Customer Service Call Center Jobs are awesome!

[Melena]

I would say part of the reason call center jobs are higher stress then most other customer service oriented jobs is that the customer is much braver over the phone. I've had 70 year old guys tell me to suck there cock for having the audacity to ask for registration information on his product, but I guarantee that same person would not have said that to my face. I think the worst I've experienced in retail besides the threat of lawsuit is having a printer thrown across the counter, and that was once out of probably a decade in retail. 3 years of a call center and I've been called every name in the book, and probably had a few new ones invented. Hell when 9-11 happened, I had a guy in NY bitching about how Shogun: Total War wouldn't work on his computer, never mind the fact if he looked out the window he'd notice a couple of buildings missing from the horizon.

[Osede]

wha? they're not the same company... not sure if you worked for a common processor but BOA and Wells are completely separate entities (for the most part).

now I'm curious as to how you could have been working for all those banks at once. not calling you a liar, just saying that's... weird.

yeah, it sounds weird, but I have heard similar before. Like the hp, and dell over my country. They share the same call center, which operated by another independent company. However, when you make the call to the support, they will say they are the hp or dell representative, depending on which product you are calling for support >.>

[Meresgi]

Just got a call for an interview at my old college for doing food service prep work. Going to go into this call center job tomorrow and tell them I need to take an extra hour for lunch to "go to the doctors" or some such shit.

[Meresgi]

Well they fired me today on my lunch break. I told them yesterday that I had college work to do and would only be able to do 32 hours a week max. I had told them this at my interview too. They got in my face about it, flipped out about how I didnt care about the company and told me not to come back after lunch. I was one of 2 people in training who actually understood the program we were using and I assisted everyone else having trouble every day of training without ANY thank you from the management of any sort. Bitch who interviewed me lied to me about every part of the job, even the part of being transferred over to prepress and design a few weeks after hiring.

[Yuri-G]

I would say part of the reason call center jobs are higher stress then most other customer service oriented jobs is that the customer is much braver over the phone. I've had 70 year old guys tell me to suck there cock for having the audacity to ask for registration information on his product, but I guarantee that same person would not have said that to my face. I think the worst I've experienced in retail besides the threat of lawsuit is having a printer thrown across the counter, and that was once out of probably a decade in retail. 3 years of a call center and I've been called every name in the book, and probably had a few new ones invented. Hell when 9-11 happened, I had a guy in NY bitching about how Shogun: Total War wouldn't work on his computer, never mind the fact if he looked out the window he'd notice a couple of buildings missing from the horizon.

first of all, you're totally right. people are a lot braver on the phone, and will be a lot ruder. many of them don't even realize it, and quite often they're not necessarily mad at you, but rather they're taking out stress from other situations on you. call centers double as sounding boards for all the unrelated bullshit in people's lives.

second, about the name-calling - thank god I've only worked for call centers that allow you to hang up on customers if they get rude. both of my call center jobs have been that way, and though I rarely had to do it, it was nice to be able to do so when I had to.

[Killgannon]

OK i mostly just skimmed this thread, but I'll add my experience from working in 2 different call centers

#1 AT&T DSL Tech Support (2 years here)

This job had absolutely no respect for your skills, or experience, or anything. As long as you could answer the phone and attempt to guide the dumb fuck on the phone through setting up their internet, all the while apoligizing for their own stupidity, you could get by. Most of the time it was the blind leading the blind. They frowned upon any outside thinking, or anything different from their "scripts". As I was leaving, they implemented a new "tool" that they REQUIRED you to use on EVERY call (and ran metrics on this) that was supposed to be a "flow chart" of what to do on calls. It was actually a terrible piece of shit that may have been good for people out of training, but sucked ass for seasoned people who already knew what they were doing. The customer quality sucked, from ass wholes who thought they were better than you, to trailer trash crack whores who could barely figure out their own number. It was a terrible place to work, and I wound up just not going anymore.

#2 Lilly Corporate Technical Support

I'm currently working here. First off this center is state of the art i guess, we can easily work from home, the company entrusts basically EVERYONE with a laptop to take home everyday, and since this is a large global pharmaceutical the employees are typically intelligent. The metrics are very lax, there's very little blocked on the internet, they dont really care that you're on facebook, or pandora, or listening to your ipod while on calls. My supervisor is my age, with a degree, and actually knows what he's doing and can help if needed... The managers at AT&T had no clue wtf was going on on the calls, they couldnt do your job at all.

Basically what I've learned is Corporate level call centers (internal) are WAY WAY better than retail level "i talk to some dumbass" call centers

Edit: saw something above about stress levels and name calling. the only time ive ever been yelled at as at the customer level, corporate level they are mainly just pissed at their computer. Plus they're at work so they cant really be as brave as if they were at home, because someone will find out. Corporate is way less stress then retail, I really honestly dont get stressed out by my current job, where as AT&T was 100% stress 100% of the time.

[Wintermute]

first of all, you're totally right. people are a lot braver on the phone, and will be a lot ruder. many of them don't even realize it, and quite often they're not necessarily mad at you, but rather they're taking out stress from other situations on you. call centers double as sounding boards for all the unrelated bullshit in people's lives.

second, about the name-calling - thank god I've only worked for call centers that allow you to hang up on customers if they get rude. both of my call center jobs have been that way, and though I rarely had to do it, it was nice to be able to do so when I had to.

I loved all the angry customers I used to get calling in.
Every second I was on a call with a customer it would count towards my productivity so I'd let them rant and tire themselves out while I checked BG.

Most of them were pretty well behaved if you let them vent first


We also had a customers who pretty much called up to make the person on the other side feel like shit. Everyone in the office would always end up taking what he said personally and they'd always go out for a smoke right after.

Unfortunately for him years of online gaming, MMOs, and forums have desensitized me so much it meant he couldn't come up with anything original or bad enough to offend me.