I work in an outsourcing call center. Yes, I am the person that you talk with (sometimes at) on the phone when you call *#@! Corporation.

If people ask, I will tell them that I am part of that Corporation, but unfortunately, I don't have a union card, and have to do my job with about 75% less of the resources that a Union Employee uses to fulfill the job. There is no pathway to the top, and I will never have a corner office with a view.

Said corporation has one of the lowest rankings of customer service of all its competitors. They are constantly trying to UP their numbers by providing script that all of the call centers have to use to improve quality:

1) We have to be "happy to assist" the customer in our opening script. Most of the time when we say "I would be happy to assist", we don't really mean it. The company wants us to mean it, and we have to say it while smiling, but after saying it 40 times a day, it just means that we have become part of the machine.

2) At the end of the call, I have to ask if there are "any more questions that I can resolve", or "have I successfully resolved all of your concerns"? The problem with this is that when I can't resolve the customer's concerns then it's a pretty stupid question to ask. And then there is the person that will answer "no" to my question and then turn around and ask another question. I have asked the resolve question up to nine times on some calls!

3) Then we need to refer the customer to our self-help options. The only problem is that the self-help options aren't very helpful. They load slowly, and they don't give enough information. In fact, if I could actually FIND the information in the self-help options, I would use them as well for figuring things out!

4) Then we have to thank the customer for their business, even if they have announced that they are canceling their service. This opens up a BIG can of worms.

In between all of the scripting and the pseudo-smart tech knowledge that we have to provide for the customer, we have to verify the account. Some of the customers are real pros and have their account information memorized. Then there is the 90 year-old man that wouldn't know the start button if it jumped off the device in question and bit him on the nose. Getting him to the verification information has both of us weeping by the time I ask "how may I assist you today"? About this time, the man is snarling in the phone and demanding to talk with my supervisor.

The sad part is that the supervisor doesn't have the time to take the call, or flat out doesn't want to take the call. In fact, the supervisor that I approach has been trained on scripts as well. They tell me that they would be "happy to assist me" and then they tell me to go away and solve the snarling, old man's issue.

I am a pro at de-escalating a customer. I usually put the customer on hold for five minutes while I am supposedly looking for a supervisor. And then I come back to the customer and tell them that a supervisor is unavailable but I can arrange a call back in 24-48 hours. At this point, the customer can either work with me, or wait until I get the urge to setup the callback with a supervisor.

Then there is the walk-through. Me explaining to this old man that he has to get all techie with me on the phone, or take it to someone to get it fixed. Yes, I have brought customer's to tears trying to get them to fix their problems on the phone with me (not something that I am proud of).

Search engines are my best friends! There isn't a problem that I can't find with search engines. When I do a search, all of these wonderful articles come up that tell me how to fix this really hard problem. Then I click on the link and find that the company has blocked all access to that site. So I go back to the search engine and see if I can get the general idea from the summary and solve the issue without the link.

I do have some knowledge base articles. I go to those articles and they refer us to the self-help options. As mentioned earlier, six minutes waiting for them to load, and then another six minutes trying to find the information, and I am back to a search engine.

Sometimes, I get really desperate and call the manufacturer. I would go to the manufacturer's website, but it's blocked. And then someone from the Philippines, who only gets $10s a day from another outsourcing company, answers the phone. They tell me to go to their company website for the solution... Or they tell me to erase the device and start fresh.

 

Yes, I am the person at the other end of the phone. I lie to you, I put you on excessive holds, I put you on mute to yell obscenities, I middle-finger the phone, and sometimes I middle-finger my computer. I am a representative of *#@! Corporation.

Have I addressed all your concerns today?