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One of the best parts of being a phone jockey is the crazy laws people make up. A few memorable ones include "I don't agree with this bill therefor i'm absolved from paying it", "You can't charge me for X because I didn't know I had X and by law I don't have to pay that" and the best one "I don't have to pay for X service because I didn't use it"
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Jan 1, 2018 21:42
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Coolspaz posted:One of the best parts of being a phone jockey is the crazy laws people make up. A few memorable ones include "I don't agree with this bill therefor i'm absolved from paying it", "You can't charge me for X because I didn't know I had X and by law I don't have to pay that" and the best one "I don't have to pay for X service because I didn't use it" loving THIS. "I haven't used my website, so why do I still need to pay this bill?" "Sir/ma'am, if you take a trip for a month, do you still need to pay your mortgage?" "Well, yes, but this is a website..."
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Jan 3, 2018 17:43
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"What's the address for your website" "its this" "do i put this on the internet" mothergently caress PenguinKnight fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Jan 3, 2018 |
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Jan 3, 2018 22:02
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PenguinKnight posted:"What's the address for your website" 
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Jan 10, 2018 11:57
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I wish that we would just mail out the drat tax forms. It uses paper, yeah but it's better than being slammed with calls where it's either "I want my form mailed out" 5 second calls or "I'm going to eat up a half hour of your time with a password reset because I can't figure out what the % sign is" e: from today: "Is there an issue with your website? Whenever I go to your website, it just stays there and doesn't let me in. It says username or password is incorrect" 
PenguinKnight fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Feb 8, 2018 |
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Feb 6, 2018 21:10
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PenguinKnight posted:"Is there an issue with your website? Whenever I go to your website, it just stays there and doesn't let me in. It says username or password is incorrect" Now imagine the client being a Spanish speaker and your job is interpreting all the fun that ensues. I worked at call center as a Spanish interpreter this past 4 months and oh lord Highlights include: *911 calls are the worst and I hate them *A woman requesting a transport service for her doctor's appointment. She always gave a different pick-up address when the lady on the other line wanted to confirm the address in order to process the order. *People who can't pronounce street names but refuse to spell them when the dispatcher requests it. Many of these happened in 911 calls. ("On the sign it says I'm in Birch St." "Can you spell the street name?" "No") *Dude rambling about his wife's shoe collection while calling about dental insurance. Other dude on the line just wanted to hang up, but I was obligated to translate everything (only exceptions are cursing, and 911/Poison control calls). *Dominican guy flirting with me because he said my voice was cute during a tech support call from a cable company. I had to translate it all, but at least support lady thought it was funny. *"Sir, do you know why you are in a hospital?" "No" "Last night you were in the parking lot. Drunk and completely naked" "Oh" *A diabetic man who insisted he had to take all of his medication in the morning even though the doctor and later a Spanish-speaking nurse told him to take one pill with every meal.
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Feb 10, 2018 09:59
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PenguinKnight posted:I wish that we would just mail out the drat tax forms. It uses paper, yeah but it's better than being slammed with calls where it's either "I want my form mailed out" 5 second calls or "I'm going to eat up a half hour of your time with a password reset because I can't figure out what the % sign is" I wish you would send out your tax forms on time, too.
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Feb 10, 2018 17:43
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I've worked in a call centre for just under a year and it's killing me! Outbound, selling insurance. Being a regulated financial company means no electronics and no paper or pens on the floor, which basically means 99% of things I'd do to keep myself sane are banned. I wish I could colour or read a book or something. There's like ~30 seconds between each call and since I'm cold calling people it's mostly just negativity, people telling me to gently caress off and get a proper job etc. I'm a sensitive baby and I cry at least once a week. Management have just recently started massively cracking down on sales targets and time spent off the phone, so excess coaching and toilet/drink breaks have to be made back up at the end of the month. At the end of this month anyone who achieves less than 70% of their sales target goes into performance management which is basically a long drawn out way of firing us. I'm almost definitely getting like 50% at most because I am bad at sales. I'm so mentally exhausted that when I get a day off I just stay home and sleep. I'm supporting myself and my partner who is doing a PHD, so I can't afford to leave until I manage to find a job that pays only slightly less. I am so depressed and stressed, I don't even feel like I'm in my own body. I'm not really suicidal but I kind of want to be hit by a car or something so I can get some rest.
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Feb 10, 2018 20:16
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How many hours a week do you work?
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Feb 10, 2018 20:45
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blaarghh posted:I've worked in a call centre for just under a year and it's killing me! Outbound, selling insurance. Being a regulated financial company means no electronics and no paper or pens on the floor, which basically means 99% of things I'd do to keep myself sane are banned. I wish I could colour or read a book or something. These guys are still hiring, despite the current clusterfuck that is the government. Decent pay & bennies, at least until Orrin Hatch has his way, and represented by a union, at least until Orrin Hatch does something about that.
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Feb 11, 2018 03:39
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sullat posted:These guys are still hiring, despite the current clusterfuck that is the government. Decent pay & bennies, at least until Orrin Hatch has his way, and represented by a union, at least until Orrin Hatch does something about that. I’m in the UK, thanks anyway though  It’s 11am - 8pm, not really long hours but unsociable ones I guess.
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Feb 11, 2018 11:40
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Since from what I've read of this thread and from a co-worker who was a 12 year veteran of one of att's call centers, I'm guessing working at a census bureau call center is going to be a sight better than a private one? Is there anything I should know (if anyone has advice) before I actually get in there calling folks? My first and second jobs were a summer job at a Kroger owned grocery chain and a few semesters at a math tutoring lab, so I'm still new to this working thing. I'm figuring it will be a sight more stressful than the latter, but probably better than the former.
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Feb 11, 2018 19:57
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I work a call center job that basically helps companies set up appointments for customers or confirms if they're attending trade events. No debt collection, no cold calls, no selling anything and people STILL get enraged half the time when I call them. The top questions are usually: - How did you get this number - Why are you phoning me - (random curse words and take me off your calling list NOW) People are just angry on the phones for some reason. Like the ringer on a phone has some pavlovian power that instantly enrages people even before they've picked up the call.
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Feb 11, 2018 20:07
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FanofPortals posted:I work a call center job that basically helps companies set up appointments for customers or confirms if they're attending trade events. No debt collection, no cold calls, no selling anything and people STILL get enraged half the time when I call them. There's some people who just HAVE to answer their phone no matter what, and will then get angry at you for interrupting them. Calls from my company show up as 0800 so it's obviously not going to be something important, yet I get people answer on the toilet, in the bath, while driving, while teaching in a classroom, working up a ladder, in a work meeting etc. If my phone rings and it's not a local number or one I recognise, I let it go to voicemail unless I'm literally sat on my rear end doing nothing. I just don't understand the compulsion to answer your phone and then be angry because you're busy. Then there's the ones who say 'I'm busy can you call me back?' And get angry when you actually call back, because we're not allowed to close leads unless we've received an actual no and can't read minds.
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Feb 11, 2018 20:38
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blaarghh posted:If my phone rings and it's not a local number or one I recognise, I let it go to voicemail unless I'm literally sat on my rear end doing nothing. A lot of robo callers use phone number spoofers to mak the calls look local. If a call has the same first couple of digits as your phone number does, it's a call spammer.
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Feb 11, 2018 22:11
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FanofPortals posted:People are just angry on the phones for some reason. Like the ringer on a phone has some pavlovian power that instantly enrages people even before they've picked up the call. Ugh, I know this feeling too well. Today I can guarantee I will get at least one person mad that I'm calling on a Sunday. If it's such a big deal, just don't answer. We'll try again, I promise.
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Feb 11, 2018 22:31
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there are way too many people that confuse the login url with our email.
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Feb 28, 2018 22:37
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Someone at my call centre tried to jump off the third floor last week and had to be escorted out by police. Management haven't mentioned it at all, not even a generic 'we care about our employees' wellbeing, here's some mental health hotlines, talk to your manager if you need to' email. What they have done instead is make the process for calling in sick even more complicated and dehumanising lol  Now you have to explain your symptoms in detail to two different people, describe what you're doing to make sure it doesn't happen again, (answer three riddles, cross a lake of fire... ) wait all day for a follow-up call to check you'll be coming in the next day, then have a review meeting when you're back to document everything. Which is awkward enough if you have like stomach flu, but I can't imagine any of that going well if you're off because of personal or mental issues.
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Mar 17, 2018 14:22
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blaarghh posted:Someone at my call centre tried to jump off the third floor last week and had to be escorted out by police. Management haven't mentioned it at all, not even a generic 'we care about our employees' wellbeing, here's some mental health hotlines, talk to your manager if you need to' email. What they have done instead is make the process for calling in sick even more complicated and dehumanising lol Ugh, that's disgusting. I'm glad the guy didn't jump, but I hope he's getting the help he needs (even if it doesn't sound like your employer would help with that kind of thing). I'm coming up at 1 year at my job. I'm technically part of the chat-only team, which is -way- better to me than having to take phone calls. I've sorta carved out a niche job for myself creating training videos instead of answering chats in the queue, though. All I had to do was start coming in on Sundays to capture and record everything, and I guess my supervisors liked it enough that they were able to get me a work laptop and Adobe's Creative Cloud Suite and are giving me time to work on it during my normal hours. I'm even working on a special video project that's overseen by our CEO, so if that goes well, I'll have some good negotiating leverage for later down the road. I'm still subject to being moved back to the chat queue if wait-times get crazy, and I got word today that they'll be doing away with dedicated chat/phone teams in the next few months. I think it makes sense to be more flexible with moving people around from a department standpoint; I've seen days where the chat queue is exploding but the phone queue is a ghost town, and vice versa. That being said, I don't want to have to take another front-line support phone call ever again if I can possible help it. I have a few internal job opportunities I'm shooting for that will get me out of this department, so fingers-crossed that one of them will pan out!
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Mar 17, 2018 15:40
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blaarghh posted:Now you have to explain your symptoms in detail to two different people, describe what you're doing to make sure it doesn't happen again, (answer three riddles, cross a lake of fire... ) wait all day for a follow-up call to check you'll be coming in the next day, then have a review meeting when you're back to document everything. Which is awkward enough if you have like stomach flu, but I can't imagine any of that going well if you're off because of personal or mental issues. lol e: I mean I keep trying to think of a joke because from far off it's so absurd it's funny, why does anyone ever choose to work there? But I just feel terrible for the people who do.
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Mar 18, 2018 00:25
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blaarghh posted:Someone at my call centre tried to jump off the third floor last week and had to be escorted out by police. Management haven't mentioned it at all, not even a generic 'we care about our employees' wellbeing, here's some mental health hotlines, talk to your manager if you need to' email. What they have done instead is make the process for calling in sick even more complicated and dehumanising lol Holy poo poo run away!
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Mar 18, 2018 01:56
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blaarghh posted:Someone at my call centre tried to jump off the third floor last week and had to be escorted out by police. Management haven't mentioned it at all, not even a generic 'we care about our employees' wellbeing, here's some mental health hotlines, talk to your manager if you need to' email. What they have done instead is make the process for calling in sick even more complicated and dehumanising lol This is insane, in case you were wondering. E like are you getting paid in tons of gold bullion or handling classified information or something for that to be real Inspector Hound fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Mar 18, 2018 |
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Mar 18, 2018 04:17
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blaarghh posted:Someone at my call centre tried to jump off the third floor last week and had to be escorted out by police. Management haven't mentioned it at all, not even a generic 'we care about our employees' wellbeing, here's some mental health hotlines, talk to your manager if you need to' email. What they have done instead is make the process for calling in sick even more complicated and dehumanising lol Extensive descriptions of consistency and smell of bodily fluids and functions, followed up with pictures in the review meeting.
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Mar 18, 2018 15:40
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therobit posted:Holy poo poo run away! I'm trying! I've been there for just about a year. It's so hard to find another job that isn't in a call centre though, I feel like I'm trapped forever.
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Mar 18, 2018 16:16
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blaarghh posted:I'm trying! I've been there for just about a year. It's so hard to find another job that isn't in a call centre though, I feel like I'm trapped forever. At that point, I'd be down with digging ditches, cleaning porta potties, selling crack to toddlers...
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Mar 18, 2018 21:52
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Get a good long term disability insurance plan to fall back on once it drives you completely crazy
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Mar 18, 2018 22:22
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blaarghh posted:I'm trying! I've been there for just about a year. It's so hard to find another job that isn't in a call centre though, I feel like I'm trapped forever. I think this is the hardest part about working in a call center: in the majority of these jobs, you don't actually gain any transferrable skills that carry much weight on a resume or in an interview.
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Mar 21, 2018 07:11
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Had a short shift at ye olde center of calls tonight. I forgot to mention a real joy of this job is when we recycle the same call list we just went through and then call the same numbers the same day we already called them. The best part is when someone you already phoned picks up and then screams at you never to phone them again. I mean I understand that but I feel my boss/the client who hired us to annoy you should get the screaming. Oh well 
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Mar 28, 2018 05:26
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Our automated dialler sucks so even if you set a callback to a specific time if it doesn't get through the first time, it just does whatever it wants. So it leads to a lot of "I told you loving people to stop calling me while I'm at work!!!" And then there's the fact they tell us off for closing too many leads, so even when someone explicitly says 'NO I DON'T WANT THIS INSURANCE" some assholes set up a callback just to avoid closing the lead. Then whoever is lucky enough to call them next time gets to deal with the (understandably) angry customer who has been called 3 times this week. I hate when you help someone out and they're nice and polite but then when they think they've hung up the phone you hear them go "stupid rear end" or something  gently caress you I was nice.
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Mar 28, 2018 08:06
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blaarghh posted:I hate when you help someone out and they're nice and polite but then when they think they've hung up the phone you hear them go "stupid rear end" or something When I did customer service for a major US department store, this happened a few times. I usually try to end the call before I can hear their comments now.
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Mar 30, 2018 03:23
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I answered phones for OnStar for six months. Three months in I got promoted to helping the people fresh out of training because I was the number two person in my department. Helping new people was almost worse than the customers Sure, some doctor might be mad that I can't tell what kind of tires he has on his car. Or I get the schizophrenic man yelling his conspiracy theories into the phone. Or the drunk angry guy who opened with I WANT TO GO TO A FUCKIN WHOREHOUSE But having to help other people clean up their own messes was a whole new hell. The worst was the girl who had a call from a couple who needed to get a hotel in St Petersburg FL She booked them one in St Petersburg loving Russia I ended up quitting because the stress was giving me a nervous breakdown manifesting as rage episodes and it was incredibly unhealthy Best call was the guy who called because he was stuck in a lake though
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Apr 1, 2018 07:50
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I follow this thread even though the last time I was at a call center was a decade ago. Sometimes I long for he days of working phones again vs being a embedded engineer.
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Apr 1, 2018 14:49
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Goddamnit I am so happy to find this thread. I'm really sorry. This is a wall of text, I just need to get it out. I feel so guilty complaining about it to my bf and to my friends repeatedly but it's a daily frustration. I work for [major printer company redacted] doing tech support for business printers. This can be anything from military installations, state government operations, law firms, Staples, Office Depot, UPS, you name it. Part of me feels bad posting about it because from the outside, it is a salaried (base 30,000/yr) job with benefits and a couple weeks vacation right off the bat, plus weekends off. I'm drat privileged to enjoy these aspects of the job. One thing the company does right is if you want people to work call center tech support, you ought to be paying them proper. I'm lucky to have a fair manager who, despite me being really lovely at my job, is a really considerate guy. Coworkers are all great people as well. We're meant to have a 50% solve rate on 3 different kinds of machines. This means solving problems to avoid technicians being sent onsite, so we're in place as tech support to save money. It's not always possible because our customers know they can just demand a technician to come out. Everyone at my company be they supplies people, technicians or sales representatives are meant to keep up with stats; we're all aware of it. Doesn't stop a sales rep from calling on behalf of their high school client in Assfuck Nowhere, Texas with five machines intending to get a tech onsite to look at 'em. One party makes a ton of promises to save their own rear end, only for people in tech support to take the loss. Ah, can't just set up one ticket for 5 machines. Has to be a single ticket for every single machine, meaning.. 5 tickets against your solve rate for the day, in one call. We're not allowed to deny service to the customer either. If they so much as mention wanting a tech, we set it up. The best you can do in terms of pushing back is when you know 100% a simple issue can be solved by replacing a consumable part that they likely already have on site and you sell them on getting them up and running sooner than later, but for some people it manages to go in one ear and out the other. Like.. do you not want this to be solved. sooner? No? Ok, wait up to two days for a tech, then, be my guest. Customers who lie about attempted troubleshooting are also the worst. You ask them what troubleshooting they've tried and they list W, X, Y. When you say you can try Z, they say "oh I've done that!!" We're not allowed to call them on it. They're just so caught on having a technician onsite - they have service contracts that they pay us for and think we're the call line for technicians, not realizing they also pay for phone support and contracts stipulate that they work with us. Understandably the front secretary at a company or the IT guy onsite isn't the person who's signed that contract and gone over the details of it. They're just told, "call this number if you need to place a service call". The people who say, "I didn't go to copy school" and don't want to troubleshoot, well, I get it - this isn't troubleshooting someone's modem on a Saturday when they have time to talk to me. This is people working actual loving jobs who are being taken away from their jobs due to the machine failing and their productivity is hampered twofold as a result. Don't blame you one bit for not wanting to work with me, ma'am. At our company meeting with the whole call center a few months back our head of operations for the call center noted in surveys that customers are unhappy with calling in. Well? Did you make the connection that people.. don't like being taken away from their jobs to troubleshoot? Not to mention. Multi-billion loving dollar company and they can't fix a phone system. It breaks so often. Currently we're helping our default queue (the "stay on the line for further assistance" queue if you don't have your serial number on hand for the system to direct you to the right place) which means after the 20 calls waiting for ten minutes to reach my team are finished up, we start getting random calls. Some we transfer to other teams. Some we take and work on machines we aren't trained for! It's frustrating. If it's not the phone system loving up, it's our ticketing systems. I've done call center operations in tech support before and have never had the systems issues we have. All this and you're still expected to reach a 50% solve rate and to maintain calls at around 6-7 minutes. Do you want solves or do you want fast calls? Calls can only be 6 minutes if they're standing at the machine ready to troubleshoot; most people are not when they call. It feels so goddamn stacked against you. I know companies raise the bar on you so you feel like you have something to shoot for but.. I don't know anyone who feels motivated to shoot for poo poo all at this job. It wouldn't be so bad if all we did was issue technicians, but we're expected to save money by solving things over the phone. They can tell you how much you cost the company versus saved it. Oh, we started with two machines then added a third. Instead of doing it the logical way, we were told to do training for this machine between calls instead of being booked time to do training, it was added to our queue on a Monday, and we didn't see the machine in person until the end of that week. The company didn't wait until we had more people added to our team either, we were expected to just deal with it. So I'm flying by the seat of my pants explaining poo poo and troubleshooting poo poo I'm unsure of. In terms of getting a better job, well, in this town it's rather literally the best I've got. You feel stuck between a rock and a hard place because the only other options are other call centers that pay less well, or you fight for shifts as part time retail or fast food. I'm waiting to hear back from school so I can loving get some marketable skills and not do this ever again. Anyway.. I'm sorry this is such a rant. I wake up with a pit in my stomach and spend 40 hours of my week frustrated. The only relief I get is when I get to see my bf once a month, or when I get to talk to him at the end of the day. I just know I can't do this forever.
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Apr 10, 2018 06:06
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That's awful! I'm glad you have a plan to get out.
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Apr 10, 2018 13:03
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I loving did it. I made it a year and now I can finally get my FMLA for my schizophrenia and take time out when I’m seeing poo poo around the call center and responding to questions the customers aren’t even asking me. God call centers are difficult with mental illness.
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Apr 13, 2018 00:22
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Hope you hit your 1250 hours too. Good luck with the mental health stuff!
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Apr 13, 2018 01:13
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I got a new job! It’s still phone based but it’s inbound customer support, and business customers so hopefully it will be less soul destroying. Also it’s a smaller and nicer company. I don’t start til may and I don’t want to get my hopes up because it might still be awful but I’m just so happy. No more cold calling, no more sales targets 
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Apr 18, 2018 07:46
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blaarghh posted:I got a new job! It’s still phone based but it’s inbound customer support, and business customers so hopefully it will be less soul destroying. Also it’s a smaller and nicer company. I don’t start til may and I don’t want to get my hopes up because it might still be awful but I’m just so happy. No more cold calling, no more sales targets Congrats! Anything is better than the last place!
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Apr 18, 2018 12:36
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someone in my call centre messed with my account for the system and now i have admin privileges by accident, so i can now see all the really obvious fraud they commit. its a very well managed company.
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Apr 18, 2018 13:29
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Another Person posted:someone in my call centre messed with my account for the system and now i have admin privileges by accident, so i can now see all the really obvious fraud they commit. its a very well managed company.
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Apr 18, 2018 16:55
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