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The Holiday Season at a Call Center

Working at a call center certainly has its trials and tribulations unless of course you have a very think skin and are comfortable delivering bad news to strangers. If not, this job can be particularly difficult during the holiday season.

If you're not familiar with the term "call center" for the most part they are businesses whose purpose is to make or receive phone calls for other businesses. One of the most common users of call centers are large utility companies calling their customers to remind them of late payments, turn-off notices, or to collect money from customers.

At least one such call center provides for a fee this service to utility companies across the United States. An automated system dials the phone numbers of the utility customers who are late with payments. Some will receive a recorded message telling them the situation (late payment, possible termination of service, or date of disconnection of service) and to call the utility to remedy the situation.

The phone number the customer is given is actually a number back to the call center in many cases. The people who then answer the pones after those calls or after such notices have been mailed via the postal service from the utility company with the call center number must then collect money over the phone, set up payment plans, or tell these customers their power (gas, electric, water normally) will be turned off without payment.

During the holiday season these calls and mailings don't stop. The day before Thanksgiving Day thousands of utility customers were told they had 72 hours or in some cases 48 hours to pay their utility bill or their utility service would be turned off. Of course they were not told the utility company would be closed during that time so not only could they NOT pay their bill but also the field workers would not be disconnecting service until the following Monday. They were left in the dark' emotionally stressing over this situation for the holiday.

In many cases the people didn't have the money to pay these bills or would have already done so. Many were left with the fear of not having gas, electricity or water to prepare their Thanksgiving dinner.

The Monday morning after Thanksgiving Day at the call center the phones were ringing no-stop. A common phrase that day was, "Yes, your notice has expired and there is no guarantee your service will not be terminated unless you pay_____ amount of dollars now." People with children, people with

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