Call centre workers: spill the beans

Bartelmy

I work for a finance company. We're behind a number of credit cards, but the majority of our business is in fixed term-agreements, ie, loans, buy-now-pay-later, etc. If you've bought consumer electronics on finance, you probably owe us money.

I work in our credit department. We issued a number of store cards in the early 2000s, most of which we no longer deal with. Thus, if you happen to have one of those old cards, we have no interest in retaining your business. Half the stores closed anyway, and there's only a handful who will still accept the cards. If you want to close your account, we will respond with a cheerful "okidokie!".

Our policy on late fees is, we will remove it if it was due to our error, if you did not receive your first statement and thus had no way of knowing when the due date would be each month, or if we owe you some goodwill or there are extenuating circumstances.

In the latter case; some customers have a "goodwill" flag on their accounts, which means we can reverse one fee, no questions asked. Otherwise...well, for example, I had one young man who told me he'd been in a car accident, fallen into a coma, and had called us as soon as he could. Since he'd never had a late fee in the entire six years he'd had the account, I was inclined to accept it. If, on the other hand, you're screaming at me that you've never had a late fee and you deserve to have it removed, I bet you anything I'll see several on the history of your account.

Also, please remember that you don't deserve to not have to pay interest. You can avoid interest if you pay your account off in full every month. If you fail to do this - yes, even by a penny - you will automatically be charged interest for the days the balance was on the account. You're not being charged interest on the discrepancy, you're being charged interest on the daily average. We will not reverse it. Interest is the price of credit. You don't deserve not to pay it.

Also, to second what was said above; my manager is there to manage people, not customers. He does not know the system better than me. He will routinely mute his side of the call so he can check details with me before repeating them to you. In short; a manager will not help you. They do not have greater abilities or insight than I do. A supervisor might, but once I've conferred with them, they won't say anything new to you in person. And because our supervisors also work on the phones, you may well be speaking to a supervisor in the first place, before being transferred to whoever is sitting at the special 'supervisor phone' for the day.

We're quietest on Sundays and Bank Holidays because most people don't believe we're open then.

Please don't do what The Most Obnoxious Woman in the World did and shush us when we're trying to explain things. That does not incline us to go the extra mile for you.

The words 'Financial Ombudsman' and 'FCA' do not scare me. Nor does "I want to close my account!". We won't bribe you to stay. We have enough customers.

geerex wrote: »

As for not being good at my job, I must have dreamt up the bottles of wine and vouchers that I received as gifts :rotfl:. Jealousy is a terrible thing.

In most if not all call centres, call avoidance as you've described will have you instantly dismissed for gross misconduct, and with good reason. I don't think it's possible to consider yourself good at your job - even while acing other elements of it - while committing gross misconduct. Though I suppose there's an interesting debate on definitions there; do you have to do all of your job to be considered good at it? Or does it still count as being good at it if you're doing well at the bits where you're not committing gross misconduct?

CoffeeandStitches

Bartelmy wrote: »

Also, to second what was said above; my manager is there to manage people, not customers. They do not have greater abilities or insight than I do. A supervisor might, but once I've conferred with them, they won't say anything new to you in person. And because our supervisors also work on the phones, you may well be speaking to a supervisor in the first place, before being transferred to whoever is sitting at the special 'supervisor phone' for the day.

Same in ours. We have zero authority in our office to change any prices or terms, but it's amazing how people won't accept that from the agent, or the agent's supervisor. It's only when they have spent half an hour moaning to the below, then been given to a manager that they finally accept it.

Bartelmy wrote: »

The words 'Financial Ombudsman' and 'FCA' do not scare me.

HERE HERE!!!!!!! When you use those 'Buzz words' it does NOT mean you will get your own way. All it means is that I have an extra form to fill out at the end of the call. Please, for the love of chocolate, save it for when you are following the correct complaints procedure.

Bartelmy wrote: »

In most if not all call centres, call avoidance as you've described will have you instantly dismissed for gross misconduct, and with good reason.

Instant dismissal here as well. And the managers are not afraid of doing it.....

InsideInsurance

Havent worked in call centres for a long time now but did 10 years before switching to change management and strategy. I dont think there is any consistency across different companies.

I worked for mail order company and the system gave you unlimited authorisation as there was no authority levels built into the system. Each operator had what they were supposed to go to for discounts on items or reducing monthly payments but to get higher you just went to a senior or a team leader and then in the notes just say "Sam Smith authorised" or whatever so there were no real checks and balances.

On the flipside when I did outbound telesales we had no authority to do anything. As a third party provider for the merchant we didnt even officially have access to the customers account, we just had their name, address and telephone number. All orders made for the product were simply written on paper forms and I assume faxed or emailed to the merchant at the end of the day. Probably not the best as they contained credit card details for payment.

Working for a power company we could see who the electricity supplier was for any properties in our former areas but officially you gave them "the premium rate telephone number" to call to find out who it was or of cause we can take over the supply for you now if you want?

When in Claims then anything short of sending money somewhere was purely under your own control. For money I could self authorise payments up to £1,000 and authorise other peoples payments up to £25,000. Even entry level staff could self authorise up to £100. There were of cause frequent file audits and this wouldnt impact those decisions already made but would impact your performance reviews and thus bonus and/ or progression

Water company didnt really allow us to do anything, during office hours we simply were taking calls for "emergencies" and passing them to the regional office, ordering septic tank emptying and shipping water. Out of hours you had to prioritize the emergency jobs and instruct the on call engineer to attend. Not that often did you get so many separate events that you really need to make judgement calls.

Did time at a telephone company (yes I did do all the utilities but unfortunately you dont get double pay unlike monopoly) and a supermarket were a long time ago that I cannot remember that much about them. The only thing that sticks out about the supermarket is that everyone in the call centre was a customer service manager by job title so that if there was an instore complaint and their CSM wasnt available they could be passed to us and we could legitimately say we were a manager. Of course reality was we had the same job grade and pay as the instore CSAs just a different title but it did the trick with the callers.


Similarly I dont think there is a universal good time to call. 4am on a Sunday morning tends to be quiet but that doesnt help on a 9-5 mon-fri call centre. Likewise it will depend on if what you need can be answered by the person that works the dead shift, if they need to refer to a team thats office hours only then you may as well call in office hours.

Within office hours, avoid lunch (12-2) and first or last thing. More people call in the afternoon than the morning once the lines opening rush dies down.

duchy

Like most other things.....a lot has changed in call centres in ten years !

Interesting historically though

maz2702

I have worked in a call centre for years for a travel insurance company.

as previous posts manners is key!

secondaly if you have called to query a policy/payment/complaint - give us a chance and LISTEN to the response.

thirdly please please please do not call when you are eating - wearing a head set listening to your food slushing round your mouth makes me more inclined to get the call over with.

geerex

Bartelmy wrote: »

In most if not all call centres, call avoidance as you've described will have you instantly dismissed for gross misconduct, and with good reason. I don't think it's possible to consider yourself good at your job - even while acing other elements of it - while committing gross misconduct. Though I suppose there's an interesting debate on definitions there; do you have to do all of your job to be considered good at it? Or does it still count as being good at it if you're doing well at the bits where you're not committing gross misconduct?

I don't doubt you.
I was young, I didn't care, and I got away with it for MONTHS! I left before I was caught.
Like I have already said, I did my best for decent people. I just refused to deal with the idiots. I received many compliments, and awards. Had I had no "opt out" when dealing with the morons, I daresay I would have quit sooner or been disciplined for telling the idiots exactly how stupid they were being.
In essence, it was flawed. I gamed the system, screened out all of the people who would have made the job ten times worse, and did fairly well out of it. I pity those who have to deal with the full spectrum of human detritus, the job must be hell.
I thank God that I'll never be in the position, but I'd rather be unemployed than work in a godforsaken call centre.

Full disclosure: Depending on their level of proficiency in English, some, ahem, new entrants to the country could help you meet your targets in one day. Many hadn't progressed beyond the name/address/yes/no class, and as such, you could pretty much load their account with everything, all with their permission. Targets met!:rotfl:
If they were either totally useless, or a bit better, boom - direct transfer to the "asian" helpline. :T

daytona0

geerex wrote: »

I don't doubt you.
I was young, I didn't care, and I got away with it for MONTHS! I left before I was caught.
Like I have already said, I did my best for decent people. I just refused to deal with the idiots. I received many compliments, and awards. Had I had no "opt out" when dealing with the morons, I daresay I would have quit sooner or been disciplined for telling the idiots exactly how stupid they were being.
In essence, it was flawed. I gamed the system, screened out all of the people who would have made the job ten times worse, and did fairly well out of it. I pity those who have to deal with the full spectrum of human detritus, the job must be hell.
I thank God that I'll never be in the position, but I'd rather be unemployed than work in a godforsaken call centre.

Full disclosure: Depending on their level of proficiency in English, some, ahem, new entrants to the country could help you meet your targets in one day. Many hadn't progressed beyond the name/address/yes/no class, and as such, you could pretty much load their account with everything, all with their permission. Targets met!:rotfl:
If they were either totally useless, or a bit better, boom - direct transfer to the "asian" helpline. :T

I agree with this.

The way I seen it though, a call is over pretty soon and after doing time in a call centre you learn that some people are actually rude and that you don't need to go out of your way for everyone (but you certainly need to "help") so I used to deal with everything. Complicated emails were good because they'd kill 30-60 minutes. No call avoidance.

That being said, there was a huge culture of call avoidance in the department and agents were absolute nightmares at times;

- Girls who would be on a dead phone line and would absolutely refuse to do anything else (not vocally of course), often doing things like painting their nails (the trick is to be chummy with the manager and get them chatting about crap). Guys could be just as bad but they were more black and white - they either worked hard and had a chat or they were sacking fodder.

- Customers being ignored for up to 9 days via email when the solution was clearly spelled out by myself on a previous note (ie a simple refund) all because the agent couldn't be arsed reading my notes. Seen that a few times

- Customers being outright fobbed off for a bit longer simply so that agents could avoid doing additional admin work

- Agents spitefully sending customers to the wrong department (either on purpose or "by accident") knowing full well that they likely won't get the customer again. This was a sly way of hanging up which didn't even result in a warning

geerex

daytona0 wrote: »

I agree with this.

The way I seen it though, a call is over pretty soon and after doing time in a call centre you learn that some people are actually rude and that you don't need to go out of your way for everyone (but you certainly need to "help") so I used to deal with everything. Complicated emails were good because they'd kill 30-60 minutes. No call avoidance.

That being said, there was a huge culture of call avoidance in the department and agents were absolute nightmares at times;

- Girls who would be on a dead phone line and would absolutely refuse to do anything else (not vocally of course), often doing things like painting their nails (the trick is to be chummy with the manager and get them chatting about crap). Guys could be just as bad but they were more black and white - they either worked hard and had a chat or they were sacking fodder.

- Customers being ignored for up to 9 days via email when the solution was clearly spelled out by myself on a previous note (ie a simple refund) all because the agent couldn't be arsed reading my notes. Seen that a few times

- Customers being outright fobbed off for a bit longer simply so that agents could avoid doing additional admin work

- Agents spitefully sending customers to the wrong department (either on purpose or "by accident") knowing full well that they likely won't get the customer again. This was a sly way of hanging up which didn't even result in a warning

The whole call centre culture is wrong. Instead if paying crap basic wages, agents should be paid a living wage and expected to go above and beyond to justify their position.
All UK citizens should be conscripted into working with the public for a year to show them how not to act in the future. Everyone living in the UK should be made to pass at least GCSE English as well. We have too many ignorant people in this country, good manners are sorely lacking.

hollydays

geerex wrote: »

The whole call centre culture is wrong. Instead if paying crap basic wages, agents should be paid a living wage and expected to go above and beyond to justify their position.
All UK citizens should be conscripted into working with the public for a year to show them how not to act in the future. Everyone living in the UK should be made to pass at least GCSE English as well. We have too many ignorant people in this country, good manners are sorely lacking.

How do you propose making everyone in the uk pass GCSE English??

daytona0

geerex wrote: »

The whole call centre culture is wrong. Instead if paying crap basic wages, agents should be paid a living wage and expected to go above and beyond to justify their position.
All UK citizens should be conscripted into working with the public for a year to show them how not to act in the future. Everyone living in the UK should be made to pass at least GCSE English as well. We have too many ignorant people in this country, good manners are sorely lacking.

Not all call centres are bad. The one I worked in had about 10 different companies in the same building. They got any old sod to man the phones (bums on seats) and they paid them minimum wage on a zero hour contract (which is just to make sure that they can sack you on the spot). It took between 1-3 years to get offered a contract if you survived that long. That call centre specialised in being cheap and cheerful, taking advantage of the young people mainly. My mum works in a government one and, whilst she gets similar crap to what I got, she gets paid considerably more and gets all these mad incentives like flexitime and bonuses.

I have to say though that they did actually try and tackle the whole GCSE English issue (which I am in complete agreement with you in terms of customer advisers as well as customers). Their idea of addressing it was a 6 hour training session on how to put commas into sentences and the correct use of "their, they're and there". It was all well and good in principal, but it was wholly underwhelming. I'm qualified to teach English in other countries and it is amazing how little people know about English.