Complaining — The Right Way

One thing I love about our company is that we have a website wherein you can complain anything and anyone in the company. It does not need any login names, your full name, your department, your team, your supervisor’s name — they just need what / who are you complaing to and they will be investigating it. Most of all, since we are in the philippines, the ones that are handling the investigation is someone outside the country. This is a good since you will know that there will be any “bias” thing that will ruin the investigation.

The employees preferred it this way than just escalating it to your supervisor or to your managers since most of the time, the person that you are escalating to is their friend or their relative, or worse, someone intimately close to them but in a secret way! LOL

Gone are the days where in you will seek the assistance of your Human Resources department to complain on something or someone and they will take the lead in investigation.

I hope that every company, not just in call centers, should have this so that there is another way for employees to share their rants or complains [the really true ones only] so that they will know which employees to keep and the ones that should be kicked out!

Something Is Wrong

After we felt the recession, here comes the new wave of stressing news in our company — our big bosses are resigning from their jobs!

What the hell is going on here?!?!?

Is it about the salary raise issue? Or is it about moving towards a greener pasture? Well, different questions but same meaning though — all boils down to money.

That makes me scary again! Because for our account there should be a new batch of new hires to be trained but it was cancelled and so our company decided to train them for another account!

And solely, just in our department, we have so many employees who resigned recently!

Another thing, there are lots of employees just in our account alone that is being terminated. Higher numbers than last year. Sometimes I am thinking if they are being terminated because of what they did or the company is just really trying to decrease the numbers of the employee so we won’t feel that this is the recession happening in our own site!

Jeez!!! Is this a sign that I already need to resign and find a new job — no that’s wrong. I need to find a new job first and resign afterwards! Hahaha

Halili and Kho Scandal

I actually have the 5 videos after searching in the internet for one and a half hour! Whew! With all the opened websites — can no longer remember where I got the links So if you want to have it, just reply here, ill be happy to ’share’ it!

I am not trying to exaggerate here but I only knew the video scandal thingy ust this week. I don’t know but me having to work in a call center feels like creating my own world. After work, it’s either that a call center employee goes home or hang out first. And when I hang out [or we hang out], we normally talk about how our day was or what happened all throughout — even if we don’t like to talk about the usual happenings in our workplace — we still ended up talking about it.

99% of your mind concentration revolves around what has happened to your job and by the time you get home, all you want to do is to get enough sleep. You don’t want to hear any noises before you doze off, because the noise in the call center company is already unbearable sometimes, so no t.v., no radio and no loud talking!!!!

That’s why I didn’t knew that there was this hot video scandal talks already. I was just told by my sister that there is and she wants me to download it . I told her, if it’s been over a month, pretty sure, it’ll be hard to find already. But my sister persisted.

So, I did. I keep on searching while I’m downloading the season 4 of my favorite Ally McBeal. Took me an hour. But what a shock it was to me when I found out that there’s just not only one but there are lots!! One download and I’ve got 5 video scandals. Long playing videos of Kho with his victimized women!

I think, in the real world, there’s really Mister and Miss Aggressive persons who can just treat sex just like a fast food. Varieties, choices — all you can eat anytime, anywhere coz its readily available. THe only thing that made it so bad is that what they thought they were doing in private has become publicized!

I won’t be surprised if Katrina Halili will be abstinating for awhile because of the trauma. I can only imagine that when she’s about to do it with a man, she will always have this hesitation that there’s just a video around the room and she’ll end up neglecting doing it with him! Hahaha !! Poor man!!

I just hope that Kho will be given the right kind of punishment he deserves because if he claims he is not the one who publicized the videos, there won’t be any video, if he in the first place, did not record his private moments with his women!

Inbound vs. Outbound

When you are in the call center, there are just two types of call, you’ll gonna have to take: inbound our outbound.

In my entire life in the call center industry, I always chose to be in the inbound part. Inbound calls is the part wherein you are going to receive a call from a customer and there is where the service will start. The customer will have a lot to say, many inquiries and you’ll have to listen for most of the part to have all the inquiries / questions responded to.  If you’re in the industry, this does not need any much effort to say a lot. You can even get away of not speaking for sometime. Most of all, when you are in the technical support field. ‘Coz most of the time, you will be troubleshooting and the customer will do what you mostly dictates to them or will just look at the screen while you are troubleshooting for them using a remote access application to resolve their technical issues.

Now, the other one is the outbound part. Almost, 80% of the outbound calls i knew would require persistance. Selling, telemarketing, surveying. For me, it requires a lot of effort for you to speak most of the time and the customer will need to listen. For them to convince to buy what you’re saying or took a lil of their time to answer a survey or to remember what you’ve done during a troubleshooting moment with a specialist an hour ago so that they can get a percentage of their customer satisfaction rate, is already a big fuzz / deal to the customer. It’s like taking away some of their quality time unless you’re really good at the convincing part and they won’t feel that.

For you who doesn’t have much of an experience yet in call center industry, which one do you prefer the better?

Lock Then Leave

Our IT department in the company would always remind us to lock your computer if you want to leave it for a while or shut it down when you’re going home already. Privacy is a big concern in and out of the company. Even if in our department we know what files might be there in each of our computer, it is still important to keep it safe from any intruder.

For instance, my colleague says that she will just go to the sleeping quarters and will take a sleep instead of having lunch. Unfortunately for her, she left her pc unlocked. My boss had to use her computer because one of the websites where we need to see a data is not running on his. But jeez!!! What pops out on the screen was the gross picture of her having “intimate” moments with two other girls on a secluded room. Wow — they could even pose for FHM! Of course, we all have our own skeletons in the closet, but that one was a blast. And we just decided to kept to ourselves what we’ve seen since the girl is one of our most prized worker in that department.

Now, that’s the serious reason behind locking your stations before leaving it.

Years ago, I remember that in our company, the IT department would still use it as a reminder on our screensaver so my friend thought of something. When one of our colleagues left and he did not lock his pc, he used it and created the email. The time we received it, here is what it said:

“It’s the year of the chicken and I love chicken joy”

He actually “send it to all” and we all shared a good laugh at it!

Harry Potter and Vampire

There was a time when almost of the agents are quiet after their call. Unusual for them not to talk, to gossip, to whine, to complain — actually I’ve been on this kind of scenario for sometime.

Yes — i’ve been hooked on the Vampire and Harry Potter e-books. We used to read books but since, aside from having English-only-policy [EOP] on the floor, the management also ruled the policy clean desk — urgh!!!

There’s always a way when you have that overwhelming will — so here comes the e-books. For wherever this e-book came from, cause it is not allowed for us to download anything from the website, it just appeared on our C: drive.

However, there’s just two only things that topbills the e-books that we have: books about Vampires and Harry Potter. I just told myself, instead of buying the hardbound books which costs a lot, I’d rather have this instead.  Just like the mindset of almost everyone.

The only thing is — we are already thinking — and even one of my co-agent that time that’s so hooked with this — is already thinking that vampires is just everywhere. Could be one of the agents working in our call center.

Why not — if he is as handsome as Edward Cullen? Hahahahaha !!!

The New Call Center n Town

Everybody will say i’m bored, i’m feeling drained, i’m tired of the same old stuff, i’m fed up with this office — the usual comments you hear once you had a get together of your own co-agents in the call center. Plus, of course, the usual salary talks, the workoads, the metrics that keeps on changing and increasing every month, the information overload … stressful really!!

But there’s one thing that can always change the topic — the new call center in town.

You won’t be late in the news when there’s a new one. The usual topic or question — how much?!? Next questions are — where? are they new? is somebody from our company is already there? What’s the feedback? Is it a technical support or customer service account?  Are they strict in the training? Are they related to this call center company? What are the accounts? And the questions can go on forever …

Just like the other day, somebody asked me ‘hey do you know the call center near —- ?’ And i said yes. Then the conversation starts from there.

But after a month or so, you will still see the same faces,  your friend’s still there, sticking to their very tiring, draining, stressing job.  After all the comparison with the new call center in town, if you think you will feel more safe and secure in your present job than play it risky with the new job, they would always find it easy to just stay in their present job. Why go to the higher paying call center, wherein you can just stay for a few months and get fired, than stay in your present work that has been your bread and butter for years?

But then, this doesn’t mean that when you get to sit down with them, you won’t be hearing the usual comments that I’m already drained, tired, fed up, etc. etc ….

Why Are They Absent?

I once enumerated things in my blog what are the usual reasons why a call center agent is absent. That’s my POV when I am still a call center agent. Now that I am on a higher post in our office, I found out more what’s the reason why the majority are being absent on a particular day.

In call center, you call it reliability. Why does our reliability is down for today? What is our absenteeism for today?

Here are some of them but not in a chronological order:

-  Summer is here! Everybody’s just excited to get out of town or go to a beach and flaunt watever they have and will just inform us they are sick — and so they are absent.

—– Now, these call center agents know that for that day, there are bunch of them who notified they wont be at work just because they just went out of town for this summer holiday.  Jeez!!!

- Another one, sports! Championship of this league and this famous boxer has a fight today.  Everyone will try to reserve a vacation leave and if they can’t, they’ll just inform us they won’t be able to report for work today due to blah-blah-blah …..

- Salary day sickness — you just want to unwind, spend your money, look for a mall that is on sale for that day,so much to do but you still have a work later? Another info telling that they won’t be able to report for work …

And you — what is your reason?

Moving Forward

And so I thought about recession … but there it is — a new call center offering so much higher pay than what our company is paying us. And they are going to give us just one  fourth of the load work than what we are doing in the office.

Give in or just stay in the company?

Is this a decision of loyalty or the need to have a higher pay due to economic crisis?

I guess, the answer is already obvious. Because some of my colleagues chose the “higher pay” over loyalty.

Moving forward is a good thing most of all if it is going to give you a better reason to ive your life. What’s hard is you’ll always have something to look back from what you’ve left behind.  I am what’s left behind. A new set of people to work with [because they were easily replaced by somebody else] and a new workload [of course, you can't teach a dog new tricks overnight].

I don’t know if I’m sad because my friend left the company or I’m sad because he just added some load to my overloaded work already … hahahaha!

But that’s how life in a call center. Once you’re gone, or even before you’re gone, there’s somebody already in line waiting to replace you.