Today I had the pleasure of playing
human Resources for a good client that I have had the
pleasure of answering his lines for about a year now.
When he started he was struggling hard, working a full
time job and doing his company part time. He found us
and we helped his dream become a reality. You have no
idea how great that makes me and others here feel. An
interesting thing about this job, or working in any
answering service or call center, is you can easily tell
the dedicated people. They stand out like a thumb
because they really do care to help our clients. It is
our duty to make them all look like huge corporations,
and to help them make that illusion a reality.
The bad employees aren't like that.
They cut corners, they pass the buck and expect someone
else to take up the slack. They complain or rant yet
never seem to realize that we are all in charge of our
own lives. Start living it then. If you're at work,
work. Take pride in your job. Every job worth doing is
worth doing well and your own character comes out in the
process. If you are the type to want to skate
threw life, then I feel sorry for you. I'm sure you're
not even reading this as most of you don't read. I'm not
saying I'm the smartest person in the world. My
grammar blows but I'm also a virtual storehouse of
useless information. Great for Trivia and knowing where
Zaire is, but who the hell cares where Zaire is?
At my last call center job in
Manhattan the people who you don't want working with you
and dragging you down with their negativity and BS
ruled. They were the norm. Here at A.I. or Successful
Office as most people know us, we weed them out fast.
Slackers who hurt our clients, hurt us so we pay special
attention in getting rid of or not even hiring the
cretins to begin with.
There are a lot of them too. After
helping HR people quite a few times I see what they see.
Lots of people who walk around life with a blank stupid
look on their faces.
So back to the good clients that we
love to help. It is so gratifying to see on a daily
basis. Especially when they send thank you e-mails and
letters. It's almost like they were our companies
from the start and we incubated them. I think
people who work at any small business that gets bigger
over time feels the same. It's almost a proud feeling
that I can't describe any better than to just say we did
well.
Ok, I admit this is one week that
I'm so glad is almost over. I worked my butt off this
week. Have mucho OT at $25 an hour, which is real cool.
I'm working at our answering service for under 2 years
and making serious loot.
The Most Annoying
Thing At the Answering Service
Today I had a typical example of
the caller from hell. This lady wanted to speak to a
client of ours. The client is out of the country for a
few days, but the caller insists on speaking to him.
After all of the cordials over and over, the training
did come in handy. But she would not hang up under any
circumstances. No reasoning or logic would work. What
then does a call center rep do?
Well what I did was tell my team
leader to cover my you know what. I had her listen in
from her monitoring station and record the conversation.
After all of her extensive blah blah blah and niceties,
same result. The woman insisted on speaking to this
client now.
Well the unthinkable occurred and I
was told to hang up on the woman but first apologizing
for having to do so. Why are we so nice even in hanging
up on people? This person was obviously mentally
deranged.
Call Center Laughs For The Day
Funny diversion and I knew that
robot at my last firm lol . Maybe everyone who works in
every answering service and call center in the world
knows that robot. The robots don't last long in our
company. Personality is very important in hires.
That makes the atmosphere cool. We have a running
collection of comics and clips all dealing with the call
center industry and other things that are funny, and
just about everyone here contributes. YouTube too is the
best. Whatever you like you can find it there.
Battlestar Galactica
In the previews after this last
episode they showed Baltar in that reincarnation
chamber. Why is anyone surprised? I know a few people
who are like they weren't sure. Could it have been the
Pretty blonde Cylon.
Look at this article from 2003
predicting how they think the show would be.
click here
Again I like the new Cylons. The
story is fantastic, the characters are all extremely
well developed. The issues dealt with are many times
modern in origin. Even a version of suicide bombers that
you could not do anything but feel and sympathize for.
Now that is a good show with awesome plots and I would
bet that anyone who watched it would be amazed - but if
you never watched it before, then don't start with the
new ones. Buy or rent (Netflix is great for this)
the DVDs. You will not regret it.
January 24, 2007
Hump day is here and almost over.
This has been a very busy week by anyone's standards.
The more we have to do, the faster time goes by. That
another one of those weird things with working in an
answering service or call center. If it is a busy
one with a lot of action like ours, then the day starts
and ends most rapidly. We estimated in one of our
little call center debates, that every day here is like
3 days that other people do. No exaggeration in
that estimate too. The things we remember, we compared
to other people in other positions, and our time is
warped. It's like what we think is a month ago, really
does feel like 3 months. A Very fulfilling and
profitable 3 months, but fast as hell.
If anyone ever wanted time to fly
by, just come to work here or any other call center in
the country.
Yesterday I posted some info with
the background details from the kid that prompted a
press release by our company.
Novel Call
Center Client Danny of NJ - Press release is linked
in the post. Definitely one of the funniest
stories related to the call center industry.
Today was a typical Monday
here in the Brooklyn Main office. I'm here till Midnight
tonight filling in again for a friend who wants to go out.
I said sure, as $25 an hour (OT is time and a half here) is
pretty sweet for a customer service rep. That's one of the
great things about our company. If you are good, they let you
do mucho ot. We have people here less than 3 months who are
making over 60K a year. Not bad if you are some guy or girl
out of college.
Monday is usually the busiest
day of the week. Call volume is like 10% higher than usual,
with many people around the country all doing the exact same
things at the exact same times. It's a weird thing about
working in any answering service. We know and see patterns in
things that most won't bother seeing, or care to quite
frankly. We are good observers of human nature.
On Monday you have a built up
call volume by way of all of those people who couldn't order
over the weekend for whatever reason. Plus all of the early
go-getters who take care of all of their business first thing
Monday.
Am I missing something with
programmers and web designers. LOLhome.com is home to hundreds
and hundreds of great pics if you want a good laugh.
We have some free time in the
call center in between the waves. At night sometimes 10
minutes can go by where no calls will come in at all.
Especially after 11pm.
A Funny
Call Center Support Call
Is that an interesting caller
or what? I bet people are just dying to outsource to Asia now,
aren't they? I bet it really doesn't matter though to people
who don't care about quality, or sounding American. If you
just want your messages and it's not important if language
gets in the way, or culture, then Indian and other outsource
destinations might be a good idea.
January 18th 2007
This is a funny clip on call centers
in India. It really is. A shame these guys don't
know about our company. If there is anything that I don't
like, it is calling up any company for any reason and getting
someone that you just know is thousands of miles away in
another country.
Outbound
Call Center Times
I worked in an outbound call center
before coming to work at Successful Office. You need a very
thick skin to work in such an environment. By the end of the
day you walk out of the office in shambles. Cold calling is
one of the biggest pain in the rears you can imagine. After
all, it is we who bother these people in their homes.
Look at this video. It's from England and I feel sorry for the
rep, this caller really lost it when called. I've had
bad callers in the past, but this guy takes the cake.
Actually it was the BT Call center that called him. Not saying
he's justified for blowing up like that, just that I'm a very
private person too and getting calls when I'm relaxed at home
can really piss me off. Please be aware that this video has
some expletives, curses and screaming so if you are the wimpy
type don't watch it.
Luckily most of the people we dealt
with at my other firm were cool. I came here for the better
atmosphere and pay. I still do outcalls working here at S.O.
but there is a major difference. I don't just do outcalls all
day long. 99.5% of the day we are chiefly doing in calls. Only
when a client wants us to follow up with someone, complete a
sale, or whatever, do we do outcalls. Never do we cold call.
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