Call centre workers: spill the beans

dontpanic42

I worked for about eight months in an insurance call centre, dealing with motor claims. I agree with everyone here who's said that being nice is the way to go. I'm a goody-two-shoes who hates getting in trouble, so I would never refuse outright to help a customer (unless they got really abusive, in which case we were allowed to hang up on them), but I definitely wouldn't do any more than the bare minimum for someone who was being rude to me. I'd just try to get you off the phone and hope you got through to someone else next time.

On the other hand, there were several times when I went out of my way to help people who were nice to me, sometimes spending a whole day trying to fix their problem. Our call centre was a bit less regimented than some and there was flexibility to come off the phones if you were working on something. In lots of places, you can get into trouble for not taking many calls. When I called some other claims departments at other insurers (e.g. in order to negotiate liability settlements), they'd sometimes ask me to stay on the line while they wrote me an email or something, because otherwise they'd have to take another call and wouldn't be able to finish the work I needed them to do. So be prepared to stay on the line if they ask you, it might avoid a further delay (although obviously if you're paying for the call that's not ideal).

Our lines were open 9-5. I'd recommend calling before 12 or between 2:30 and 4:30. Half the team went to lunch at 12 and the other half at 1, so you're queuing with more people to speak to fewer agents. And we didn't get paid overtime for staying after 5 (although we weren't allowed to just hang up and go home, either!), so if you call just before hometime your tired and underpaid customer service minion would definitely be trying every trick in the book to get you off the line.

geerex

When I used to work for BT, I used to hang up on anyone who sounded like the following: hard of hearing, foreign (poor English), people who were calling on behalf of someone who couldn't speak English (why not?), the drunk, the sweary, the stupid, those who had hoovers/blaring music/screaming children, and anyone else I thought would be hard work.
My call stats were woeful, im surprised that I lasted as long as I did. Horrible, horrible soul crushing work.

missg2210

AJXX wrote: »

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.

This is so true. Used to work at a courier contact centre and the ruder yoh were the less i would do but be nice and i would dk a lot. If you were very rude ie swearing i would say "ahh thats so nice of you' and hang up. Winds them up even more!

Goodfellah

Until recently I worked for the satellite tv people. In both the call centre and in other levels.
The call centre folk,mostly, deserve a medal because they are the frontline and most people calling The front line want to talk to a manager if they don't hear what they want to hear. Though everyone has off days ��
If your phoning a call centre try to avoid peak times like lunch times tea breaks and the times people just get in from work. After all if your calling in at this time there will surely be a million like you and waiting for a call to be picked up certainly gets blood pressure up.
If anybody has a query ask me, Worst I can say is I don't know.

Doc_N

geerex wrote: »

When I used to work for BT, I used to hang up on anyone who sounded like the following: hard of hearing, foreign (poor English), people who were calling on behalf of someone who couldn't speak English (why not?), the drunk, the sweary, the stupid, those who had hoovers/blaring music/screaming children, and anyone else I thought would be hard work.
My call stats were woeful, im surprised that I lasted as long as I did. Horrible, horrible soul crushing work.

You sound (if all that's true) rather an unpleasant person. Did you consider a career as a banker?

AJXX

screaming children/babies is another one to add.

When I worked in a call centre I could not think of anything more irritating. Some people would even call in with (what sounded like) a screaming baby sitting on their knee!

Mind you the way some customers went on you sometimes couldn't tell if it was them or the baby!

duchy

Don't whine when you ring up -it might work with your Mum -call centres respond better to a clear complaint .

daytona0

geerex wrote: »

When I used to work for BT, I used to hang up on anyone who sounded like the following: hard of hearing, foreign (poor English), people who were calling on behalf of someone who couldn't speak English (why not?), the drunk, the sweary, the stupid, those who had hoovers/blaring music/screaming children, and anyone else I thought would be hard work.
My call stats were woeful, im surprised that I lasted as long as I did. Horrible, horrible soul crushing work.

That reminds me of when someone got sacked in my old job...

They were having a bad morning and got a customer who had one of them voices. The agent actually hung up for no reason (the customer was quite irate but nothing you shouldn't be handling). So the customer rings back and starts complaining to another agent. It gets flagged up to the manager and about 30 minutes later the agent was being escorted off the premesis.

The best bit was that the customer calmed down and came out with the phrase "I hope I didn't get that person sacked, I was just a bit angry before" - Well you did get him sacked but we'll never tell you that

ben_m_g

Insomniscene wrote: »

I work in a call centre, possibly not what you're wanting to hear but I do outbound sales. (won't be dwelling on this too much...)


And jumping on the bandwaggon with the posters above - it is a tough job and simply being nice can go such a long, long way. As an outbound sales guy - I expect it a lot more than inbound customer service agents. My main gripe is when people don't want to talk. I'd rather you hung up, or simply told me you're not interested, and never to call again, even if you said it using numerous four letter words. But lying and saying "I'm busy - can you call back later?" means you're gonna get put back into the dialler, and called again and again and again. Then when you do answer, you're even more annoyed. Just be honest and tell us where to go! Then you'll stop getting called.

This exactly this.

Many people complain about being hassled by sales guys, very few of them have actually said that they don't want to be called back.

I had a guys contact us for information and decide it wasn't for him, but wouldn't tell me that.

Every time I called, he lied and asked to be rang back three weeks later, I didn't want to talk to him, he didn't want to talk with me, he had no interest or buying authority.

But instead of just saying so, we had this game go on for about a year. Even when he stopped taking the phone calls, I still had to do my job and email or leave messages.

Every phone call was logged, every call logged, I couldn't stop calling him because he asked me not to.
He wasn't sparing my feelings, in fact he was just creating me more work.

Podge52

It would appear that I'm in a minority as I actually enjoy my job. It may simply be that the people asking for my help need it immediately and in 99% of cases I can resolve the issue, albeit not always to the customers satisfaction.