Call centers are horrible because the people that staff them are stupid.

The BBQ Pit
21

I’ve worked in a call center, and yeah, some employees were stupid. But that was the minority. Most employees were students trying to put themselves through school without taking out huge loans, or people working a second job to make ends meet. The appeal of call center jobs to students is that you can work off-shifts most of the time, so it won’t interfere with school. so if you want to call them uneducated, go ahead, but the people I was working with were almost all partway through a Bachelor’s degree, and I’m having a hard time imagining any reputable business hiring the bunch of dropout pothead slackers you seem to imagine in the cubicles.

But I agree that we weren’t trained to be able to help that 1% of people with a weird problem. We’d get a couple weeks training on any new project we were working on, and that was it. We had scripts and handbooks and your problems were supposed to fit into one of those pages, and if it didn’t, to be honest, we didn’t really know much more about it. We’d diligently pass on the difficult cases to our floor managers and what have you, but often, the floor manager was someone who’d only been there a few months more than the rest of us and been promoted for good behaviour or something, and didn’t know a whole lot more.

It’s frustrating as hell to call up and not get your problem fixed. But you can’t say everyone in a call center’s a moron, because that’s just not the case. Yeah, I get morons too, and some companies do seem set up for failure in their tech support and customer service, by not training their employees enough, and not having a good system for handling the rare issues (Verizon, I’m looking at YOU). But in general, the guy on the phone wants to help you. It’s his job.

22

[QUOTE=kidchameleon]
This will get even more fun when Otto arrives…
[/QUOTE]

I was just checking the thread to see if he had arrived yet. We all bicth and moan because we only see one side of it but he sees the ugly underbelly. Booo! Hiss!

23

Actually the purpose is so that you have a sort of built in cushion so that the chips can shift around a bit without breaking too badly. That way you aren’t paying for chips you have to eat out of a bowl with a spoon. And you are charged by the ounce so if they did fill up the bags all the way you would be charged twice as much because you are getting twice as much product. I have never understood people who feel like every company is out to screw them over. They need to have a good product to have regular customers otherwise they screw themselves out of business.

24

I absolutely loathe call centers. I, too, frequently get frustrated with the agents. However, having trained a call center and written those screen prompts, I also realize that, particularly at a call center for a large company, the people who work there are required to understand vast amounts of information about a huge variety of products & services, many of them very complicated.

For example, where I work, not only are the reps supposed to understand government healthcare, they also have to answer questions on commercial healthcare, including everything from medical to pharmaceutical benefits, trend management, medical compliance and be able to answer audit questions. Given that I have trouble with understanding in depth some portions of the products I manage, I can’t imagine having to know every fucking product in my company. I’d give the guy some slack -yeah, it’s his job to know what he’s doing and he does gets lots of help via screen prompt, but he probably also has to know a lot of shit. My brain would turn off, too.

25

[QUOTE=kidchameleon]
This will get even more fun when Otto arrives…
[/QUOTE]

I wuld hev bean hear soonur but I wuz to stoopid too git teh thred opun.

Scanning through the comments, it seems that much of what I would have said has already been said by others, so, in case it hasn’t been said yet:

The thread title should read “…the people who staff them…” you dumb fuckwit. Maybe before calling other people stupid you should learn some basic rules of English grammar.

26

I had a great experience with a service call to an 800 number just last week.

It was to TiVo. Or does that not count?

27

I work in a call center and I take exception to several things the OP mentioned:

Call centers are very low-wage, low-intelligence/education jobs

I don’t know what call centers on average pay, but I make a fairly decent living where I work, plus I get bonuses and incentives. We book travel for our clients, which requires a modest degree of computer literacy and some knowledge of geography. It isn’t rocket surgery, but it isn’t flipping burgers, either.

and they tend to attract only the dregs of society as employees in the first place. Criminal records, no high school education or basic G.E.D. tend to be par for the course.

My company does perform criminal background checks on its employees, which is a really good idea since we have to be trusted with people’s credit card information and my employer would not want to hire someone whose criminal history shows him/her having a predilection towards dishonest, fraudulent activities.

Everyone around me is at least a high-school graduate and many of us have gone to college. There are certainly no “dregs” here, unlike what I have seen when I worked in fast food.

Even worse, the types of people that are able to stick it out and actually become long-term employees at these places are those that are possessed of a special sort of brain-dead stupidity, a zen-like ability to literally turn off the human part of their minds so that they can endure the monotony and constant workload of incoming calls. These people are somehow less than human, and they’re the ones that you’re going to be dealing with when you call up.

I’ve been here for over two years, so one could say I have stuck it out. One thing I like about my job is that it is not monotonous. Each call is different, so there’s an element of variability that keeps the job from getting dull or tedious.

28

[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
I’m still trying to imagine the sorts of people who’d contact a call center for potato chip problems . . . I’ve never dreamed of calling a 1-800 number to gripe about chips.

I sent my cousin, a former Clevelander, a carton of his favorite chips to his Florida home. When they arrived, they were crawling with ants . . . because they had been air-shipped, causing all the bags to pop in the non-pressurized cargo area of the plane. Then they got on the truck, where . . . ants. He opened the carton and . . . ants. You bet he was on the phone to 1-800-BAD-CHIP. I was so, so embarrassed, even though it wasn’t my fault.

They sent him a new carton, ground shipped and ant-free.

29

Yet another absurd overgeneralization. “I had a bad experience (or even multiple bad experiences) with a call center, therefore all call centers are bad. And the people who work there are stupid. And they all have criminal records and no high school diplomas. And they smell bad. And their mothers have excessive armpit hair.”

Pah.

First, I’ve experienced what you’re talking about. Hughesnet has by far the worst call center I’ve encountered. Even when you open by explaining that you’ve already performed this series of steps and you know the problem isn’t X, Y, or Z, they’ll walk you through the same damned steps for a half-hour. And the first thing they do is ask for the account number that I already punched into the phone at the beginning of the call.

I’ve also had bad experiences with Microsoft’s call center.

However, I just had a wonderful experience with Adobe’s call center. I got the rep in about a minute, she let me explain the problem, asked a couple of astute questions, and then walked me through a solution.

I used to have a company with a tech support call center. Our average employee had over three years on the job. All had high school diplomas, some had college degrees. They were judged by whether they solved problems, not by how fast they got people off the phone. If the problem required more than 10 minutes of research, they were instructed to hang up, do the research, and call back rather than make the customer wait on hold. They all answered the phone with their first name so that if the problem resurfaced, the customer could call back and get the same person.

Call center personnel also got first shot at other jobs in the company they qualified for. One went to college while working tech support and became my top programmer. One became a sales rep. One became an office manager. Believe me, if we were hiring idiots with criminal records, I wouldn’t have been

(a) keeping them for over three times the industry average, and

(b) promoting them.

30

Really? I’m working in a call center at this very moment, headset on and all. I’m not an idiot, most of my coworkers are not idiots (I suppose the OP’s coworkers are all paragons of brilliance, of course), I received excellent and extensive training, all of my supervisors are very experienced and know exactly what they are doing, and I am able to solve a variety of issues, including off-the-wall calls. Also, when we transfer, we explain the customer’s situation to the next person, to save them the hassle of doing so. If the customer is on hold during this process, I am also either on hold or in the process of explaining the situation.

Oh, and it would have been difficult for me to earn my BA if I were profoundly stupid. Very difficult, indeed.

Now, I’m not denying that the OP likely had some very poor experiences with call centers, but vast generalizations aren’t very smart. Go ahead and call me, I’ll be happy to assist you. Why will my greeting sound extra happy? Because it’s pre-recorded! That makes a whole lotta sense, doesn’t it? Yeah, I thought so. And I don’t work off of screen prompts or any other scripting of that nature. We are encouraged to personalize our service. My performance goals are also highly attainable, and I am encouraged to stay on the phone as long as necessary to resolve the issue. Our performance goals include resolving the situation immediately, meaning that if multiple calls are necessary, that has a NEGATIVE impact, rather than the managerial glee portrayed earlier at multiple calls.

None of this is confidential or proprietary information, either. It is available to any customer who would like to ask.

Did I provide enough reasons why the OP’s generalization is not applicable to all call centers, or do I need to fight more ignorance?

31

Thread: TL/DR

I am just popping in to say: I work in [the same office as] a call center…

Call centers are horrible because the people that call them are stupid.
In our case most of the staff are intelligent (some are forgetfull) but the customers are often dumber than shit.

32

I’ve been working in or with call centers for nearly 16 years, for two large companies. Today I’m one of five service quality analysts who monitor the quality of our firm’s three call centers (two in the US and one in India) which includes a little over 200 phone analysts.

Every single one of them has a college degree or the equivalent (even in India). Very few are stupid, and the ones who are don’t last long. There are certain behaviors that are expected on each call, but none of their replies are scripted. My team personally reviews a set of random calls for each analyst each month to make sure they are providing good service, and they have regular group and individual coaching sessions (in addition to their ongoing training on the products they support).

They are graded on call handling skills, customer focus, technical knowledge, and documentation skills. If they are deficient in any of these areas, they are let go (or reassigned). We pay close attention to our customer surveys. Our US analysts are paid decently and our Indian representaties are in the top 5% of wage earners in their country.

Frankly, just about everything in your OP is bullshit. I’m sorry you received poor service. Sometimes it happens. I’ll bet that over the course of your lifetime, you’ve received good call center service far more often then poor service. How many times did you post about those?

Okay, now I’ll tell a funny story that IS about poor service, but it is the exception rather than the rule. A call I listened to yesterday:

Very Frustrated Caller: Maybe I should just hang up, shut down my laptop and screw it!!
Analyst: Okay sir, would you like a ticket number until then?

Edited to add:
Bufftabby, you sound like you would fit right in here, if you ever want to change companies. Unless you already work here… hmmm… if so, raise your hand…

33

[QUOTE=Lobsang]

In our case most of the staff are intelligent (some are forgetfull) but the customers are often dumber than shit.
[/QUOTE]

We are? If I knew where you worked I would take my business elsewhere.Tell me where you work so I can boycott your ass. :smiley:

34

[QUOTE=Omegaman]
We are? If I knew where you worked I would take my business elsewhere.Tell me where you work so I can boycott your ass. :smiley:
[/QUOTE]

Are you admitting you are dumb as shit? If you’re not, we welcome your custom.
[sub]The point I am making is: The world is not made up of dumb call center workers and clever callers. There are dumb and clever people on the opposite sides respectively[/sub]

35

[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
I’m still trying to imagine the sorts of people who’d contact a call center for potato chip problems.
[/QUOTE]

I actually did once. I was at lunch with a friend and was having a hell of a time opening a bag of chips. It was comical. I noticed that there was a 800 number on the back of the bag so I called it as a goof. I put him on speaker and gave him an ear full of mock outrage about how I was having low blood sugar issues and couldn’t eat because of the hard to open bag. The call center guy was quick on the uptake and played along knowing that I was joking. He got a great laugh out of it and sent my a coupon for a few bags of free chips.

BTW, Kettle Chips come in hard to open bags so that they won’t burst when sent to high altitude destinations like Denver IIRC.

36

[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
Yet another absurd overgeneralization. “I had a bad experience (or even multiple bad experiences) with a call center, therefore all call centers are bad. And the people who work there are stupid. And they all have criminal records and no high school diplomas. And they smell bad. And their mothers have excessive armpit hair.”

Pah.

First, I’ve experienced what you’re talking about. Hughesnet has by far the worst call center I’ve encountered. Even when you open by explaining that you’ve already performed this series of steps and you know the problem isn’t X, Y, or Z, they’ll walk you through the same damned steps for a half-hour. And the first thing they do is ask for the account number that I already punched into the phone at the beginning of the call.

I’ve also had bad experiences with Microsoft’s call center.

However, I just had a wonderful experience with Adobe’s call center. I got the rep in about a minute, she let me explain the problem, asked a couple of astute questions, and then walked me through a solution.

I used to have a company with a tech support call center. Our average employee had over three years on the job. All had high school diplomas, some had college degrees. They were judged by whether they solved problems, not by how fast they got people off the phone. If the problem required more than 10 minutes of research, they were instructed to hang up, do the research, and call back rather than make the customer wait on hold. They all answered the phone with their first name so that if the problem resurfaced, the customer could call back and get the same person.

Call center personnel also got first shot at other jobs in the company they qualified for. One went to college while working tech support and became my top programmer. One became a sales rep. One became an office manager. Believe me, if we were hiring idiots with criminal records, I wouldn’t have been

(a) keeping them for over three times the industry average, and

(b) promoting them.
[/QUOTE]

This is the way customer service call centers started out from my experience and the way it should be. I miss that. I have fond memories, loved going to work (had perfect attendance for 3 yrs straight in a row) and had lots of bankable sick time (until they switched to use it or lose it), and learned so many skills which allowed me to experience several different office positions. My favorites were training (I even got to write a new-hire helper’s guide), call quality, & mentoring/coaching.

Those were the good old days.

37

[QUOTE=Lobsang]
Are you admitting you are dumb as shit? If you’re not, we welcome your custom.
[sub]The point I am making is: The world is not made up of dumb call center workers and clever callers. There are dumb and clever people on the opposite sides respectively[/sub]
[/QUOTE]

Well actually I was just joking. Hence the smiley. I will tell you this. I don’t accept any smart ass attitudes when I am on the customer end of the phone and I don’t present myself in any way other than a customer. I deal with all persons on an equal level as that is how I conduct myself even if I’m talking to a homeless person. As I deal with persons all day every day on the phone in matters that go far beyond customer service and into the technical workings of things even most of the people I am speaking to have a limited knowledge of, great care is taken to keep everything on a level field as I sell things and making persons feel inferior to yourself is a surefire way to make sure they purchase thier goods elsewhere. Be sure that unless your Donald Trump you have a boss and so does he ad infinitum. When someone gets snotty with me I go up the chain until I feel I have gained satisfaction. And guess what? I can’t think of but a couple of occasions that some ones smart assed comments weren’t dealt with in a matter that didn’t suit me right down to the ground.

38

[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
I’m still trying to imagine the sorts of people who’d contact a call center for potato chip problems.
[/QUOTE]
Anal seepage.

“Hello Mister Lay? My butt’s leakin and it won’t stop. Done ruint a couch cooshion. I wont caysh money.”

39

[QUOTE=Omegaman]
Well actually I was just joking. Hence the smiley. I will tell you this. I don’t accept any smart ass attitudes when I am on the customer end of the phone and I don’t present myself in any way other than a customer. I deal with all persons on an equal level as that is how I conduct myself even if I’m talking to a homeless person. As I deal with persons all day every day on the phone in matters that go far beyond customer service and into the technical workings of things even most of the people I am speaking to have a limited knowledge of, great care is taken to keep everything on a level field as I sell things and making persons feel inferior to yourself is a surefire way to make sure they purchase thier goods elsewhere. Be sure that unless your Donald Trump you have a boss and so does he ad infinitum. When someone gets snotty with me I go up the chain until I feel I have gained satisfaction. And guess what? I can’t think of but a couple of occasions that some ones smart assed comments weren’t dealt with in a matter that didn’t suit me right down to the ground.
[/QUOTE]

I guessed you might be joking but I wasn’t sure. I figured my reply would cover both bases (being a joke question : Are you admitting to be, to use my original phrase, ‘dumb as shit’)

I respect our staff (not just because they’re our staff) they try not to be smart-alecs. One of them was in danger of being so, and I pointed it out to him which stopped it happening. They are used to our customers and have come to expect a lot of dumb ones. And a lot (but less, and less often) of abusive ones. I have had good experiences being a customer and bad ones. The good ones were where the call center person was surprisingly helpful. The bad ones were where the call center person seemed to have a default view of people who ring call centers as not having the intelligence to check something is plugged in, switched on, not set fire to babies, drink bleach etc..

Anyway, sorry if you were taken aback by the way I responded to your joke. And here’s a smiley to show there’s no hard feelings :slight_smile:

edit: And on top of what they have to deal with, they end up being customer service for other companies (that are linked to ours in some way. In one case they don’t have their own call center. IN other cases we’ve given up telling customers “If you’re having problems specifically with X, then you will have to call X, their number is.. xxx-xxx-xxxx”)

40

Well, I work at a call center, and I’m stupid. So… I got that going for me.