Usually when I call an 800 number it’s because of something unusual–at least from my perspective. I need to talk to a person. I often find myself annoyed before I get through. By the time I specify the language, key in my card number, listen to the balance information, last payment information and credit limit information (which I already knew), listen to how I can pay by phone or on line (which I already know), listen to the directions from the voice menu, hear the options (which never seem to include my problem), guess/select an option, etc., I’m feeling irritable. Do you have any data on whether all this screening really helps? It would help me if there was an initial filter–routine inquiry or in-person assistance.
I realize this isn’t directly a CCR issue–but you may have some insight.
3trew, I do believe we might work for the same MotherCorp… and if that’s the case, you have my sincere sympathies because I believe I’ve probably spoken to a few of those customers over the years too.
(it’s threads like these that make me thankful I’m not a phone monkey anymore)
My favourite escalation involved a customer with the hydro company who demanded a full month’s service for free because his cell phone didn’t work during the Big Blackout of 2003. For some odd reason, he didn’t find it funny that I asked him if the same logic meant the power company would credit me for that month’s bill because I hadn’t had power because of the blackout.
I’m in an office now, so I don’t need one. Ironically, my boss is on the call center floor in a larger cube. She wants to be out in the middle of everything, and they want me segregated as much as possible. But when I was in a cube, no one came into my space without warning or permission.
Okay, Mahna & 3trew, 'fess up–which carrier? I was with T-Mobile and I swear,3trew, I had every damned one of those calls too! And a few more to boot… I was lucky, though, I had a really good team that I spent a lot of time making even better so I hardly ever had to take escalated calls–as a matter of fact, half my team were senior enough that they could take sup calls from other agents. That was very nice. Most of my escalations were from other teams. :rolleyes:
It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly dumb people can get when they’re calling customer service. It’s like their inner two year old kicks in and the tantrums can be spectacular. If there is one piece of advice I could impart to every person on the planet, it is this–you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and this goes several orders of magnitude more when you’re on the phone with customer service.
I am still employed for a couple of months, so I’m going to exercise the better part of valor and not name the company outright. I suspect, though, that it doesn’t matter. If we were visited by aliens from the Andromeda galaxy they would have the same stories.
I’d rather not divulge - it’s easier to bitch and moan about work when there’s a slim chance anyone would know exactly who and what I’m talking about.
Sounds like there’s not much difference from one carrier to the next, anyway. Cell phone customers seem to run the gamut from entitled douchebag to raving lunatic and/or pervert no matter where you work.
I worked in a call center several years ago and I absolutely hated my job, even much more than fast food and retail jobs I had as a teenager. I was miserable all the time and absolutely dreaded getting up in the morning and going in to work. I’m sure most call center jobs aren’t so bad but the management at the company I worked for cared mostly about phone stats and whether I followed the script verbatim, and less about actually resolving customers’ issues.
Between 150 and 180 times per day, I’d get a beep in my headset and a voice would tell me the name of the company I was supposed to represent (we handled customer service calls for several different clients and product lines).
On about 75% of the calls I received, I’d get an angry customer on the other end wanting to cancel their subscription. But no matter how irate they were, I was supposed to make at least 3 attempts to save their account. It was a difficult position to be in as I often sided with angry customers silently, but at the same time, had to follow policies and practices of the company and constantly had to defend things I didn’t even agree with. Ironically, I was usually one of the top performers each week for quality assurance calls and phone stats.
When I started in December 2002, there were 16 other reps in my training class. By the time I walked out of the job in April 2003, 13 of those people had already left. Hopefully, other customer rep positions aren’t this stressful. At least I love the job I have now and I always make sure I’m very polite when I have to contact customer service for a company.
Do you hear the screaming and profanity as we try to navigate the useless options of the phone tree, before we get to you? Are those recorded/voice recognized?
Is it just chance that when one starts using profanity one often gets connected to a person fairly quickly?
I have to punch in my account number/phone number at the automated beginning of the call. Why do I always, always have to repeat it when I get a person on the line? The same number I just punched in 15 seconds ago?
Nope. Of course, we don’t have a phone tree for that very reason. Most of us hate going through zillions of options, so our 800 number is routed directly to a CSR that handles your area of the country. Our call recording begins the second you are connected to a CSR.
That’s annoying. Places I have worked previously have either used that for routing purposes or it will pop up on the phone display or a computer screen. But then, for “QA purposes,” you still have to verbally verify it. As a QA person, I think that’s a crock. Thankfully, our current IVR doesn’t require that. The first time you give your information will be to the CSR that helps you.
I work for an oursourcer; we handle mostly overflow calls from the client’s other four or five in-house call centers. Our system doesn’t accommodate the client’s software, which displays your inputs on the computer screen. That’s a source of frustration for both the caller and for me.
There are a couple of other possible reasons for that as well. One is that the system isn’t integrated all the way through, ie) it’s used the information you entered to route the call to the right area, but the routing software isn’t necessarily able to pass that information on to the computer that the agent is using. This could be fixed but would require the spending of large sums of money.
Fixing that wouldn’t actually solve the problem, though, as there is also the issue of multiple services on the same account. About 20% of the calls I monitor have some variation of the following exchange:
Agent: “And are you calling about the number 555-555-5555?”
Customer: “That’s one of the numbers on the account, but my question is about 555-555-5309.” Dad’s given his number when prompted, even though the question is about Junior’s service. This way we don’t make changes to the wrong one.
A not insignificant proportion of the callers will also, when calling about their wireless account, enter their landline telephone number, or the number of whatever phone they are calling from, which wouldn’t bring up any account.
We are monitored by three levels of QA. We have two QA specialists in-house (both are good friends of mine, so I get NO slack from them whatsoever) and they monitor us each once a week; my team manager monitors me twice a month; and our client randomly monitors us (I’ve been client-monitored maybe twice in the past three months). I know what I have to do to get high scores on the monitors (actually, ours are like golf scores – the lower the better.) When I don’t do it, I get a mediocre score. When I do everything I’m supposed to do on every call every day, I get larger paychecks. As I said, our in-house QA guys are friends of mine, and I worked alongside them for years the first time I was in the call center, so I know how good they are. And, I was on QA teams for two other clients in my previous call center life, so I know what they’re doing and I trust them.
I’ve worked places like that, where I’ve been monitored by different people. In my current situation, no one else does the monitoring except me. It’s good in a way, because I’m solely responsible: but it’s bad, because I feel like the supervisors need to do some in order to keep in touch with their CCRs.
QA is tied in to bonuses and incentives at my job as well. Great QA + number of calls handled + less requeues = great incentive.
At one job I had, one of the QA guys was also my trainer in that department. He would do live monitoring, so if I was doing something wrong he would shoot me an email during the call and tell me how to correct it.
We’re very lucky to have some great people working for us. I always try to give them the benefit of the doubt, since I know what they deal with every day.
My grandson Julian brought these devil sticks as part of his breakfast for in the morning, and I have already gone through one set of two packs, because they remind me of that other cylindrical snack…
Not Biscotti, but what???
I’m gonna have to sneak out in the middle of the night and buy some more, so he won’t notice any missing.
