Nice People Thread No. 14, all Nice and Proper

CKhalvashi

Spirit wrote: »

In other news , our mortgage is paid off this weekend. By an amazing set of coincidences, we will be mortgage free, I am retired with a good pension, We have modest savings and a lump sum to invest.owe nothing, and many 00s of £ in credit with utilities.no school fees or university costs. Provision for a deposit for DD in our plans.

Crikey.

Just got to get health cracked, which is priceless.

Congrats Spirit! :beer:

kabayiri wrote: »

Try working in a contact (call) centre for an environment.

People boil down to statistics.

There are discussions and arguments as to how many seconds people have between calls to ready themselves for the next call. 5 seconds sounds nothing but it is spoken about as big money.

Everything is known in terms of numbers. How many rest breaks; reasons for call drops; abusive responses, the lot.

Genuinely, I do feel for those on the front line. Many of them are unlikely to see the job through to any kind of retirement too. They tend to get fed up and leave.

I told a guy that called on Thursday that I'm not being paid to answer his survey, and if he'll pay a pro-rated day rate to the client I was working for, he'd be more than welcome to speak to me.

I won't get abusive with any cold caller, but my favourite was probably the other week; investment in fine wines.

- Cold caller
- Something I know nothing about
- Said he could send a brochure (as he wouldn't get off the phone, kept using my full first name, which anyone that knows me will tell you I hate and I was in middle of something else), next week had a call asking if I'd be willing to invest north of £10k
- Company I've never heard of
- Up to 20 missed calls in a day and no voicemail left

I don't think he'll stop calling any time soon, but he still won't be getting that sort of money with the above circumstances.

Generali

Nom, nom, nom GDB. NOM!!!!

ivyleaf

It looks delicious GDB :drool:

gfplux

While on holiday in France I had a number of those "Microsoft" calls. I have had my standard response worked out for some time now.
I shout down the phone that they are crooks and the authoritys are about to raid their property and they better start running. They all hung up before I finished my rant however I felt wonderful.

Generali

gfplux wrote: »

While on holiday in France I had a number of those "Microsoft" calls. I have had my standard response worked out for some time now.
I shout down the phone that they are crooks and the authoritys are about to raid their property and they better start running. They all hung up before I finished my rant however I felt wonderful.

I used to have a pop at the people on the phone with these scams but in all honesty, the people ringing up are probably as exploited as anyone else. I have a mate that worked in a boiler room in Spain. One day she turned up and everyone had gone away. She never had a clue that the company was dodgy.

I just hang up on them and those people that call about charities. They're just as bad as those beggurs that call up from 'Microsoft' IMHO.

GDB2222

Generali wrote: »

I used to have a pop at the people on the phone with these scams but in all honesty, the people ringing up are probably as exploited as anyone else. I have a mate that worked in a boiler room in Spain. One day she turned up and everyone had gone away. She never had a clue that the company was dodgy.

I just hang up on them and those people that call about charities. They're just as bad as those beggurs that call up from 'Microsoft' IMHO.

I have one of two responses. The main one is to ask them to hold on whilst I turn on my computer. Then I put the phone down and get on with something else. That keeps them busy for a few minutes whilst they are not scamming someone else. Or, if I am feeling particularly public spirited, I let them take me through their script, being sure to make lots of mistakes.

The other response is to have a chat and ask them whether they can't get an honest job. Several of them have told me how bad they feel about what they are doing. I'm still not going to let them near my computer though.

kabayiri

There is a reason why there are 2 terms. Contact centre is usually reserved for inbound calls, when you want help. Call centre applies to those unwelcome calls you receive in the middle of the shower, nearly causing you to slip, and then go on to asking if you want to make a claim!

PasturesNew

I used to do lots of call centre work in the past. It was a quick way to walk straight into a job - and I was good at it. That was just for local companies, making appointments for reps to go round and sell them stuff like fitted kitchens, conservatories, double glazing. I did a portrait studio once too (cold call them and get their card number to sign up for four photo sessions, with small print, £16 for the four sessions and they got a free photo from each session).

I've also done door knocking - mostly double glazing/conservatories, but once there was an unusual canvassing job I did... it was some dairy that wanted to sell doorstep milk delivery franchises - and they offered the franchise person a "ready made round". So a team of us would go out and doorknock to sign up new milk delivery customers. I got paid £7/signup. They got their first week of milk free and a doorstep milk cooling box. Made shedloads there.

It's a job you can walk straight into and start that day .... you used to get a flat rate hourly rate, then an amount per appointment booked. Better companies also paid a %age of any sale value.

But you do get burn out pretty quickly.

I used to do it mostly as a quick income boost on top of a full-time day job, or a quick sole income when my day job finished. I used to temp a lot in days gone by (when temps were valued). Indeed, in 1990/91 I was getting £6.60/hour as a bog standard secretary! I'd struggle to get that these days, except with NMW rising it'd be guaranteed. But it's taken 25 years to get back to that rate!

I was living in a mobile home - which you can only get with a personal loan. If you lose your job and get the dole your loan wasn't repaid, so you had to really bust a nut to find "any work/any job/start soonest ....to avoid repossession/eviction"

zagubov

There was a programme on the telly the other day about a boss spying on his employees by pretending to be on a reality show (this was in the US).

He chatted idly with a co-worker who admitted she wouldn't be staying in the job long, and later when he came out of disguise he told her she was finished. I don't know who came out of the exchange looking worse; the foolish employee who'd expressed disloyalty on-camera or the boss who'd sacked her in front of the viewing nation.

kabayiri

PasturesNew wrote: »

...
But you do get burn out pretty quickly.
...

There's a PPI style claims company up here which had 80%+ front line staff turnover in under 2 years.

There is also a national blue chip company who run a contact centre in the Manchester area. They have the best retention ratios you could hope for, and it's the most economical site the company has in the entire UK.

I guess it depends on the quality of the company.

It's amazing just how well qualified the agents are. It's not unusual to find people with degrees in tier 1 roles.