The Call Centre – Inherently Good or Bad?

There are two views of human nature. One optimistic assessment is that human nature is fundamentally good. Sure, on occasion, it could become knocked-off course by bad, but in the end it’s true goodness would be reasserted. The other contrary and far more pessimistic view is that human nature is fundamentally bad and that despite things like civilisation constraining it – like a dam constrains water – it will, when these constraints are loosened follow its true destructive course.

So what about the call centre? Is it fundamentally good in nature, with the occasional outbreak of badness, or is it more fundamentally bad and will it always revert to type?

We’ve heard before about the toxic call centre – the place Niels Kjellerup described in 1999 as

a place you work to make enough money, so you can leave. High staff turnover and sweat shop mentality are key symptoms whereas the underlying cause are best summed up as bad management practices.

But is the toxic call centre a corruption of the call centre, or is it it’s true self? I’m pondering this because of news from my last call centre. It was never perfect, but as call centres go it wasn’t bad; You could make a coffee and go to the loo pretty much when you felt like it and management followed a ‘coaching’ philosophy.

A new senior manager however, has ushered in a new approach. It’s a familiar one in which the whip is cracking, tea and coffee breaks are frowned upon and numbers are rearing their head in a big, big way for both junior managers and staff. Next I’m sure I’ll hear about memos on toilet breaks.

It seems to me that the call centre is governed by an internal logic. People sat at desks, either taking or making calls, are easy to monitor. Therefore the ability to micromanage is inbuilt into the environment, inbuilt into the call centre.

This in turn is re-enforced by IT systems which log and calculate productivity, producing reams and reams of numbers; Calls waiting, idle times, wrap-up times, toilet break times and so on.

Sometimes, and in some places there may be structures which can contain its nature. In my old call centre it was a firebrand of a union-rep who genuinely put the fear into managers at all levels and whose approach meant that toilet breaks went unremarked upon, in others it may be an organisation which takes a more holistic approach. However, as soon as this changes it seems the call centre reverts to type.

Funniest Call Centre Moments

It’s not all grim in the call centre. Sometimes it can even be quite funny. Call centre humour can come in a variety of forms;  bizarre calls, strange customers, headsets slipping off mid-call or agents falling off chairs. As part of the call centre interviews feature I asked interviewees for their funniest call centre moment. In no particular order here are a few (and if you have your own funny call centre story, please share this in the comments section – it’d be great to hear some more!):

Plane Talk

I had to call my ticketing department, which has agents in 2 different cities, so your call could end up in one of two call centers. One of my coworkers was chatting on his line about books with someone, and asking questions. Then I heard the ticketing agent sitting next to the one I was speaking with answer his question, so I could hear both sides of the conversation at once, happening in 2 different cities.

Anna – Credit control

Person calling to tell us they had just had a big poo.

Call Centre Girl

A lady wanted to know if she broke down whilst transporting sheep in a trailer, if we would recover the livestock if she put them into her car! Had visions of about 10 fluffy white sheep stuffed into a Nissan Micra…….

Lee

Lady naming her pet goat after me after resolving her complaint

Jennifer – TV & Telecoms since 2005

An irate customer called in & my friend took the call. The customer refused to be calmed down & my friend wasnt really able to help. The customer went on a tirade and at one point actually said to my friend she’s going to contact President Obama & get her fired!!! We laughed about that comment for days!

Keith

Far too many to think of at the moment, transferring a dour, confused and agitated Yorkshireman on to a chirpy and wonderfully positive American girl in account security is a recent favourite.

MC

Senior lady who was trying to get an x-rated movie to ‘learn something new for her 50th wedding anniversary’… I instructed her on how to set it up, but she kept failing at it and would call back and hang up until she got me again (this happened like 5 times), then I finally made the movie available for her directly from the system and it turned out she had the TV on, on the EXACT channel with the volume crazy high… I could hear her trying to make sense out of what she was watching, then freaking out, then laughing then talking to herself, then the moaning (from the tv of course) went crazy and she started yelling over the phone asking me to turn it off hahaha the whole thing lasted about a minute, it was like 7 years ago but it still cracks a smile in my face when I remember. She giggled, thanked me and wished me a nice day…

Loz

A colleague standing up, tidying his desk and just generally faffing around with his belongings during a call, then leaning over to peer into a drawer, and his headset falling off. He picked it up, put it back on, and said to the customer: “Sorry, I didn’t hear that – my headset fell off!”

Luisa – Financial services

Having an elderly Welsh gentleman call in and tell me he was playing with his “pride and joy”

JP – Inbound sales

When I was talking about my kitten mittens to a co worker. I alsweres the phone with my verification script inadvertently introducing myself as mittens.

MC –Inbound telecoms

A woman arguing with me until she was blue in the face that nobody in the house had been watching expensive (naughty) pay per views because she had been on holiday for the past 2 weeks. Her tone suddenly changed when I asked if she had teenage boys in the house. All I heard was ‘GAVIIIIN’ then the line went dead. I hope that guy’s ok!

Turgid

Someone who didn’t realise i’d taken them off hold who sang me the entire main verse of relight my fire. Or when most people had gone and I was wheeled around in a post bin very fast.

Dr Bob Winston

Drunk calling, thought he was calling his mate to come and get him as he was stuck in the Pub Toilet. Thought I was messing him about.

Karen – Natwest

Some kids called a few times to report a pigeon in a branch, telling us it’s pooped on the desks.

Anonymous Millie

Saying ‘ yes sir ‘ throughout a call then being told by the caller she was a woman- oops!

Joanne – Airline call centre

when the rep from amex wanted to take a pee break and requested to place the call on hold

Disastra

Caller: I’ve had a letter from you Agent: Yes what does it say?

Caller reads letter exactly as printed (It’s a generic letter we have copies of

Agent: You’ll need to reply in writing as they need a signature.

Caller: But I can’t read or write.

Miss m.e. freedom – inbound energy

Seeing a manger who doesn’t know how to work the systems take a call

Insignificant

A quite heavy advisor, dropped pen and leaned down to pick it up, the chair landed on top of the advisor. Hysterical. A shame and it’s not nice to laugh at, but it was funny

Amy – Utility company

We had a customer call in to report low voltage in her neighborhood. Said she had just gotten home and the lights were dim in her house… she also checked outside and said her neighbor’s lights and the streetlights were also all dim. When our troubleshooters got there they found everything to be fine. The woman had forgotten to take off her sunglasses. Seriously?!

Friendly Pariah – Tech support

At the time it was hellish but we joke about it now saying at least it’s not (that guy) The company started supporting Macs, someone went out and got the most powerful macbook pro they could with a thunderbolt display and every random accessory They then proceeded to call up ten times the first day with how to use questions – we received no training on it (training costs) so we were unsure the second day was 20 calls, getting us to try and change settings so that it behaved more like a pc (it isn’t a pc, it won’t be a pc and no matter how much you scream it will never be) We still get a call a week from him with how to use problems and despite repeated suggestions he has not taken a how to use course

K – Australian bank call centre

I assisted a small-time Aussie “celebrity” apply for credit, and she was declined. Her reaction of ‘Dont you know who I am?’ was pretty priceless!

Ronald – Auto insurance prospecting

My group fantasizing about what it would be like to have an amnesty day where we could, with impunity, speak to the rude customers any way we wished.

Muddy_bum

Setting other workers boot up sound to something very loud. (oh the fun we had..)

JL

Playing “word sneak” on last day. Everyone had to sneak a word past an unsuspecting Inland Revenue customer, guy next to me drew the word “rimjob” and did it.

Eden – TV and internet technical support

Now that I’m a veteran at this place, I mostly take difficult technical calls that come in as a transfer from another agent. My greeting is “Thank you forholding. My name is Eden, Operator ID with Advance Internet Support. How may I assist you?” I must’ve been out of it and tongue this particular day and instead I greeted “Thank you for holding me” – immediate burst of laughter from both me and the agent who was warm transferring. I recovered by reissuing the correct statement and hoping I had made her day.

Karyn

“Hi, this is Karyn, can I have your tracking number beginning with 1Z?”

“Um…. I don’t see that on here…”

“Okay, do you see where it says UPS on it?”

“US…P…S… Yeah I see it. USPS.”

“Ma’am that’s actually the post office.”

“… -click-”

Also had someone call us (UPS) shipping a package through USPS using a FedEx box…

Competition time.

Having finally managed the settings, until this coming Thursday the Kindle version of Secret Diary of a Call Centre will be available for FREE. I really hope you enjoy the book and if you do then, please feel free to leave a review!

In conjunction with this I am launching my first competition. I have an original version of the above artwork (or rather doodle) – inked by me. To win this just answer the following

What reason do I give for having to be careful when discussing the last call centre I worked in?

To give you a clue it’s a piece of legislation.

the winner will be chosen at random. Answers to my email at diaryofacallcentre@gmail.com

CG

Stop that chatter!

Early on a Friday afternoon and the only audible sign that I’m not alone (which sometimes I am at this time of week) is the occasional clicking of my colleagues mouse. From the sound of it she – like me – is deeply engaged in surfing the internet. Whether its checking the news, online shopping or getting ideas for dinner tonight I can only guess. We haven’t talked for hours.

It’s not that we can’t stand each other. We have a typical colleague-colleague relationship. It’s just that we can talk whenever we want – so we don’t. It’s this which makes me realise how far away from the call centre I now am.

In the call centre talking to your co-workers is a forbidden fruit to be bitten into, to have its juices savoured. You talked whenever you had the chance. The reason for this is that when it is effectively the use of your vocal chords which is being paid for the employer expects them to be used only for the pursuit of their objectives. Using them for mere idle chatter is wasting money.

In my last call centre managers would go to lengths to prevent chatter. Not content with waving monitoring reports at you in your six-monthly review, showing how much time you’d spent not on calls they’d seek to catch you red handed. Moving around the floor with stealth they used the wobbly grey partitions, stone pillars and over-sized pot-plants for cover. Observing for a few moments they’d then leap like a lion on their unsuspecting prey.

There was really nothing worse than getting the unpleasant tap on the shoulder followed by a rebuke of ‘get back on the phone’ so against this threat we deployed several defensive strategies. The first thing to do when coming on shift was to find a seat which faced the managers desk cluster. This enabled you to observer the observer, and prevented any unnoticed approach. Adjusting your chair to sit as low as possible was another strategy. Too high and your head is literally above the parapet. Managers sight-lines could also be blocked by careful positioning of a box-file.

Another trick is keeping your headset on and looking straight-ahead, never looking away from the screen, whilst conversing with your neighbour. It goes against all the usual norms of face-to-face conversation, but it’s much easier to conceal an illicit conversation. Finally there is teamwork, which involves warning each other with nudge, or a head nod that a manager is on the prowl.

In my final year at that particular call centre I only got tapped on the shoulder twice.

Anatomy of a Call Centre

I’ve had this diagram in my head for a while so I’m pleased to finally get it down in some form. It shows my view of how the call centre works, and my role in the whole process. My position is very much to counter the negative energy of the customers by diffusing and absorbing their anger (something Arlie Hochschild referred to as ‘emotion labor’) I’m  a conduit for the system, the agglomeration of software and procedures which governs each firms day to day operations and determines the form and limitations of our interactions – If the system won’t allow it it can’t be done. The system though can’t emote, and its apologies – if it could apologise – would be as unconvincing as those tinny automated announcements you get when your train is delayed and which make me wonder if the railway companies are engaged in a secret project to build a computer which is actually sorry for your delay. Until someone succeeds that project we have the call centre.

 

Staff Turnover in Call Centres

This is something which has been in my head for a while and it’s quite an accurate summary of my current workplace where the huge number of people coming in the door is only matched by the number making for the exit. It’s a situation which is familiar to many call centres where high staff turnover is a almost a way of life – as I blogged about last year.

Call Centre Documentary: Help Needed

Towards the end of last year I was approached by Dragonfly Television, makers of’One Born Every Minute, who are in the process of making a new documentary series about complaints and customer service in  Britain.

Among other things they’re going to be featuring call centres and are keen to speak to people who have experienced a negative effect from working in the call centre:

We’re interested in showing just what the toll of being on the end of a barrage of abuse can result in, our episode is going to be surrounding utility companies and at the moment they seem to really be at the very forefront of people’s vitriol. So we’d like to understand just how the decisions that are made at an executive level can have a negative effect not only on the customer but also the call centre worker themselves.

If anyone is interested in sharing their story, please contact Jonathan.Skuse@dragonfly.tv

 

 

Turning Thirty in the Call Centre: What is the average age of call centre employees?

I never expected to see in my 30th year in a call centre. If you’d have asked me where I’d have been now at the age of 18 I’d have pictured a job in middle-management somewhere with a comfortable salary, certainly enough to pay the mortgage on a nice suburban semi.

But here I am.  And what’s worse it feels somehow wrong, like there’s a law that says you shouldn’t be in a call centre in your thirties, just like that quote which is widely reported to have been uttered by Margaret Thatcher that  ‘any man seen riding on a bus after the age of 30 should consider himself a failure’

Of course the BBC3 show the call centre didn’t help with it’s emphasis on the call centre as being young, funky and just a little bit spunky. According to the voiceover on the episode which I viewed out of the  ‘1 million call centre workers in the UK’ the average age is just 26.

But how true is this? The older I get the younger my colleagues seem to be, but I’ve also seen plenty of people older than me in the call centre and I have my suspicions about claims that the call centre is wholly a young persons environment. 

According to the U.S Call Centre Industry 2004: National Benchmarking Report based upon a survey of General Managers from a representative sample of 470 establishments the young call centre is in fact something of a myth

Call center jobs are often viewed as low skilled and clerical, and the workforce is portrayed as young and unattached to the labor force. According to our survey, however, the age and education profile of call center workers is considerably higher. The typical call center worker in this survey is 30 years old and has one and a half years of college education.

However, in a post entitled Do call centres discriminate against older workers? The Call Centre Helper blog presents data from a 2008 YouGov survey of 946 call centre agents which found that 46% of call centre workers are aged under 30. By contrast just 10% were over 50

 

Whilst this means the median age of a call centre employee would be around thirty plotted in a chart it is quite apparent how the age-profile is skewed towards the younger end of the age range.

In terms of industry sector there is also some variation. Using Data from a 2004 DTI report the CFA Business Skills @ Work Contact Centre Labour Market Report 2012 presents a break down of average age by industry sector.  The average age varies from 24 for Healthcare and Entertainment & Leisure to 31 for Utilities and 32 for the category Food & Drink.

Importantly, according the the CFA report, the DTI data distinguished between several different groups of employees:

In terms of identifying patterns, the DTI figures from 2000 draw on evidence from focus  groups and site visits and further explanation illustrates that there were at that time several key groups of employees who were agents. The first of these groups was identified as young women under 30 who may not have higher educational qualifications but have significant length of service in the industry. Fewer young men are in that category. A second group is made up of returning workers and those looking for a new  start after structural redundancy. This brings in a more mature group which raises the average age. A third group consisted of recent graduates or even students working part time who may not be seeing long term prospects in the industry.

Additionally there also seems to be some evidence that as the economy and demands of the industry change the average age of call centre workers is rising

Newer qualitative evidence is provided by consultation and research undertaken in 2009. Focus groups and site visits indicated that the average age of agents was probably rising  as was the average level of qualifications. This came about partly from changing labour  markets and partly from the tendency for contact centres to handle more relationship-based work than early call centre routines, many of which have now been automated. Consultees confirmed that their recruitment focuses on candidates with  greater life experience and the ability to form a rapport and relationship with a wide variety of clients. Despite the lack of quantified data, this information is clearly relevant to the overview of age of the workforce.

In short there’s going to be a lot more of us turning thirty in the call centre.

Calls may be monitored

 

Angela Merkel might not have been too happy about having her calls listened in to, but to many of us working in the call centre industry having our conversations listened in to, recorded and then fed back to us is an everyday occurrence.

For me, being listened in to is never a nice experience. First there is the paranoia. Spotting a  team-leader sat at a station  you start wondering how long since you was last monitored, then they glance over. Momentarily you catch each others eyes before you both turn away. Convinced it’s you and begin upping your workrate until you’re throat becomes sore with the exertion. You push, prod and cajole customers into buying more, upgrading or whatever it is the company wants you to do – what on paper you should do – but  which under normal circumstances you wouldn’t care less about hassling people for.  Worst of all you have to do everything by the book. No cutting corners the way you do to keep your average call time down, and absolutely no writing off of trifling amounts to neatly circumvent an argument with a customer.

Fortunately I’ve always been quite good at reading the signs and know when I’m being listened-in to and so can take full advantage of the Hawthorne effect which states that subjects being observed act differently due to the very nature of observation. Once however, I wasn’t so lucky. In my defence it was a very, very quiet day, with nothing much happening in the way of calls. I’d decided to put my feet up and take it easy. My big mistake though was  calling up a colleague for a quick chat. Unbeknownst to me they’d just had a run in with their manager and unleashed an anti-management tirade which would have landed us both in hot water were they not already working their notice. As it was it was just me fighting to keep my job. Lesson learnt.

But is monitoring all bad? Of course I’d rather not be monitored and have my conversation style forensically unpicked, but is there an up side? According to this article in Call Centre Helper there is, with the writer pointing out that

Over the years, I have often found that it is possible to gauge a call centre’s efficiency by its attitude to listening to calls. A bad call centre usually has no facilities for listening to calls. In a well-run call centre, senior management will listen to calls on a regular basis and provide immediate feedback to agents.

I’ll never love monitoring, and will always continue in the belief that monitoring is another part of the power imbalance in the Call Centre, but this something I’d agree with. In my worst call centre job I was monitored only once in two years. The reason for this quite simply is that for management monitoring calls is a time-consuming hassle they’d prefer not to do, particularly in the kind of call centre where everyone is over-burdened to the maximum.  To listen in to half an hour of calls takes half an hour of a managers time, in addition to the time taken to feed-back which is likely to be at least another half hour and even then they’d probably only hear a very narrow range of scenarios – not enough to really gauge performance. Faced with a call centre of even twenty agents regular monitoring becomes a huge task. The problem which then occurs is that managers will always be desperate for some way of measuring the performance of their staff and without monitoring they then turn to the dreaded call stats.

 

 

Fictional call centre characters #2 Vroom

Vroom’s Managerial Matrix

Book: One Night at the Call Centre by Chetan Bhagat

Name(s): Varun Malhotra/ Agent Victor Mell/ Vroom

Employer: Connexions (India)

A struggling outsourcer with a call centre in Guragong Connexions take calls for their one and only client the U.S firm Western Computer and Appliances. Call flow is however dwindling and the future of the firm is in question.

Vroom’s call centre journey:

Young and idealistic the college educated Vroom was originally working as a journalist, but took a job in the call centre due to the better money on offer. This choice is a constant source of tension for Vroom, who finds call centre work hard and though he tries to justify his choice by pointing out that with economic wealth comes greater power  he also reflects on the hollowness of consumer society and the relatively low wages of Indian call centre workers compared to workers in the West.

Finest call centre moment:

Without a doubt developing Vroom’s managerial matrix. In Vroom’s own words:

There are four kind of bosses in this world, based on two dimensions: a) how smart or stupid they are and b) whether they are good or evil. Only with extreme good luck do you get a boss who is smart and a good human being.

Worst call centre moment:

Routinely abused by rude, angry and above all stupid customers. Vroom’s worst moment comes when he receives racial abuse from a drunk caller leaving him visibly distressed, trembling and breathing heavily.

What does Vroom represent:

The tragedy of wasted talent. With his education Vroom could be a journalist making a difference in society, but instead he’s wasting this potential in the call centre. Vroom is also representative of the tensions of the outsourcing model where power lies with the big Western companies who profit by paying comparatively lower wages and with the Western consumers who act in an abusive way towards the virtually powerless call centre workers.