105 comments Add a comment
There has been a fair amount said about how useless call centre staff are, your customer service skills are lacking, the call centre has been outsourced to India etc. Well I work in a call centre and although it isn't a very exciting job, its an honest days work and it allows me to pay the bills, put food on the table etc.
We encounter a wide range of and quite a variety of attitudes in our line of work. Some people are pleasant, others are not so pleasant. When ringing businesses to make enquiries I find most secretaries are an impenetrable fortress of rudeness.
We are real people you know! There is simply no excuse for the way they treat call centre staff who have to ring them because it is their job to do so.
A certain amount of civility has gone from communication these days. I am sure a lot of people have the kind of mind set that means if they cannot see the person they are talking to, it is somehow perfectly acceptable to be rude, abrupt and patronising.
Call centre employees are only doing their job. They do not get paid to have abuse thrown down the receiver at them.
A little politeness goes a long way. So treat call centre staff as you would like to be treated yourself; you never know who might be on the other end of the line.
By: Holly
Leave a comment
And that, you ignorant, ill-educated moron, is EXACTLY the reason we hate people like you. You want to get rid of us? Well here's a shock for you, you bumbling RETARD, we don't particularly want to have to speak to YOU. If we want to mix with idiots, we will probably go to a Wetherspoons.. the reason we are calling a CALL CENTRE (clue is in the name here.. think about it..) is because we need ASSISTANCE. YOU are supposed to know about the things we are calling about. If you don't care that I have been kept waiting, then it's simple: I don't care that you are badly paid and overworked... you deserve to be if you don't care about the job you are doing. Get an education and then get a decent job, if you have the mental capacity to do so. If you don't, then you'll have to live with the cards you've been dealt... sorry, but nobody is going to employ you to do a 50K a year job if you do not have the ability to do it. That's life. Sorry and all that.
you are told what to say what to do
how to cheat
how to manipulate decent customers regardless of how much it costs
us,so you are as bad as your bosses
just LIARS AND CHEATS
Good point and on the mercifully rare occasions when I have to call these monstrous companies and I get through to a call centre, I ask to speak to someone in charge so that I can vent my dissatisfaction on someone high enough up the food chain to be paid to deal with a complaint. Usually this works, at least if not the employee knows I'm annoyed with the employer, not the person.
Many of the call centres employees are not employed by the company itself, they are contracted out and just going through a script, they often have no knowledge of the procedures or products of the company.
I see your point Gemma, but how do we communicate our anger to the company other than through the call centre? It's usually the only way we can contact them at all; call center staff are the face of the company and when we have complaints what else are we supposed to do?
How about you considering the fact that if we get angry with you it's the fault of your employers and not their customers?
It's no coincidence that there's a high turnover of staff, people just get burn-out after 6 months to a year - it genuinely does drive you a bit mad. Instead of getting angry with someone who is probably not getting much above minimum wage and may well be taking their 100th call that day, why not think about the companies who employ them? It's about time they understand it's not a long term tenable job unless you build in more flexibility, treat staff like adults, give the role credit and acclaim and give staff variety - for example why can't teams all be multi-ski11ed so they can spend half a day on the phone and half a day off the phone doing admin? I know this break would make a huge difference to many and chances are, as a customer you will be getting much better service from someone who has the energy and patience to deal with your call properly.
Six months later, I took a call centre job with another company (as a second job). Completely different story as the manager was so helpful, very pleasant, and although the money was crap, I had no work related stress. Being treated like an adult instead of a child helped hugely.
Mr H