My old person trait is that I think 'ghosting' is completely unacceptable and you owe the other person a face-to-face conversation.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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As someone who works in a call center, screw that last person on here. So sorry you hate the automated system. Sorry you had to wait on hold. They can't keep enough of us employed because y'all are fucking mean and no one wants to be abused for $15/hr.
Er, I mean, Thank you for calling, sorry about your wait!
Don't you think you could both be victims? Waiting for ages listening to a 13 second loop of music interspersed with "your call is important to us" might make people a bit more angry?
You should be mad at the people who gain financially from it, and could make it better for you and the customers, but might have to skip that third yacht for little Timmy.
I have very little faith that a lot of these people would be any more pleasant. My time spent over the last year in the chat department at my company is a major reason why. Chat, unlike phone, has little to no wait time usually. But maybe something about written word makes people even more vitriolic.
Of course I am upset at our staffing policies as well, and the company who is at the whim of the shitty investors.
Right? I see a very easy solution to this, which is, instead of telling the person to sit there and wait under the threat of losing their place in queue if they're not available when the magically shitty music stops playing, to just have the costumers state their name and problem and to then let them go on their way and have the call center itself call back the costumers once their queue position comes up.
But of course. Capitalism.
My company does hold callbacks. The system calls you back when your wait is done. So at least that is more pleasant.
I understand that people get angry when they have to wait in line for ages and usually due to something having gone wrong in the first place, but dumping that anger onto a hapless call center employee who's in many ways — like you said – also a victim of the same company is Not Cool™.
If I find myself feeling elevated by a company screwing me, I always start my call by telling the customer service agent that any frustration on my part isn't directed at them, but at the company and their policies, things I understand they have zero control over. If they're obviously foreign, I try to make clear that I think it's an injustice that they're paid less than their US counterparts and that I think they should be paid the US equivalent, because them being from another country does not make them any less of a human being deserving of basic respect and dignity.
Usually, having gotten that spiel out of the way at the beginning of the call, they are pretty understanding and by the time I'm done explaining I'm less elevated. If you're frustrated, it helps to keep in mind the power structures at play and direct your frustration and anger at the correct parties: the corporate suits who use customer service lines to screw with customers and avoid ever having to hear a customer complaint themselves.
What I really want is the corporate phone numbers so I can call the fucking jackass CEO at home and direct my fuming fucking self-righteous anger right under his stupid worthless ass. Because I'm well aware that they record calls and don't give one flying fuck about our complaints. They don't listen, they don't care. They'll care when I'm blowing up their personal phone at 3am demanding them to fix the fucking issue.
For that matter, I want to see the productivity data on the top executives. AIUI, companies like Amazon monitor and push employees to get maximum productivity. Okay, so if Bob the warehouse worker takes an extra five minutes on his bathroom break and misses his last delivery of the day, that'll piss off the customer and cost Amazon, say, $100 in sales. But by the same logic, if Andy Jassy takes an extra five minutes on his bathroom break and doesn't finish everything on his daily to-do list, that might cost the company $1M. So all the more reason to monitor his movements to make sure he's not slacking off.
The key is that executives don't really matter that much. The company isn't going to lose our on money of the CEO has diarrhea. The vast majority of work is done by the employees. Unfortunately, employees of the company can't just decide to give themselves bonuses and shit like the board can.
I had two friends quit call centers within a month of joining because it immediately sent them into a depression.
I'm sorry for everything you have to deal with at work.
I wish call center software had better features on dealing with overburdened staff. Callbacks are a great thing to avoid having to be on the phone constantly. A dash of statistics might be nice to recommend an alternative time to call to get a better wait time.
I don't use callbacks, and I don't leave messages, because no company has ever actually called me back. It's a great idea, but IME they never execute it.
My HMO's advice line uses them. They very handy for when you're trying to get non-urgent advice.
I once drove for one hour and fifteen minutes listening to hold music only to get to my destination and have to hang up. Fuck those companies man.
Worked in a call center for a long time and I somewhat agree with the last person.
It's often easier to deal with something with a real person. That is not the issue.
The issue is people being polite and respectful. If everyone was a decent human being, call centers would be a good place to work and they wouldn't be understaffed.
That wouldn't really be true, since working conditions are determined entirely by the employer.
In other words, no matter how nice a job may be, there's a boss entirely willing to underpay and overwork their staff to maximize profit.
Where I work the pay and benefits are good, volume is very low, my boss is cool, but my customers make me hate life. A large percentage of my customers come in screaming about how they have no service and they need a credit for the past 6 months they've been having issues (that they never notified us of) and then they refuse to do stuff as simple as reboot. After you finally convince them to do it (and of course it fixes the problem 90% of the time) they bitch about having to do my and job and hang up without a thank you.
In the service industry at least, working conditions are not entirely up to the employer.
Well, I can't speak for all call centers. Mine had great conditions and good bosses. Clients were really rude though, and I had it kind of easy because it was a banking Call center. Usually people tend to be nicer, but when shit hits the fan it hits hard.
So what you are saying is that you should be allowed to categorise them into nice and "wait until smb. Will find the energy tot talk to them"?
Lmao. That could be a way to get around it, but those calls would be permanently in queue if that was the case hahaha
Well don't be a dick then.
I hate waiting 30+ minutes to talk to someone but I also never take it out on the rep. But really, something needs to be done it's ridiculous.
I'm always nice to the call center people, they've been good to me. Sometimes the automated system is so frustrating that I worry my frustrated tone of voice carries over to the beginning of the call with the actual person so I feel like I have to be like "holy hell the phone bot is annoying, if I sound frustrated I'm just recovering, it's not you." I totally get that it's a hard job, though. I always feel bad when the person is super apologetic for taking some time and I'm like "no, no, it's cool. Take all the time in the world, if you can fix my issue I'll be so happy." Just makes me think they get pressured a lot by bosses / customers :|.