Call centre workers: spill the beans

doshdope wrote: »

Having worked in a contact centre, the golden rule is always to never have a go at the person answerign your call, 99.9% of the time, any error is nothing to do with them so shouting at them will get you NOWHERE. You catch mroe flies with honey than vinegar

This is something people really underestimate. I used to work in a call centre 2 years ago.

Call up and start being all huffy and complaining then I guarantee that I'll do my bare minimum for you and no more.

If you're nice then I'll go out of my way to get you what you want.

Most of the time when people complain about 'bad customer service' it's because they're being hostile towards the rep, and the rep is righty just doing bare minimum to get them off the phone.

I worked for an unnamed laqrge online retailer


- Do not consider ringing up 15 minutes before the close because you are most likely going to be fobbed off. If you do then keep the call short and easy to solve. If you are ringing to make a complaint then the agent will be likely to promise you absolutely everything and will be the most agreeable person in the world - but don't necessarily expect anything to be done when you get off the phone (agents are not always that bad though).

- If you feel you have a legitimate point but the agent is rude or you don't feel that they addressed your concerns then simply ring back. Another agent will happily help you, especially when you casually mention a colleague's name and how they didn't really help you (this can sometimes backfire though)

- Do not be a bad crank. Period. I had some woman ring me up about a tester payment (around 1 pound) and she started screaming about how our company had stolen her money. She was almost crying. First of all, I have no control over it. Second of all, she caught me on a bad day as I had my motorbike (2k value) nicked that morning.... you can go crawl into a hole and die. That particular customer was one of the rare occasions where I've had a go back on the phone, which agents will rarely do.

- Best time to ring up was the morning. Staff are fresh and raring to go, and the lines were not generally busy. Our busy times were generally when people get home from work. Also, anytime after 6pm was known as "Crank time" because the bad ones came out of the woodwork and you got the occasional screamers. If you are going to complain then do it in the night with everyone else because the agents are probably a little spaced out and switch off a bit (which is a good thing for customers!). If you come on screaming at 9am when the lines open then you just put the agent in a foul mood right away and that's not good for neither you or the agent.

- People who ask "how are you" tend to put agents on the defensive. We used to think "hmm, why is this person asking how I am? I'm just here to sort out their problem so why are they trying to engage with me on a personal level?" - some of the time it is just a nicety which is fine. Much of the time the person wants a goodwill gesture or to put in a complaint and they try to make you more agreeable to this.

- I was authorised to give up to about 10 quid as a goodwill gesture/compensation. This was only ever given in the following circumstances;

1. When a customer was genuinely wronged

2. To make the parties more agreeable to a resolution (rare)

3. To get rid of people who kick off a huge fuss (an average agent used to have about 3 attempts before dishing out goodwill gestures - but some clueless idiots were just told the same thing over and over until they got bored. That was for only when they were 100% in the wrong)

4. As a way of avoiding an alternative resolution which would have taken a lot more time to complete (rare)


- Busy periods (such as christmas) will be a crapshoot....You might get the established agent who has been working there for years, you might even get the manager who is taking normal calls. On the flip side, you could get the 18 year old college dropout who is fresh off the dole and on the first week of their first ever proper job. And anything in between...

- You should talk to the agent the same way you would expect them to talk to you. If you don't talk to them nicely then they will do the bare minimum (maybe not even that) for you. If you are polite and nice then most agents will go out of their way for you.

- The phrase "I know its not your fault" should have meaning, and not just be something you mutter after a 10 minute rant which the agent likely doesn't care about/have any power in fixing.

- If you find a problem (lets say the website says "ordre" instead of "order")then raise it up once and the agent will happily raise the issue. Just be aware that the way companies works means that this isn't going to be fixed for weeks unless you're dealing with a huge company in which case it might take a few days. No need to milk it "oh well your IT is useless" or anything like. WE KNOW, but we can't do a thing about it! If it was up to me I'd change it there and then for you, but the company is hardly going to give me access to the css stylesheet/html file for the website.