h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Having just read the postings re call centres, I felt I just had to add my bit!. True, they are staffed a great deal by students, but also by recent graduates, and mums who work part time amongst others. Having worked for one which was owned by an insurance giant, I would just love to state that the one main thing wrong with call centres, is the attitude of the people who call!! I suppose if they have never worked in one, they have no idea that to be able to answer their queries instantly, you DO have to have a substantial knowledge of the product and its variations. You also have to be able to think on your feet, and make quick decisions. You also have to be able to multi task as a lot of the time you are listening to them, answering their questions, looking back through their records AND typing up the call log at the same time! You may then, at the end of the call, need to send a fax and make internal phone calls in relation to their query. You also have to temper your mood to theirs, again, instantly. Unfortuntately, due to the few bad call centres around, and awful "cluck cluck" type adverts on the tv at the moment, call centres have now got an increasingly bad reputation, as an employer of empty headed idiots who merely just answer the phone, with no mental input whatsoever!. I have even had customers giving me their surname, and spelling it for me, as in SMITH, that is S M I T H. .I kid you not....Oh boy, I could go on!!

I'm sitting here now on the phones and so far today I have had quite a few irate customers. Oh what I wouldn't give to grab those customers and make them take the calls so that they develop a sense of appreciation for the work that we do. It's understandable that if a person has be waiting for a long time they may be upset. However queueing is what us Brits do is it not? I'm not defending the call queue though so don't get me wrong.
Why am I sitting here taking this abuse from someone who is most likely inferior to me (I joke about that last bit) well maybe just maybe I might make their day and they'll go away from this call thinking that all call centres aren't so bad.

Yeah, late and pointless, I know, but you guys are very wrong.

After years of trying negotiate awful automated response systems, having polite enquiries passed from pillar to post, sitting in queuing systems, of promises not kept, of records not kept, often on premium rate lines where the company benefits from wasting my time and seemingly making it as difficult as possible to me to get the help I need...after all this, I think that there is a strong case for saying that the companies running call centres are the real root of the problem.

Over the last decade, I have lost count of the times that I have needed to resort to recorded delivery just to stop a company being able to claim that they haven't received it. On a fair few occasions, I have also resorted to recording telephone conversations...it is astonishing how much more quickly everything works when I do that.

It is not necessarily you guys who cause the problems (although one call centre employee spammed me with 10 calls in an hour), but you do need to be aware of the other side of the relationship and to be aware of the practices and reputation of the company you work for.

For the record, I have done a stint on helplines myself...this is useful page to read.

Oh...I arrived here because I have been getting silent calls from Santander and found this blog while looking for way to stop being bullied by companies for whom the customer is no more important than a pencil in a drawer full of pens.

No one is going to read this, but I feel better now.

http://www.callcentrehelper.com/dealing-with-angry-customers-152.htm