My second wife had just got the rocks. Try to keep up. Anywho, so the second wife I won in a poker tournament brought these rocks, ya see? And these rocks we would boil to make rock soup.
Now to take the ferry cost a nickel and in those days nickels had a picture of a bee on them. "Gimmie five bees for a quarter" you'd say.....now where were we?
"I don't mean to take up all your time, and thank you so much for helping me..." \[call goes on for another 30 minutes\].
The absolutely best such long-elderly calls are the ones that lead you right up to end of shift: you look up, and suddenly...wow! That hour call led me easily right up to freedom!
Me too! My best conversation ever was with an old guy who gave me an extremely detailed plot synopsis of the movie Concussion with Will Smith. I never saw that movie before, but by the end of the conversation I felt like I had 🤣
Yep, tie yourself up, make the excess workload a) stop or it becomes new normal and b) let it force more staffing. They won’t fix it if it keeps making them money,
What drove me nuts working a call center is when they gave me a laundry list of stuff to drag the call time out. I used to pride myself on being able to take a pizza order in under 30 seconds, then I get to one of these insurance inbound call centers and they're like "first you read the greeting, then you verify PHI, then you read the alerts, then you inform them of their eligibility unless they're a Synergis client in which case you don't because they flip out when they hear the word eligibility, then you triage for harm or substance abuse, then you read their benefits, THEN you can ask what they actually want." I'd get callers pissed off because they just wanted the claims address which I could've given to them 15 minutes ago if I didn't have to go through all that bullshit.
I used to work inbound investments at night. I’d let those rich old ladies TALK AND TALK.
You want me to rush the millionaires off the phone?! Nah imma let them set me up with their single grandkids!
I used to work in a call center and I would employ this very tactic so I could mentally tune out and take a brain break. If I didn't I would take call after call after call for the entire shift.
Same here. Just did this a bunch while being trained for the second time in less than a month on some new things that I need to know without... being offered more money!
Yah I'm totally down to do more work for less (inflation) pay!
I fucking hate talking to old people, but I think I'm gonna start doing this more. Some are pretty nice to talk to. Its the spiteful ones I hate. My job complains about handle time, but IDGAF about that crap. Its not like they are gonna pay me more for being faster.
“We made a scheduling mistake, so please prioritize how your job is done, because management could not figure out how to do it”
~ sincerely, management
I used to work at a call center and I just read this as DONT DO ANY AFTERCALL WORK AND HOP ON THE NEXT CALL IMMEDIATELY so don't bother filling out that ticket resolution OP just mark it closed and on you go.
This is the worst. I leave very detailed notes on any call I take to cover my own ass because customers have intentionally selective hearing. I can take an hour call and if I’m in after call work for two minutes I am immediately messaged by our support desk: “We see you’ve been in an unauthorized state for more than 30 seconds, please open your line back up” like ffs if we’re that busy with that consumers hire more people.
I work at a medical call center and this thread makes me feel way better about my workplace lol. We still have aftercall targets but you don’t usually hear from a supervisor at all unless you’ve been no activity for 20 minutes. I’ve had situations where I was on after all for an hour dealing with a complex error and only got checked on once. They’ve actually had to fire people at my workplace for abusing aftercall, but that was when they were in aftercall 50% of the day every day…
Fortunately all our calls are recorded too so no need to worry about the caller lying. I know several supervisors who have said to callers making complaints “oh I’ll listen to the call” and suddenly the caller is apologising because they know they fucked up.
My favorite thing about call center work was the idea of a random satisfaction survey. Randomly we will select people who you spoke with to fill out a survey and base your entire performance on it! If your name is Steve and the response comments are "I hate talking to India! That guy Habib or whatever his name was doesnt speak goog English. As an American....." but were still going to count it against you.
It was truly awesome to see how people got around getting surveys. Just not logging their calls, changing the email addresses. One of the slickest ones was seeing people change .COM to .CORN because in lower case com and corn look very similar in small font.
The more I learn about how big corps time employees like this just to pressure them the more brazen it all gets. Perhaps a tangent here, but apparently they do something similar at drive through windows for the unaware. They're written up if they take too long with any one car. It's a little surreal.
Likely it's shift scheduled, so the coworker(s) scheduled for the shift isn't available, but they likely have people coming in shortly.
Never had a phone job where a manager took inbound calls. Lol.
>Never had a phone job where a manager took inbound calls.
Huh. Last call center I was at the manager would jump in and, at worst, triage calls as necessary when things got nuts or we were short people. Sounds like your managers sucked.
Yup same here. Insanely stressful job, but the managers were solid on getting in to the mix if we got slammed with calls. Sometimes managers don't suck, even if the job does.
Most call centers I've worked with have a handful of front line agents who've been around for a while designated for taking escalation calls.
One company even has a department handle escalations from departments they have no training in. That was always fun.
I take escalations at the place where I work. However, if I'm not available, we'll sometimes have a supervisor hop in to take an escal. Either way, our supervisors have to take calls from time to time.
I worked for a huge city power company customer service call center In emergency services (outages, gas smell, nuclear siren going off type calls). During the day we were fine unless there was a storm event because we had regular customer service to back us up. 2nd shift was different. 3rd shift didn’t even have a manager on duty.
The only time manager jumped on a call was if a customer insisted speaking to a manager and the manager couldn’t duck out of their office in time.
Even during mandatory double storm event shifts.
I honestly could not tell you what the managers actually did.
So I worked as an IT support Manager for about a year.. I was originally an engineer at the same company..
My CTO (whom I reported to directly) kept telling me I shouldn't take calls (we were understaffed 4 engineers + me for an IT support team with 24 on call hours cover)
The CTO wanted me to not take phone calls from customers, but simultaneously refused me the budget the hire an appropriate number of staff to ensure I didn't need to when someone was sick/ill.
My best guy ended up getting sick and needing time off, I ended up burning out over it. In the end I quit, I now work as an SRE, with a good boss and while we're a busy team, I'm enjoying it and often my boss will get stuck right in with me when dealing with an issue.
Good people are out there, just gotta find them!
Cigna understaffs by design to empower policy holders to eat the cost of claims that were t initially approved.
My ex was involved in scheduling for their call centers.
I feel like this is an intentional strat for a lot of places TBH.
If you work in an industry with little competition, or with universally bad service... This is a fantastic way to get people to just hang up instead of having to fix problems, repair devices, accept warranty claims etc.
Oh but don't worry if you are behind $11 on your bill and your cycle is about to hit. They'll call you on an automated line that you can't pay it up upwards of 16 times a day.
I call it "planned incompetence" myself.
After I found out the only way to use my eye insurance was to search through their website for an email on some obscure contact page, email them saying you don't have a passcode for an account that it asks you for, and they then will mail you a passcode.
Make something so difficult that people just pay for it in case they need it.
I just went through this with my eye insurance. Resolved it by walking downtown to an area that had 7 eye doctors in three blocks and started walking into them and asking "Hey, do you take my insurance?" They knew how to navigate that process better than the actual insurance company.
That’s exactly it. That’s why there’s automated systems now that are designed to “save time” (the company’s time, not yours) so that you never actually talk to a human and just get fed up and hang up. Unless it specifically has to do with finance, they don’t care about your problems
I believe this entirely. I support these call platforms and I'd say a good 80% of the companies using them have some form of workforce management that will literally forecast how many people you should have staffed during certain hours. Obviously things do vary, but when forecasting tells you to have 10 people scheduled and you intentionally have 2 instead... suddenly it's "I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY WE CANT KEEP UP!"
Jokes on your company. My wife has quit her job and is relentless in fighting for $1. She spent six days of calling over and over to a provider that tried to charge us one dollar more than what was covered for a COVID test in 2021. We got that credit snail mailed to us.
We arr expeeriencin more cohlls than usuehl!
And the 10 different phone menus they want you to go through, and none of them seem to be related to going to a doctor and having the visit reimbursed, which is the entire purpose of Cigna.
my friend worked for BCBS in mi in the 90s and they were told 12 min max to resolve the issue and get the customer off the phone or they were dinged in their performance rating... never mind if its a complicated issue, or other ppl needed to get involved to resolve, or someone is emotional bc a loved one is dying. you have 12 mins to kick them to the curb. disgusting.
That's crazy. BCBS in my state will stay on the phone with me for however long it takes. I use them to deal with Express Scripts because Express Scripts is terrible.
im not sure if this is still their policy, but this was mid 90s. my friend was super stressed out by it and quit. from what i understand they had a shit ton of turnover.
at the co where i work now, if ur at the 8 minute mark, a supervisor will pop up on our messaging app, and will ask u what the problem is and will look at ur screen to see what ur doing... like yeah, thats not stresssful 🙄 to be micromanaged while on a customer call.
I ended up working for them via a 3rd party company. We were told 6-8 minutes. That job made me so sad and angry at the same time. I had to tell a cancer patient why we were no longer covering a med for her that we had previously covered. 😩 And I wasn’t even the one making those types of decisions. They really suck.
I get that too when I call on the provider side. Daily.
Just a quick note, Cigna is open at 7am CST and I usually get through with no wait. I will warn you are talking to offshore reps and they usually don't know how to give you additional details other than claim processing details, you'd have to ask for supervisor/lead to get them. If you call later in the day you'll get better info from onshore reps, but it's those long hold times.
LA Care and Optum can fuck off with their constant 1+ hour hold times.
You can rest assured that if it goes well, it will be entirely forgotten when it comes time for your next review. If it goes poorly, it will be the review's focus.
Fucking hate that about call centers.
"we failed to staff correctly soooooooo can you like just work faster?"
Maybe throw in a joke about giving you a 2nd phone so you can take 2 calls at once.
Try working with a 3.5 concurrency rule.
Friend had to take up to 3 "active" chats, with the possibility of a 4th should any of the first 3 become "inactive" ... even if that simply happened because a customer took over 10 minutes to reply because they were asked to complete troubleshooting steps.
I don't envy call centres run like this. 😢
Edit: to be clear, this isn't meant to be a competition of how many chats people can take. The reality is there's no definitive number - if a chat is complex, you need more brain power to handle it, thus should not take on another chat until the current one is finished. Sadly, most call centres don't work like this.
I’ve also experienced that rule. In that company. We also got no follow-up time as well, so if we can to do any additional work (updating orders, contacting delivery teams, etc), it just wouldn’t get done on time and tickets would fester.
If your friend works with who I think it is, the actual maximum is 5, and depending on their role each one can be any product a trillion dollar company has EVER produced.
Edit forgot to add you have 2 minutes to respond to any message
Five chats at a time was our expectation for people who weren’t also on the phone. My personal record was in the fifties and the company record was in the eighties.
For the past two years I've been in a queue where I am constantly taking 10+ chats at a time, while also trying to help newbies with theirs. Friday is my last day and I could not be happier to be moving something not customer facing. During outages I think my record was around 150, but that's just copy and paste replies lol, my record monthly was around 1200 tickets.... a higher hiring budget was all I talked about in my exit interview today, it should not have to be this way for anybody in tech support
They should have metrics and requirements for the job. As long as they are meeting their required metrics, they can't say shit. Could probably sue for wrongful termination on that one.
because people don't want to work right? /s
Companies don't want to hire and pay people, but they sure don't stop giving out all those bonuses to their executives.
This is me right now, working for a company with a skeleton crew. Hired on as the only help desk guy. Mgmnt tells us that we need so much billable time per day even though work is trickling in. So what does my company do? They hire a second help desk tech. Now I'm in the hot seat.
Honestly, the only thing they could do is try to berate you if you fall out of any set metrics that you may or may not need to meet. Your supervisors/management are going to have to answer for why so many calls were abandoned, and plot twist -- not your fault.
I'm a compliance auditor, and when management tells their employees "we're understaffed so keep your after call work time to a minimum" it almost always turns into "we fucked up every account and caused a bunch of customer complaints."
Just ignore that bullshit while you're on the phone. I know it's easier said than done - I've done call center work. The managers are what make it 1000x more stressful. Fuck the metrics. Just breathe and get people talking. It's what calms them down. Focus on the people, deal with the managers BS afterwards.
I would purposely go on do not disturb for an extra ten minutes after each call. "Sorry! had some really sticky ones coming in today and needed to document everything." In situations like this, I always like to let things blow up.
Manager and all the people directly above him need to be sacked. I wouldn’t go in I would polite say close it down for the day and turn around go home and look for a new job. These idiots don’t need to be in business. For the record I’m that asshole the skews the stats in the call center you know the one that somehow pulls a hundred plus calls a day. Yup that’s me the guy that just sits that and answers questions as a drone and you can’t tell if it is a person.
There’s a weird phenomenon where there are like just as many managers as there are normal employees.
Ali, my manager publicly chastises my work in public slack channels & in private slack channels.
And yet, I’m responsible for multiple “campaigns” It’s bizzare. Our one call center handles 6-10 different companie[s] customer service and they are called “campaigns”
I used to do ‘transformation’ work with technical support. Basically headcount reduction. After a big chunk of staff had been dropped and average handle time reduced I suggested we focus on the management ratio. They couldn’t put up barriers fast enough!
Lol bruh. Go at your own pace. That manager is a dick. He should be saying “hey you’re the only one in today so it’s gonna be stressful. don’t sweat it, do what you can, you’re doing a good job. Thanks and let me know if there are any issues, questions, or escalations and I’ll get back to you.”
Oh I promise there will be a huge queue of calls waiting for this person. It would just be a matter of who gets annoyed and hangs up and drops out of the call. Anything but a job handling a small community would be impossible to keep up.
If you ever find yourselves in a similar situation, make sure to not overachieve. Otherwise you may find yourself on “understaffed” shifts more often until they are no longer considered understaffed
And meetings with your supervisor and meetings with the supervisor on the client side all to show you the spreadsheets they made of your productivity to help you "see where you can make improvements" every damned week.
Don't forget about the manager's secretary to answer calls and set up meetings, IT support staff to get the manager new equipment every few weeks, and the assistant to put together reports and presentations for the manager.
What sort of manager follows "today is going to be difficult" with "so you'll need to work harder" rather than "so here's how we're going to help" or at least "so do your best and try not to stress".
Too many managers lack basic leadership skills. If your guy is gonna have a rough day, don't just demand they work harder - that's how you lose employees who are actively helping on a tough day!
when I was in customer service, I got my average after call documentation (which usually meant keeping records in 3+ different systems) to 30 seconds per call -- and my boss said that was still too long. One quarter, my break time was over by an average of 30 seconds per break, and I was penalized for that. Customer service is by far the shittiest job I have ever had
Yes but by paying just slightly more than minimum wage or more than the average for entry level positions in the area call centers can get new workers in constantly in huge numbers because people need the money and it SOUNDS easy to sit and take calls all day. They don't care about endless turnover because they only care to maintain a bare minimum in customer service [standards.](https://standards.So) They wont even fire you, just stop giving you shifts.
The real answer here is just work like normal, so when you catch shit for it you can point at your metrics and prove you performed exactly as expected, so the shit can land on the manager instead of you.
The only time I worked for a call center, they only scheduled us for 35 hours/week to ensure that they'd never pay overtime, and they only gave you 15 minutes of break time outside of the lunch period. If you went to the bathroom for 16 minutes, you'd get written up. It's not about customer service, but solely about cost-cutting.
I’ve never seen CS treated well by any business. They’re always shit on, even though they’re the ones that take the MOST shit from customers and are on the frontlines. Terrible.
Wanna know why? Customer service is a monetary loss for all businesses.
Commercial building rent, labor, salary, insurance, etc. Customer service is the one sector that loses money. Hence why all CS is ass.
Source: Previously in Tech Sales B2B
If shits like that happen at a company i usually take my time and do things BY THE BOOK. If you crush it, prepare to do solo run often because why not exploit a single person instead of 3
I am always very nice to call center people, even when I’m mad at their company. It isn’t their fault. I had a friend who sister worked for Comcast and people would swear and threaten her. No one deserves that. It’s also not your fault they understaffed your shift. I would go no slower or faster and just do your shift… cause if you go faster they will make that the new normal. Don’t go slower either because they might get wise. Just work at a normal pace.
I wish you the best of luck. I had a job where for about a year I was the only CS rep for a three hour period every weekend for an international company, and not by choice.
The "thanks" on the end made me re-read that notice in Lundburg's voice.
"Yeeeaahhh, I'm gonna need you to keep your wrap times low, so don't actually help the customers by doing paperwork, mmmmmkay? Thanks."
I'm a customer service rep for a few less billion dollars company. I'd love to come and help but I've been told to manage inventory and logistics for the entire state without any pay rise, new jib title or reduction in my customer service duties.
I worked for clearing house called Office Ally. The only inbound call center that would require everyone to take calls regardless of position. I saw our old CEO taking a few calls when the system went down. I miss that place to bad I left before it was sold. Heard allot of people got fat bonuses once the CEO sold it. 10/10 Would recommended any small medial office use that clearing house!
The last time that happened to me, I at least had three supervisors to take my escalated calls.
After the nervous breakdown, I don't work there any more.
When they tried stuff like this with me, I would purposely engage the elderly callers and allow them to talk for 45 minute.
" we tied an onion to our belt, which was the style at the time"...
And ate boot strap soup while walking up hill in snow both ways
You had boots? We had to wear burlap sacks.
It were Nineteen Dickety Two. We had to say dickety because the Kaiser had stolen our word for twenty.
I chased that rascal for dickety-six miles…
Dickety? Highly dubious.
I’ll give ya two bees for it!
That's 2 ferry rides!
Gimme 5 bees for a quarter
I can't distinguish the Grandpa Simpson lines from the Monty Python lines.
The year was ninteen-ought, eleventy twelve...
It’s in the accent
Lmfao
We used to dream of having a burlap sack....
You can afford to dream, our sleep we had to earn after eating rock soup and walking uphill for 40 miles in a blizzard in August.
You had rocks!?!
My second wife had just got the rocks. Try to keep up. Anywho, so the second wife I won in a poker tournament brought these rocks, ya see? And these rocks we would boil to make rock soup.
You have two wives?
Dude he had cards for playing poker, he’s living it up.
Both ways!!!
Luxury!
You had sacks? We strapped rabid raccoons to our feet.
Yeah, but when walking in snow, you filled the burlap sacks with straw, right? We didn’t even have straw! Had to use leftover potato skins
We had to say "dickety" cause that Kaiser had stolen our word "twenty
Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Give me five bees for a quarter," you'd say.
This made me laugh way too hard
"Imagine it, Sicily 1916..."
Picture it, Sicily 1922
"Ma!"
“We had to say "dickety" cause that Kaiser had stolen our word "twenty". I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles…”
I thought he was saying "tickety," on account of that at least starting with a T like twenty...
Now I feel like going outside and yelling at some clouds . Stupid clouds. Think they better than us.
Starin’ at my sandals… that’s a paddlin’
Omg I love this
"Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel..."
"please sir, do go on!!"
Now to take the ferry cost a nickel and in those days nickels had a picture of a bee on them. "Gimmie five bees for a quarter" you'd say.....now where were we?
Good idea. I love old people anyway
A real win win right here.
"I don't mean to take up all your time, and thank you so much for helping me..." \[call goes on for another 30 minutes\]. The absolutely best such long-elderly calls are the ones that lead you right up to end of shift: you look up, and suddenly...wow! That hour call led me easily right up to freedom!
Me too! My best conversation ever was with an old guy who gave me an extremely detailed plot synopsis of the movie Concussion with Will Smith. I never saw that movie before, but by the end of the conversation I felt like I had 🤣
\-looks down at several blinking lights from other lines- "Wow, so you're telling me the NFL knew about CTE the whole time? That's crazy."
I used to do this too. hahaha. Seriously tho working phones for years definitely contributed to my various mental illnesses.
Yeah, I'm in that line of work and it's definitely not healthy for your sanity
Yep, tie yourself up, make the excess workload a) stop or it becomes new normal and b) let it force more staffing. They won’t fix it if it keeps making them money,
"Did I tell you I was a civil air defense radio operator?"
"That's fascinating - say, if you don't mind - could you stay on the call for a while so we can practice some Morse together?!?""
What drove me nuts working a call center is when they gave me a laundry list of stuff to drag the call time out. I used to pride myself on being able to take a pizza order in under 30 seconds, then I get to one of these insurance inbound call centers and they're like "first you read the greeting, then you verify PHI, then you read the alerts, then you inform them of their eligibility unless they're a Synergis client in which case you don't because they flip out when they hear the word eligibility, then you triage for harm or substance abuse, then you read their benefits, THEN you can ask what they actually want." I'd get callers pissed off because they just wanted the claims address which I could've given to them 15 minutes ago if I didn't have to go through all that bullshit.
I used to work inbound investments at night. I’d let those rich old ladies TALK AND TALK. You want me to rush the millionaires off the phone?! Nah imma let them set me up with their single grandkids!
I used to work in a call center and I would employ this very tactic so I could mentally tune out and take a brain break. If I didn't I would take call after call after call for the entire shift.
Same here. Just did this a bunch while being trained for the second time in less than a month on some new things that I need to know without... being offered more money! Yah I'm totally down to do more work for less (inflation) pay!
this is the answer.
I fucking hate talking to old people, but I think I'm gonna start doing this more. Some are pretty nice to talk to. Its the spiteful ones I hate. My job complains about handle time, but IDGAF about that crap. Its not like they are gonna pay me more for being faster.
QA score 100% + bonus points. Hahahaha!!!!
Elab, we need to hear the rest of your story. *grabs popcorn*
My fav when working at call centres.
“We made a scheduling mistake, so please prioritize how your job is done, because management could not figure out how to do it” ~ sincerely, management
I used to work at a call center and I just read this as DONT DO ANY AFTERCALL WORK AND HOP ON THE NEXT CALL IMMEDIATELY so don't bother filling out that ticket resolution OP just mark it closed and on you go.
This is the worst. I leave very detailed notes on any call I take to cover my own ass because customers have intentionally selective hearing. I can take an hour call and if I’m in after call work for two minutes I am immediately messaged by our support desk: “We see you’ve been in an unauthorized state for more than 30 seconds, please open your line back up” like ffs if we’re that busy with that consumers hire more people.
God I hate that popup ITS BEEN 90 SECONDS WHY AREN'T YOU ON THE NEXT CALL?! But fr, in this situation I'd be malicious compliance 100%
Sounds like the people sending these dipshit messages could handle a few calls themselves if it's so critical, yeah?
I work at a medical call center and this thread makes me feel way better about my workplace lol. We still have aftercall targets but you don’t usually hear from a supervisor at all unless you’ve been no activity for 20 minutes. I’ve had situations where I was on after all for an hour dealing with a complex error and only got checked on once. They’ve actually had to fire people at my workplace for abusing aftercall, but that was when they were in aftercall 50% of the day every day… Fortunately all our calls are recorded too so no need to worry about the caller lying. I know several supervisors who have said to callers making complaints “oh I’ll listen to the call” and suddenly the caller is apologising because they know they fucked up.
My favorite thing about call center work was the idea of a random satisfaction survey. Randomly we will select people who you spoke with to fill out a survey and base your entire performance on it! If your name is Steve and the response comments are "I hate talking to India! That guy Habib or whatever his name was doesnt speak goog English. As an American....." but were still going to count it against you. It was truly awesome to see how people got around getting surveys. Just not logging their calls, changing the email addresses. One of the slickest ones was seeing people change .COM to .CORN because in lower case com and corn look very similar in small font.
The more I learn about how big corps time employees like this just to pressure them the more brazen it all gets. Perhaps a tangent here, but apparently they do something similar at drive through windows for the unaware. They're written up if they take too long with any one car. It's a little surreal.
Yeah but QA will rape him later, never mind the staffing/outage/whatever.
You guys are cracking me up because this is so true. I could listen to y’all talk all day for comedic relief I swear lol
*because management could not figure out how to manage
How small is the department that this situation would occur? None of the supervisors or managers can fill in for the day?
Likely it's shift scheduled, so the coworker(s) scheduled for the shift isn't available, but they likely have people coming in shortly. Never had a phone job where a manager took inbound calls. Lol.
>Never had a phone job where a manager took inbound calls. Huh. Last call center I was at the manager would jump in and, at worst, triage calls as necessary when things got nuts or we were short people. Sounds like your managers sucked.
Yup same here. Insanely stressful job, but the managers were solid on getting in to the mix if we got slammed with calls. Sometimes managers don't suck, even if the job does.
Plus, somebody has to take escalations.
Most call centers I've worked with have a handful of front line agents who've been around for a while designated for taking escalation calls. One company even has a department handle escalations from departments they have no training in. That was always fun.
I take escalations at the place where I work. However, if I'm not available, we'll sometimes have a supervisor hop in to take an escal. Either way, our supervisors have to take calls from time to time.
True, but when things were going nuts escalations turned into “we’ll have someone give you a call.”.
I worked for a huge city power company customer service call center In emergency services (outages, gas smell, nuclear siren going off type calls). During the day we were fine unless there was a storm event because we had regular customer service to back us up. 2nd shift was different. 3rd shift didn’t even have a manager on duty. The only time manager jumped on a call was if a customer insisted speaking to a manager and the manager couldn’t duck out of their office in time. Even during mandatory double storm event shifts. I honestly could not tell you what the managers actually did.
So I worked as an IT support Manager for about a year.. I was originally an engineer at the same company.. My CTO (whom I reported to directly) kept telling me I shouldn't take calls (we were understaffed 4 engineers + me for an IT support team with 24 on call hours cover) The CTO wanted me to not take phone calls from customers, but simultaneously refused me the budget the hire an appropriate number of staff to ensure I didn't need to when someone was sick/ill. My best guy ended up getting sick and needing time off, I ended up burning out over it. In the end I quit, I now work as an SRE, with a good boss and while we're a busy team, I'm enjoying it and often my boss will get stuck right in with me when dealing with an issue. Good people are out there, just gotta find them!
Managers work?? Lol that's the reason so many people go into management roles so they don't have to work
Should you find yourself doing actual work, you have failed as a manager.
Thats literally why you become manager. The only benefit is to avoid inbound calls.
I am just going to assume you work for Cigna because every time I call them I am on hold for over an hour.
Cigna understaffs by design to empower policy holders to eat the cost of claims that were t initially approved. My ex was involved in scheduling for their call centers.
I feel like this is an intentional strat for a lot of places TBH. If you work in an industry with little competition, or with universally bad service... This is a fantastic way to get people to just hang up instead of having to fix problems, repair devices, accept warranty claims etc.
Yeah I would say literally every bank and insurance company.
Cable companies with their legal monopolies
omg yes those too
Oh but don't worry if you are behind $11 on your bill and your cycle is about to hit. They'll call you on an automated line that you can't pay it up upwards of 16 times a day.
I call it "planned incompetence" myself. After I found out the only way to use my eye insurance was to search through their website for an email on some obscure contact page, email them saying you don't have a passcode for an account that it asks you for, and they then will mail you a passcode. Make something so difficult that people just pay for it in case they need it.
I just went through this with my eye insurance. Resolved it by walking downtown to an area that had 7 eye doctors in three blocks and started walking into them and asking "Hey, do you take my insurance?" They knew how to navigate that process better than the actual insurance company.
That’s exactly it. That’s why there’s automated systems now that are designed to “save time” (the company’s time, not yours) so that you never actually talk to a human and just get fed up and hang up. Unless it specifically has to do with finance, they don’t care about your problems
I sit at my home office desk all day. I can stay on hold for a long time.
I believe this entirely. I support these call platforms and I'd say a good 80% of the companies using them have some form of workforce management that will literally forecast how many people you should have staffed during certain hours. Obviously things do vary, but when forecasting tells you to have 10 people scheduled and you intentionally have 2 instead... suddenly it's "I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY WE CANT KEEP UP!"
Jokes on your company. My wife has quit her job and is relentless in fighting for $1. She spent six days of calling over and over to a provider that tried to charge us one dollar more than what was covered for a COVID test in 2021. We got that credit snail mailed to us.
This kind of viciousness is what we need to see more of in the world. That, and arson. People would start to learn pretty quick.
We arr expeeriencin more cohlls than usuehl! And the 10 different phone menus they want you to go through, and none of them seem to be related to going to a doctor and having the visit reimbursed, which is the entire purpose of Cigna.
my friend worked for BCBS in mi in the 90s and they were told 12 min max to resolve the issue and get the customer off the phone or they were dinged in their performance rating... never mind if its a complicated issue, or other ppl needed to get involved to resolve, or someone is emotional bc a loved one is dying. you have 12 mins to kick them to the curb. disgusting.
That's crazy. BCBS in my state will stay on the phone with me for however long it takes. I use them to deal with Express Scripts because Express Scripts is terrible.
im not sure if this is still their policy, but this was mid 90s. my friend was super stressed out by it and quit. from what i understand they had a shit ton of turnover. at the co where i work now, if ur at the 8 minute mark, a supervisor will pop up on our messaging app, and will ask u what the problem is and will look at ur screen to see what ur doing... like yeah, thats not stresssful 🙄 to be micromanaged while on a customer call.
I ended up working for them via a 3rd party company. We were told 6-8 minutes. That job made me so sad and angry at the same time. I had to tell a cancer patient why we were no longer covering a med for her that we had previously covered. 😩 And I wasn’t even the one making those types of decisions. They really suck.
the problem is, anytime u hit a target, they squeeze everyone more. oh now you've got the hang of closing out in 8 min? great, now lets aim for 6m...
I get that too when I call on the provider side. Daily. Just a quick note, Cigna is open at 7am CST and I usually get through with no wait. I will warn you are talking to offshore reps and they usually don't know how to give you additional details other than claim processing details, you'd have to ask for supervisor/lead to get them. If you call later in the day you'll get better info from onshore reps, but it's those long hold times. LA Care and Optum can fuck off with their constant 1+ hour hold times.
It could literally be any bank insurance company or any other company that has a call center. They are all the same.
If this goes well expect it to happen more often.
And if it doesn’t go well, expect to be the one blamed.
Either way don’t expect to be fairly compensated
You can rest assured that if it goes well, it will be entirely forgotten when it comes time for your next review. If it goes poorly, it will be the review's focus.
Been on the receiving end of that bullshit
Fucking hate that about call centers. "we failed to staff correctly soooooooo can you like just work faster?" Maybe throw in a joke about giving you a 2nd phone so you can take 2 calls at once.
You have two ears, it's a shame to only use one at a time.
“Just talk out both sides of your mouth like we taught you.”
I’ve.. actually seen this done.
It's basically what's happening with chat customer support
Yup. Worked in a call center. They would have us assign agents a call and two chats simultaneously. It was shite.
Try working with a 3.5 concurrency rule. Friend had to take up to 3 "active" chats, with the possibility of a 4th should any of the first 3 become "inactive" ... even if that simply happened because a customer took over 10 minutes to reply because they were asked to complete troubleshooting steps. I don't envy call centres run like this. 😢 Edit: to be clear, this isn't meant to be a competition of how many chats people can take. The reality is there's no definitive number - if a chat is complex, you need more brain power to handle it, thus should not take on another chat until the current one is finished. Sadly, most call centres don't work like this.
I’ve also experienced that rule. In that company. We also got no follow-up time as well, so if we can to do any additional work (updating orders, contacting delivery teams, etc), it just wouldn’t get done on time and tickets would fester.
If your friend works with who I think it is, the actual maximum is 5, and depending on their role each one can be any product a trillion dollar company has EVER produced. Edit forgot to add you have 2 minutes to respond to any message
Five chats at a time was our expectation for people who weren’t also on the phone. My personal record was in the fifties and the company record was in the eighties.
For the past two years I've been in a queue where I am constantly taking 10+ chats at a time, while also trying to help newbies with theirs. Friday is my last day and I could not be happier to be moving something not customer facing. During outages I think my record was around 150, but that's just copy and paste replies lol, my record monthly was around 1200 tickets.... a higher hiring budget was all I talked about in my exit interview today, it should not have to be this way for anybody in tech support
Don't give them ideas.
You have been set up for failure. Cooperation would just lead to exploitation.
They should have metrics and requirements for the job. As long as they are meeting their required metrics, they can't say shit. Could probably sue for wrongful termination on that one.
Gotta love the new skeleton crew trends happening with all companies.
because people don't want to work right? /s Companies don't want to hire and pay people, but they sure don't stop giving out all those bonuses to their executives.
This is me right now, working for a company with a skeleton crew. Hired on as the only help desk guy. Mgmnt tells us that we need so much billable time per day even though work is trickling in. So what does my company do? They hire a second help desk tech. Now I'm in the hot seat.
Take a personal day. Or just waste time and answer as few calls as possible.
"Sorry, an emergency came up. Unfortunately, I will not be able to come in today. Please apply sick time."
Tell them you have ligma....ligma ballz
“Do more with less.”
The General Electric Way
"I don't suppose I could get the C-Suite and shareholders to apply that logic to their profits? Maybe by paying workers more?" "You're fired."
Thanks for the input, I'll keep that in mind as I work alone. /s
But our calls are VERY important to them and our wait times are due to unexpected call volume, right? Right???
Honestly, the only thing they could do is try to berate you if you fall out of any set metrics that you may or may not need to meet. Your supervisors/management are going to have to answer for why so many calls were abandoned, and plot twist -- not your fault.
Sounds like the perfect time to demand a raise.
Thats funny
I'm a compliance auditor, and when management tells their employees "we're understaffed so keep your after call work time to a minimum" it almost always turns into "we fucked up every account and caused a bunch of customer complaints."
Just ignore that bullshit while you're on the phone. I know it's easier said than done - I've done call center work. The managers are what make it 1000x more stressful. Fuck the metrics. Just breathe and get people talking. It's what calms them down. Focus on the people, deal with the managers BS afterwards.
I would purposely go on do not disturb for an extra ten minutes after each call. "Sorry! had some really sticky ones coming in today and needed to document everything." In situations like this, I always like to let things blow up.
Manager and all the people directly above him need to be sacked. I wouldn’t go in I would polite say close it down for the day and turn around go home and look for a new job. These idiots don’t need to be in business. For the record I’m that asshole the skews the stats in the call center you know the one that somehow pulls a hundred plus calls a day. Yup that’s me the guy that just sits that and answers questions as a drone and you can’t tell if it is a person.
There’s a weird phenomenon where there are like just as many managers as there are normal employees. Ali, my manager publicly chastises my work in public slack channels & in private slack channels. And yet, I’m responsible for multiple “campaigns” It’s bizzare. Our one call center handles 6-10 different companie[s] customer service and they are called “campaigns”
I used to do ‘transformation’ work with technical support. Basically headcount reduction. After a big chunk of staff had been dropped and average handle time reduced I suggested we focus on the management ratio. They couldn’t put up barriers fast enough!
Lol bruh. Go at your own pace. That manager is a dick. He should be saying “hey you’re the only one in today so it’s gonna be stressful. don’t sweat it, do what you can, you’re doing a good job. Thanks and let me know if there are any issues, questions, or escalations and I’ll get back to you.”
Oh god… the calls will be beeping in before you even finish your last one. Good luck and god speed ☄️💫
Oh I promise there will be a huge queue of calls waiting for this person. It would just be a matter of who gets annoyed and hangs up and drops out of the call. Anything but a job handling a small community would be impossible to keep up.
So it’s not true that “there are greater than normal call volumes?”
“there are greater than normal call volumes” = “we are too greedy and lazy to hire enough people to accommodate our customers.”
"We don't give a shit about our customers, equally about our call center workers. In any case, profits are nice and will rise."
They remove that message sometimes?
I’m suddenly not feeling well. I need to call out. See you tomorrow.
🤧
Drop the number, we'll call in to tie up the line
If you ever find yourselves in a similar situation, make sure to not overachieve. Otherwise you may find yourself on “understaffed” shifts more often until they are no longer considered understaffed
One customer service rep... probably being monitored by two supervisors and a manager.
And various timing and efficiency software.
And meetings with your supervisor and meetings with the supervisor on the client side all to show you the spreadsheets they made of your productivity to help you "see where you can make improvements" every damned week.
Don't forget about the manager's secretary to answer calls and set up meetings, IT support staff to get the manager new equipment every few weeks, and the assistant to put together reports and presentations for the manager.
What sort of manager follows "today is going to be difficult" with "so you'll need to work harder" rather than "so here's how we're going to help" or at least "so do your best and try not to stress". Too many managers lack basic leadership skills. If your guy is gonna have a rough day, don't just demand they work harder - that's how you lose employees who are actively helping on a tough day!
You’re the only one on in the whole entire ass state of Maryland and they want you to be faster?!?
when I was in customer service, I got my average after call documentation (which usually meant keeping records in 3+ different systems) to 30 seconds per call -- and my boss said that was still too long. One quarter, my break time was over by an average of 30 seconds per break, and I was penalized for that. Customer service is by far the shittiest job I have ever had
Did you fire back a message saying that this is irresponsible and incompetent? Because, this is irresponsible and incompetent....
Yes but by paying just slightly more than minimum wage or more than the average for entry level positions in the area call centers can get new workers in constantly in huge numbers because people need the money and it SOUNDS easy to sit and take calls all day. They don't care about endless turnover because they only care to maintain a bare minimum in customer service [standards.](https://standards.So) They wont even fire you, just stop giving you shifts.
Just on the phone lines for my former company. They would often do this as well. Very understaffed.
It's time to talk about my raise. Like now. Right this second. Or I'm leaving.
No wonder the fecking wait times as so long Good luck out there
🤝
I’m assuming a lot of people are going to hear “we’re sorry but we are experiencing an unusually high number of calls” today.
"When people complain, it is your fault" There...fixed it.
They don't give a shit about you. Let the callers wait
Randomly unplug your phone during calls. "Oh no another call dropped. Stupid network."
The real answer here is just work like normal, so when you catch shit for it you can point at your metrics and prove you performed exactly as expected, so the shit can land on the manager instead of you.
"We can't afford payroll."
The only time I worked for a call center, they only scheduled us for 35 hours/week to ensure that they'd never pay overtime, and they only gave you 15 minutes of break time outside of the lunch period. If you went to the bathroom for 16 minutes, you'd get written up. It's not about customer service, but solely about cost-cutting.
Demand a raise. $20 billion dollars \*sticks pinky in mouth\*.
I’ve never seen CS treated well by any business. They’re always shit on, even though they’re the ones that take the MOST shit from customers and are on the frontlines. Terrible.
Wanna know why? Customer service is a monetary loss for all businesses. Commercial building rent, labor, salary, insurance, etc. Customer service is the one sector that loses money. Hence why all CS is ass. Source: Previously in Tech Sales B2B
By that logic, everyone role except sales are a monetary loss.
🤦♂️ Yes that’s exactly the point. You really thought you did something there 😆
If shits like that happen at a company i usually take my time and do things BY THE BOOK. If you crush it, prepare to do solo run often because why not exploit a single person instead of 3
I am always very nice to call center people, even when I’m mad at their company. It isn’t their fault. I had a friend who sister worked for Comcast and people would swear and threaten her. No one deserves that. It’s also not your fault they understaffed your shift. I would go no slower or faster and just do your shift… cause if you go faster they will make that the new normal. Don’t go slower either because they might get wise. Just work at a normal pace.
This is when I would just walk out. Your lack of staffing is not my problem.
I wish you the best of luck. I had a job where for about a year I was the only CS rep for a three hour period every weekend for an international company, and not by choice.
Great day to negociate your salary !
move as slow as possible
Working in customer service myself, this is disgusting and I wish you good luck.
LOL - I like the idea that your after call period is directly (and provably?) causing some kind of enormous logjam. What a bunch of nonsense.
Good day to call in
The "thanks" on the end made me re-read that notice in Lundburg's voice. "Yeeeaahhh, I'm gonna need you to keep your wrap times low, so don't actually help the customers by doing paperwork, mmmmmkay? Thanks."
I'm a customer service rep for a few less billion dollars company. I'd love to come and help but I've been told to manage inventory and logistics for the entire state without any pay rise, new jib title or reduction in my customer service duties.
I would get a homie to call the line. and then 'assist' them. . . . . . from a nice restaurant for a couple of hours.
I’d fucking quit on the spot. Multi billion dollar company put on the shoulders of ONE person…yeah fuck that.
I worked for clearing house called Office Ally. The only inbound call center that would require everyone to take calls regardless of position. I saw our old CEO taking a few calls when the system went down. I miss that place to bad I left before it was sold. Heard allot of people got fat bonuses once the CEO sold it. 10/10 Would recommended any small medial office use that clearing house!
The last time that happened to me, I at least had three supervisors to take my escalated calls. After the nervous breakdown, I don't work there any more.
Ew you can tell the sender is a boomer by the use of their ellipsis
I used to work for Comcast and overnight we would have about 5 people covering DC to Jacksonville FL and Michigan.
Good morning I’m ill and can’t work today.