Oh the joys of answering the telephone via a computer in a call center!

Regardless of whether you are on inbound calls, answering customer inquiries or outbound calls, where you are cold calling said customer, you are alone, in your own little cubicle world, tied to this desk for 8 hours or more if needing you to stay over to handle the influx of calls right when you are supposed to leave at the end of your shift. Oh PLEASE stay for 15 minutes! Then 15 minutes becomes 30 minutes become 45....it seems to happen EVERY time working in a call center! WHY ME!

Then the manager is saying, just a few more minutes, till we get the stats down and you can leave! Really! Just a few more calls and we will be in the clear! Yeah, whilst I am sitting in my non air conditioned car that gets me to point A to point B and to this frappy place every day, and I care about the stats! I sit back down and mull over more calls! After all... team work is crucial in a call center!

There I am, sitting in my little desk chair, staring at a cubicle wall, with my cheat sheets pinned to it, and some times if lucky and handy dandy binder with pages of information, and scripts in case the power goes out to the computers and you get to hand write all the information and return calls back! And if you are a temporary as I was many times, I have had to SHARE my precious cube with a few other shifts, so forget making my little cube-ee a home!

Dealing with irate customers is pretty much commonplace when working in a call center, and you are never actually 'trained' to handle the rejection that can, and usually does happen, you are trained to be polite and say the customer is always right. Maybe not in every case would the customers always BE right, but I've had people get so irate, I've had my managers speak to them, and I change my voice and get back on the phone and they are none the wiser, telling me that the other person whom they were speaking to, which they do not know was really me who was on the phone before the manager and tells me what an idiot this other person was ( whom is ME ) and I just told them the same information as the person they did not know was ME, told them!

NOW whom is the idiot! Oh it is so much fun to work in a call center. Most people use this position to move along in the company, as this is working almost from the ground up. You have to learn the product first in order to convey it to the customers and some times the customers know the ins and outs of the products, so at times the customers ARE always right.

I hated working for several call centers, where we actually had many copies of the White Pages telephone books, and we each got a page and had to COLD CALL each person, front and back of the pages.

One thing that is imperative to being a good customer service representative, is to ALWAYS have a smile on your face when speaking as the caller on the other end can hear your smile, but first and foremost, LEARN how to PRO-NOUN-CI-ATE the names of the people you are calling. BEFORE YOU CALL THEM!

Now THAT is a challenge in itself if you are unsure and trust me, when you get it wrong, the customer you are calling will definitely tell you how. And you know they are right!

Learn more about this author, A L Johnson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Testimonies: Why I hate working in a call center?
We want to hear your view. Write now!