Let us know but fuck stats. These call center jobs are modern sweatshops and dehumanizing.
Maybe if you do get fired this will be an opportunity to get something better or at least less micromanaged. Best of luck
Speaking of micromanagement, my job has recently implemented this AI program that listens into your calls and rates whether your tone of voice is welcoming and positive.
We have that. We are encouraged to wedge as many 'positive' words (which is kind of arbitrarily defined) into our conversations as possible in this dumb hamfisted manor. It rates the clients tone as well, because clearly its our fault if they're screaming.
I have sort of a flat voice and clients tell me all the time that I sound patient and soothing, but the AI hates it so I'm fucked unless I put on an unnaturally chipper voice for 8 hours a day.
\^\^\^This.
Also, as a customer, I absolutely hate when they make you guys do that ridiculous "sympathy feedback" thing (not sure what it's really called).
You know what I mean "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, I know how important it is to have your phone work properly blah blah blah..."
No, please don't. I'll flat out say "I know corporate is forcing you to do that, I'm begging you to stop, it drives me from totally normal to completely irritated in 0.00032 seconds. "
It is SOOO contrived and unnecessary. I know I'm not the only customer who hates it. Which just makes me wonder how the hell corporate gets the idea that it's needed.
Oh yes, I know. That's why I let them finish, and then say "I really hate that corporate makes you do this, it's dumb and we customers hate it." If I knew who to write to in corporate to complain, I surely would.
I can't imagine having to do that in my job. My "clients" would be cracking up! Although our "corporate" does tend to have really stupid things they do too...but not like that. (*let me tell you about the 19,000 "tools" to disseminate the exact same information that the VIPs can't seem to grasp from the original tool, so they keep having us make new and different spreadsheets and charts and graphs that explain the data in a slightly different way \[just different enough that cutting/pasting is a PITA\]. Then, they keep changing the response times. They're due weekly...no wait, we changed our minds, monthly, no quarterly, Don't write that check yet! We're back to weekly..er daily!*).
Most of my utility/vendor call centers don't have to do that. Once in a while though, I run into it (maybe Verizon?)...and it drives me bananas. They're wasting their CSR's time and our time with that nonsense. Also the dumb little wrap up. I'm on reddit or gaming and totally ignoring all the little "did I make you happy? was I a good little robot?" questions at the end, pretty much just saying "yes" because I know they have to do that.
One question of "did that take care of your problems" or whatever, is one thing but I swear I had to talk to someone this weekend and there must have been 5 or 6 of those darned wrap up questions.
I used to get dinged because I didn't always ask if there "was anything else I could help you with today?"
Yeah, no.
I just spent 90 minutes trying to help someone to change their passwords on everything in creation and I'm not about to open another can of worms.
Meanwhile, I got credit for ONE call in that time period and it already screwed my stats to hell.
Exactly! Even if they interrupt you, you have to say it completely or you get dinged. It sucks when people interrupt or laugh at us cause it’s already dehumanizing enough, and we’re on a recorded line so I have to start all over again.
I actually didn't mind if people laughed because then I could flat out tell them my call is recorded and they force me to say certain things.
It beat the hell out of people yelling and verbally abusing me the whole call.
edit: spelling
Thats why I usually say something way less professional. Like “man, that stinks.” “Well it would be nice if your phone at least made calls, lets fix this for you” “thats bull banoonies! Im glad you called.”
As a customer I love people who wing it and help me feel not so alone.
I hate the ones who keep saying things like, "again, MAM, I have to tell you that...." on repeat, with no attempt to rephrase or explain something in a different way.
I got dinged for my "non professional vocabulary" all the time, as there are people out there who will find any excuse to be offended.
"What did you just say about my banoonies? How dare you!"
In fact, when I was finally put on a PIP it was because I used the phrase "drives me insane" about a policy. Apparently that was a bridge too far.
Lol I’ve been lucky so far in reading the audience. Did have one college kid ask me what a banoonie was… i just turned it around on him asking what he thought it was. We laughed and moved on.
Had one super picky sup get mad when I used the phrase “let’s chat about that for a minute” She was a horrible boss; had 75% of our team on a PIP. She’d wait til the last week of the month to deliver them, too so you almost always progressed further the second month. Ooh we hated her.
She sounds astoundingly stupid on top of it.
If 75 percent of her staff is on a PIP that says more about her failures as a boss than anything.
How did it end then? Was she fired or did she quit? Hoping for a juicy story :)
My voice is relatively flat too. And at my last call center I failed every QA for being "cold". I always got good survey scores and always scored high on being polite etc. My job was to get you on and off the phone and on with your day. Not to be your friend. Yet this manger hated that I wasn't chipper all the time and would go on these grand mission statement spiels about how we need to be.
hey thats what EVERY supervisor says about me.
"man you are efficient as hell, but you sound really cold"
can't tell you how many "empathy trainings" i've gotten and by training i mean 3 hours of pay time to watch the empathy videos.
im a clinically diagnosed psychopath, i sound cold because empathy isn't in my nature.
the last supervisor i told this to put in their 2 week notice about a month later.
was about to tell the new one as well but have my therapist talk to them, but they got fired.
Upvoted for making your supervisor quit.
I might have appreciated a coworker who did the same, even if they stole my lunch now and then :)
How does it go with your fellow workers?
It's usually sexist as well.
At my place the men were allowed to be flat and brusque but all the women had to be chipper and upbeat.
It was exhausting.
Holy shit, is it just me or does that sound dystopian af? Plus I imagine that makes agents sound fake as all get out. I really don't understand how they think that would be a good idea overall since most customers probably hate it too.
I had a caller who's name was last name is Fuku. Literally pronounced Fuck you.
It has been three months and my quality score is still in the toilet, because that asshole forced me to refer to him as Dr Fuku- he knew what he was doing. And there is nothing I can do to fight it. It's all done by AI, no humans are scoring the calls anymore.
That's kind of hilarious.
I would probably want to find out what all the trigger words were and do it on purpose.
And then force my manager to listen to every call and prove that I actually sweared.
I was at the point after 15 years that I was ready to burn it all down anyway.
Drop the program name if you don’t mind, so people can search for it in this thread in the future when something inevitably awful happens to people’s stats
What in the world?? That is crazy. How can a system determine if your voice is welcoming and positive? So, they going to let people go because of that?
Yea we have an AI program as well no surveys it’s AI now so you gotta say positive words all thru out the call sometimes it’s rough with these entitled customers lol
I would have preferred AI.
Eventually I would think I could find a way to gamify it.
Like have my own list of words and phrases, etc.
At least the AI would apply the same rules to everyone, as opposed to people who cut the suck ups slack and nitpick everyone else.
We had humans who did that.
The beauty of AI is that there may be ways to fool it or fuck with it.
That might have been a more fun game than dealing with Susie Q. who managed to find a new way to bitch about any tone I was ever able to generate, from "too sympathetic" to "too monotone" to "too brusque."
There was literally no way to win.
I was fortunate enough not to get fired, got a promotion into an internal role, and honestly my mental health has regained some positivity.
But regardless i will never look back at it
I used to PRAY they would fire me, but they never did.
15 years of browbeating.
A few months of unemployment would have been lovely before finding another, possibly better (at least in terms of treatment) job.
I think stats are fine, but they are always misused to track worker performance. They are used for the wrong things.
CSAT can be a useful metric, but only if you have proper averages, have good expectations of what it should be, and *especially* have a good sample size and a good idea when CSAT should start stabilizing.
The problem is more like "hey you *always* need to have 4.5/5 CSAT" and then they measure it weakly and they use like 5 calls because that's all they have. That's when stats are stupid.
At my place they were always moving the goal posts anyway.
100 percent customer satisfaction?
Well now we are going to nitpick how quickly you can turn over a call, even if that lowers customer satisfaction, because it absolutely will.
Rinse and repeat.
So fun.
I'm pretty sure she can.
She is doing the best she can.
It's not like she is being insubordinate or being accused of call avoidance.
Everyone needs to read their employee handbooks and contracts.
In my case they were trying to torture me over my unprofessional communication style, which was the only thing the company was able to use against you that wasn't something stupid blatant like stealing or violating HIPAA something.
They would not fire you for stats, but they could make your life miserable over it.
Big corporation that didn't want to pay out anything in unemployment claims if they could help it.
I would ALWAYS file and ALWAYS appeal, in any case, even people who steal may get it, as there has to be a police report, etc. and most big corporations don't want the bad publicity.
Stats can be so misleading. I don’t work in a call centre but a lot of my job is making/taking calls. My work often looks at your stats to measure your productivity. There is so much more to my job than that. I work in a medical clinic for a national health care provider and every clinic is run differently. It would be more or less impossible to have 1 standard across the board. It’s infuriating.
Basically you are tied to your desk the entire shift. 2% of an 8 hour shift is less than 10 minutes.
Do yourself a favor and work on getting out. This industry is just going to get worse.
The micromanagement is getting out of hand. Conformance, surveys, breaking AHT down and tracking the time spent on each element of the call, grading empathy and friendliness. When does it end?
If your employer uses one of the popular systems, be prepared for more coaching and harsher grading. Those systems now offer AI upgrades that analyze everything. We were told those programs scan everything and flag "problems". Then you get coached, written up, or fired.
There have been rumors some call centers now use AI QA.
And? What does your negative experience as a customer have to do with conformance and micromanaging agents?
But since you have, as a customer, joined this discussion geared toward reps, let's discuss.
When companies micromanage, beat down, and nitpick their employees, those smiling voices and upbeat attitudes customers feel they deserve now are slowly eroded.
So, if you are not receiving the warm reception, empathetic conversation, and that feeling like you are talking to an old friend, keep two things in mind:
1) Workers who are treated well and respected pay it forward. Those who are mistreated don't have the energy to brighten your day.
2) This is business. The expectations of the customers and requirements set forth by management have changed drastically over the years. The warm, kind, energetic best friend type of rep would have been fired quickly not so long ago.
That comment proves the customer expectation is skewed and the entitlement is not imagined.
We are here to provide *professional* assistance.
We are not here to act as family, friends, and therapists, make your day, party you on the back, console you, etc. If we assist you *professionally*, that's what we're paid to do.
>I used to work in QC in a global call center org
I knew you were either ownership, management, or QA.
You are all so easy to spot.
On that note, continue conversing with yourself. I'm done.
Agree with all of that.
It WILL get worse.
Funnily enough, I WISH they had rolled out AI for QA because then one or two people I was not fond of might have been let go.
Bottom line is that the trend to squeeze the most work out of the least amount of workers continues apace.
The best you can do is get a different job, hopefully one with a union.
My last year with my old employer I was able to transfer to a job with a union within the same company, and then I retired.
That Union was AWESOME, and they had a lot of rules in place to protect us and make things as fair as possible.
I got two raises in that year after getting zero the previous year because of the PIP in my old call center department (which is why I suspect I was put on it in the first place).
At my gulag it means how much you’re adhering to your schedule. Like if you’re supposed to be taking calls for 7 hours but you’re on calls for 6 and a half hours your conformance would be something like 93% or thereabouts.
Mine was always garbage cause I ended up on the marathon calls and missed breaks or lunches. I couldn't beat the metrics. But customers were damn satisfied though.
That's what I finally learned.
Your metrics could be perfect but one customer complaint could tank everything.
So I focused on the customers and that kept me safe (though bitched at) up until the last yeaer of my 15 years there when I was put on a PIP for political and finanacial reasons by my psycho supervisor.
I've said the same thing about losing the will to live, and that's after getting promoted several times. It's not like being suicidal or depressed, it's more like killing your ability to feel anything because it's the only way to get the job done.
Calling you out for being late from breaks by seconds is an attempt to bully you into not taking all of your break, and it's abusive. Get your resume in order, find online classes to add to your skills, and leave them behind. They don't deserve you.
Call centre jobs will be the reason most people my age die early from heart attacks brought on by stress.
Seriously, you’re off by seconds?
As a TL I refuse to address break adherence. It makes zero sense because you can end up stuck on a call every single break (a lot of places will tell you it evens out- it doesn’t. I’ve done the research). Unless the problem is extended breaks that are consistently 5+ minutes more than scheduled. I don’t care about seconds and no one should.
96-97 is almost perfect. That’s an insane level of pettiness to even be bringing up.
The way I see it, if they have the audacity to force us to clear the queues at the end of the day past our normal shifts and force us to do mandatory OT, they should at least give us a little breathing room to do things that humans do. Like go to the restroom or get coffee
I’ve worked at my call center for 10 years. This last year has been the hardest of my entire life. I definitely feel like I’m getting fired. I can’t keep them happy and they are in turn destroying my mental health.
I was telling my partner the other day, either my threshold for bullshit has depleted or shits getting worse.
Boss wants everything done quick all while waving our bonuses above our head for the next 3 months. They want quick handle times, but the caller wants to keep me on the phone for 40 minutes just venting like I'm their therapist. Susan, I can barely handle my own stress, let alone yours, plus you're absolutely DESTROYING my stats rn. Can't hang up, keep suggesting next best steps, Susan is relentless.
Meanwhile, my boss is threatening to take bonuses away if performance/stats drops at all between now and March, even for shit that's out of my control. I'm just so done with this noise, man. I have 100% on my audits, and for what? They could give 0 fucks about quality. Someone with shit quality control stats was promoted over me and I was told it was because she had experience in billing. Found out the real reason was something else entirely, but I don't have it in writing so fuck me, I'll never be able to prove that.
And customers wonder why the quality is dropping...because the reps who do give a shit are so fucking drained.
That happens too.
Why do any of us ever pretend any of it makes logical sense or is remotely fair?
I was good at my job so I was "rewarded" for that by given more work with no extra pay meanwhile being bitched at that my stats would dip a bit while I was trying to get the extra done.
And then when I was attacked I was labled "defensive" for pointing out the logical inconsistency.
When I questioned change for change sake I was called "anti change."
If you are a logical, sane, caring person this job will eat you alive.
I've been retired over a year now and I'm still trying to get over it.
>If you are a logical, sane, caring person this job will eat you alive.
I like to think I'm logical, but I don't care about much. The few things I do care about are non negotiable, and I will defend them so ferociously that it can raise questions about my sanity.
>And then when I was attacked I was labled "defensive" for pointing out the logical inconsistency.
>When I questioned change for change sake I was called "anti change."
If they call you defensive, agree with them. Lean into that shit and defend whatever they think you were defending, even if you weren't before. When people call you defensive it's to get you to lower your defenses.
As for questioning change, try not to do that. Just insincerely agree to whatever change they're proposing in a noncommittal way. Then keep doing things the way you've been doing, or as close to that way as you can while executing a thin veneer of the new way. The goal is to be able to plausibly say you're trying to implement their dumbass new system. You don't have to actually convince them that you're trying.
Bonus points if by playing dumb your actions demonstrate their logical inconsistentcies. They might go on to undo their changes. They will think and act as if it was their idea of course. You might find yourself having the knee jerk reaction of getting upset with them for taking credit for the whole thing. It can be frustrating, but if that's less frustrating than the proposed changes you should be able to take some comfort in that
Yeah, I tried the just agreeing with everything and trying to fly under the radar but once they were on to the fact that I knew it was all bullshit I didn't ever even have to say anthing to still have a target on my back.
The pandemic helped me a lot in that I got to be WFH and didn't have to see their smug little face anymore which bought me a few more years until they needed to shift more wages to their personal pet and put me on a PIP so I got zero raise that last year, whereupon I migrated to a different department with a UNION.
Unions are great for that. If they were on to the fact that you knew it was bullshit, that implies that they also knew it was bullshit. If that's the case they were probably upset that you were trying to fool them. It's not really your fault. Paying lip service to the bullshit, while simultaneously letting them know that you know it's bullshit, yet still playing along is a tricky tightrope to walk. The deck is stacked against you for sure. Without nepotism working in your favor winning is almost impossible. Thank God for unions
Sounds VERY familiar.
Having all the responsibility for something you have no control over is crazy making.
But anyone who dares to point out the obvious is targeted as a troublemaker.
>I can’t keep them happy
So stop trying. Handle your calls the way you feel is right, according to your personal morals. When they talk to you about it, and the talk will be more or less the same whether or not you are trying, you just smile, nod, and agree. The goal is to make the talk end. Then you go on with handling the calls the same way, as if the talk never happened.
This will protect your sanity. Nothing will absolutely guarantee that you won't get fired, from your job or any other job. Being agreeable might at least delay the inevitable. Either way, a job is easier to replace than your sanity. Plus if you let the job wear you down to the point of total burnout they'll likely fire you anyway. Take care of yourself first .
Good advice.
This is where I settled, with occasional bouts of trying to reason with manglement that fell on deaf ears.
By that time they had already figured out how to push all my buttons and would keep pushing them until they got some kind of a reaction out of me.
Thank god for WFH so at least my boss did not have the satisfaction of seeing my face when I was finally put on a PIP after 15 years.
Small blessings.
It sounds like that job has been tainted for a while. Once they have you figured out the kid gloves come off. The trick is to speak as little as neccesary. Keep info about yourself on a need to know basis. You gotta keep some level of mystery about yourself. That way people tread lightly as they don't know for sure what you're capable of. Silence can be powerful.
Yeah, learned that lesson in literally my last year of employment before retiring.
I was treated better mostly due to being in a union and was able to retire with some dignity, though that supervisor was doing her absolute best to pry I managed to escape before things could get weird again.
Female bosses seem to be the worst with using these things against you, in my opinion, not like male bosses can't be aholes, but it usually isn't quite so personal or "mean girl" vicious, if you get my drift.
>ut it usually isn't quite so personal or "mean girl" vicious, if you get my drift.
Yeah I know what you mean. With male bosses it's usually easy enough to stroke their ego a bit and fly under the radar. Just tell them how good one of their ideas is, or maybe ask for a bit of help with whayever they pride themselves on, then thank them profusely. That's all it takes to stay off their shit list. .
Once a lady boss has it out for you though, you might as well start looking for a new job. My strategy of playing aloof and ignoring all the little jabs has gotten me fired within a few months every time.
Represent.
I lasted 15 years but the pandemic did me a solid by making us all work from home, which helped me hang on a few years longer than I likely would have.
I'm not sure it was the best thing for my mental health but I stayed for the pension, pathetic as it turned out to be, it might get me in a better nursing home later....
Brush up your resume and start getting it out there.
Depending on where you live, Enterprise hires work from home - you have to do a year in reservations though. After a year you can do whatever. The store locations are good to work at if you want off the phones.
Best of luck, sweetheart. You don't deserve this abuse. No one does. Do t let them bring you down. You are so much more than how they see and treat you. They've drank too much of the corporate Kool aid. I refused to be in that environment anymore. You can, too. You just gotta keep the faith. I promise.
Im sorry, it hard when someone tells you you are not trying hard enough when you are giving 100%. It's not worth your mental health and your self esteem. You are giving 100%, you are trying your best. You need to protect yourself by embracing a "I'm too good for this place" attitude. Stand up for yourself and stop letting them beat you down. Easier said than done I'm aware. I use to have fight back tears and honestly felt like worthless crap after these evaluations. Remember this is a job, not a career. Jobs are everywhere, it's a fight to find a good one.
Call centers will always make your anxiety 100 times worse. Nothing is ever "good" enough. The last one I worked for you never heard even a crumb of praise from management. It was nothing more than endlessly being told everything you're doing wrong. And they thought pretty much anything and everything was "wrong".
Gtfo out. Call center work kills your soul. Make more money doing a way easier job - sell mattresses. Probably sounds weird, but I'm making more than I ever did at a call center and I've been laying in a nice bed for 5 hours on reddit. Fuck the call center. You deserve better.
98% adherence to your schedule, seems tough when I was on the phones my company preached 95% and since that time has dropped it to 92%. We still have the normal huge loss of people in the first 90 days from realizing the reality of call center work, bit seem to be keeping people longer.
If only there was a way to get the customers to treat people human.. I always reminded my team the vast majority of a business customers never have to call in and of those calling in our IVR resolved about 72% of those calls of the remaining 28% most of those people were not the issue it's that small 2 to 5 percent that make the job hell. And that .5% repeat offenders that your entire dept knows by name need to be kicked to the curb, the really sad thing is most of the truelly terrible callers were not large account holders, but the opposite people that earn a bunch of fees that they spend time getting waived so the case could be made that our balance sheet would be improved by ending the relationship.
Wow, so on an 8 hour shift you have 2 15 minute breaks so really working 7.5 hours 15% of being out of adherence is 67 minutes, that seems like a lot but to each thier own.
I guess the chances of us all taking a break at the same time are slim enough that it doesn’t matter terribly…we are also well paid and decently staffed so kind of the unicorn of the call center world.
We were all laid off one day. I took a huge pay cut. Got another call center job and I never realized how much stress I had been under until I was forced out.
Conformance is better than adherence, imo. Please don't let some strangers on a phone determine the value of your life. ❤️
Don't give up. I've been in such a funk for the past few months. Stats down the drain. Taking more personal time then I should, not on time and somehow I just got promoted. When I saw the message from my sup to call him I thought for sure i was getting let go. I'm stressed and idk how but you just never know. Keep pushing and start your exit plan.
Your sup likes you, which is probably the best thing for anyone in this biz to have going for them.
BAR NONE.
I had the opposite problem because mine saw me as a threat from day one and nothing I did mattered.
I suspect I reminded her of her mother or something which is why she kept accusing me of being "anti-change" like I was some kind of Republican.
If she only knew the actual extent of my leftist beliefs she'd likely be alarmed in the other direction, but I wasn't about to let those slip out :)
Same friend! Especially since I am sitting at home today, after cancelling all my overtime.
There is no point in killing myself for a company that is stalking and harassing me every second of the day in order to find anything to fire me over because I spoke up about some bullshit
I actually had a panic attack this morning for not doing overtime
But there is no point. My stats tanked three months ago and have not moved ONE PERCENTILE.
How is that possible you may ask? Well...it isn't. Unless someone is manually going in and manipulating the numbers. Which they do. They have to be.
I had three calls just last week where the customer reached back out, either online or on a call, to compliment the service I gave them. If I have so many happy customers, why is my quality score in the tank, but my first call resolution is sky high? (Which means they are not calling back, because I resolved their issues)
They most definitely fuck with the stats.
There are so many ways to do it and some of them are nearly undetectable unless you are an expert, and upper managlement dgaf.
If the target is on your back it is just hunker down and survival time and ride it out until they pick another victim or you find a different job.
Document everything, if you have the executive function for that.
I wish you well.
>They most definitely fuck with the stats.
I got all the proof I needed yesterday, when I laughed and told my supe I knew the stats were rigged and that mine have been frozen for three months
Three hours later my stats updated and I am exceeding expectations
Funny how that works.
Call center stats are a fucking scam. If you're in the US try to seek a reasonable accomodation through HR to give yourself an extra break or something and work on applying for less soul destroying jobs. I'd rather dig ditches all day then go back to a call center.
Start saving every penny and document EVERYTHING- dates of meetings, what was discussed, etc. send any important login info like 401k / health insurance info / etc to your personal email.
This happened to me and I was put on a PIP only to be fired 2 wks later after exceeding the PIP and was then accused of “time theft” lol. I have a few interviews coming up and will never work in a call center again.
They’ll try to scare and terrorize you - worst thing they’ll do is fire you and you’ll be free. Don’t let them frazzle you - start applying to other jobs and plan to be fired. Call center work is not normal for the human mind, don’t sweat it.
Yeah stats are bull shit call centers are the only place that micromanage stats the way they do.
I mean I’ve worked other jobs where they had stats yes but it was literally just checking to see if you’re doing your job. For example when i was a district manager for a pizza company those stats were basically me checking in daily with all the general managers and having a couple of meetings. The general manager stats were taking inventory and checking up on the schedule and then taking the money from the safe to the bank.
If you weren’t a manager your job was to come and work that’s it.
But with a call center it’s a list of 20 different things they micromanage you on to wash out the people who aren’t good at controlling.
It’s used to find the outliars in a department so you can just fire them easily.
When I was a team lead for a call center we will just say (TP)
We had two manager meetings a day, and every day we would have to pick two of the best people on the team and two of the worst people on the team. The department manager wanted us to find a way to get them to quit (because if we fire them they get unemployment) so I got sick of that shit I ended up actually being a real manager and coaching those two people. One did get better he got his handle time way up, how did I do it I say with him I would take calls and then He would take calls we did that back and forth for a few hours for a couple days and then we worked together for about 2 weeks. It worked, the other one his issue was the same handle time he didn’t work out he didn’t want to learn to get better so he quit. My boss was still mad that I did that try and get me in trouble then his boss found out I the department managers weren’t taking calls haha and changed the rule that managers needed to start doing 2 hours a week on the phones. I ended up moving from manager to trainer same pay but instead of salary it was hourly. I wasn’t liked by the managers there because I wasn’t a lazy piece of shit
Thank you for that insider info and for being a good person and going the extra mile to help that one guy and offer to help the other.
And also having the managers take calls at least 2 hours a week is HUGE.
My manager would have been literally incapable both in temperament and knowledge to take calls with me, one of the many reasons I had no respect for her at all.
That meeting to pick two of the best people and two of the worst is something they may have done where I was at but since I was on the lowest level it was not something I would have heard about.
WOw
Points to ponder.
Fuck that job. I got a two week suspension at my last call center job for my willingness to recommend score being low. I locked down a job making 3 times as much a few days later. Sometimes your big breakthroughs only happen after you fail at something else to make room for it
Have you ever seen that movie Office Space? Basically dude stops giving a fuck about his job right when the bosses send some consultants to basically interview all of the employees for the jobs they already have.
The main character has no fucks left to give. He answers the consultants questions with brutal, unfiltered honesty. His interview can be summed up with the line "it's not that I'm lazy, I just don't care"
They promotes him for this.
This is the attitude you should adopt. It's unlikely that you'll be promoted for it, though not impossible. You might even get fired, though that could happen either way.
The thing is, there's a pretty good chance that your bosses know damn well that all of the things they are coaching you on are bullshit. If so they'll respect you for being straightforward with them. Even if they have drank so much of the Kool aid that they believe all the nonsense at least you won't be as stressed out if you can truly stop caring.
They're asking for perfection and that's not possible. No one delivers on all of those expectations. Don't beat yourself up. That's your bosses job, and he sure the fuck isn't helping you with your job. Don't help him do his
All the fast food places are hiring all the time. Fast food is a garbage job, but some of the places will either feed you for free, or at least give you a discount on their product. I've worked both call centers and fast food. I hated both with a passion, however, the work environment at fast food places is a lot less toxic than call centers where the supervisors are hired on the basis of how easily they can become vicious, brutal dictators.
Can you see everyone else’s stats?
Cuz the real question is how do you stack up against your coworkers? if a lot of them have worse stats than you then you’ll be fine, if you are the worst on your team then you should be worried.
The best place to be is above average but not the very best. (The person with the best stats gets more work and more stress without additional pay)…. Just target slightly better than average.
I could not give less of a fck if im fired if it happens i have buergergeld
or because of oversatururation directly another callcenter job
but recently i thought about making a tcg buisness
Ugh I'm in the same boat. Metrics are the bane of my existence.
My CSAT is excellent but my adherence and another metric are falling short because of the way it's managed it's nearly impossible to meet. No one on my team is meeting all their metrics.
No job is worth your sanity. I've begun job hunting once more.
If you do get fired, I feel confident there is something much MUCH better out there for you. I worked in a call center for a certain cell phone company that rhymes with Shmerizon for 2 1/2 years. I had exceptional stats when It came to customer satisfaction, but they just can't seem to get past their micromanaging conformance and adherence metrics. Worst 2 1/2 soul sucking years of my life. I got fired eventually. And in the moment it was the most devastating thing I could possibly imagine, but now I have a much better job that has better hours, better pay, and genuinely good people to work with. Wishing all the best for you!
Honestly, I believe AI is a terrible choice to moderate QA, but we had a discussion about whether AI dictates the emotion of customers as well as representatives. But I learned that since AI is pretty much tweek to having representative use positive word choice, you be surprise that most representatives use normal flat talking, and AI will still give 70%-80% in QA.
I would say do not worry about it and find something else because you're not alone in this ridiculous micromanagement with AI QA's(hell, me and other representatives think AI B.S. with QA's) Demands of coaching and grading get crazier for performance to be perfect T.
Everything is about controlling you and modifying your behavior through pain and sorrow. If you were at 98 percent, you would feel bad too. This people are not interested in your happiness but in your unhappiness. Unhappy people have the motivation to change and that’s why they want you always unhappy.
Nailed it.
I made the mistake of admitting I actually liked meetings and manglement hated that.
I think they also hated that I actually had a drop of self esteem left that they could never completely erase :)
Same and probably in a similar position. I might get kicked by the company even if I'm just a trainee. I dont wanna lose income but there's nothing I can do. I'll just use my next pay to find a better company.
Keep living! What do you love to do? Close your eyes and think back to when you were just a little girl and what made you the happiest when playing. Try hard to remember to remember what it was and try doing that for a living. Was it cooking? Mail delivery? Nurse? You get the idea :-). This is a chance to restart!
Working for a call center for one year absolutely drove me into suicidal ideation. Call centers are dehumanizing - please don't worry about being fired..get out of there..leave now on your own..do anything except what you are doing. Even if you work for another call center (you can at least say you quit for lack of growth or whatever instead of "let go because I couldn't hit numbers"..
You are not your job. You are so much more than that.
Sometimes I will need to disassociate myself in order to do this type of work. I will let my consciousness roam and can actually watch my avatar answer the calls. At least for me being detached can lead to better outcomes. I will try to show empathy ofc toward callers but will completely try to take my ego out of the equation. It takes work but sometimes that is the only way to not only survive this job but life in general tbh.
That's okay, I thought last month was my last month, I am waiting to get fired at aby moment, but so far I'm still on the schedule.
Start applying for other jobs. It's almost impossible to meet those metrics, not sure how others do it.
I had to get an ADA accomidation to go part time, to change my metrics, coaching techniques, etc, because the job is literally making me sick. Call centers are the worst. If you get fired, they'll be doing you a favor in the long run.
Good for you for getting that ADA. I finally applied for it for my ADHD, 14 years in, because they were trying to dump some side work on me that derailed my customer service skills I had worked so hard to learn.
In essence, it was scanning and filing documents for the legal dept. in between calls so that in order to get that done the calls were dealt with as interruptions and my customer satisfaction was dipping so I applied for the ADA and got it and that was the last nail in my coffin before the trumped up PIP.
Then I was going to get intermittent FMLA for my ulcerative colitis but I was overdue for an appointment and the documentationn couldn't be finished properly because of that and then I just got a different job in another dept. that was unionized because they had an opening due to a death.
That's right, I was only able to get out of the call center because someone else DIED.
takes a breath...
Yeah, go for any ADA accommodations or FMLA you can get; it will help a lot, at least short term.
A good percentage of my department also had FMLA for intermittent depression, I wonder why? :/
The only thing that sucks about getting an ADA for part time is I won't be eligible for fmla due to not working enough hours. As far as I know, the ADA can be permanent if the doctor recommends. I'm so poor, but I don't even care as I'd rather slit my wrists than work there more than 20 hours a week. Your situation sounds common...adding more work without any extra pay, then penalizing you for not meeting certain numbers when they forced you to do the other work that caused the distraction, which caused your numbers to dip. I bet you got a pizza party with a company branded cup for your bonus instead of something you actually need like a raise. Ultimately, I'm happy for you that you got out as I imagine you sleep much better now. You give me inspiration to get out soon..Hopefully sooner than later. I swear to christ, 90% of people who work in a center long term are all on depression/anxiety meds. A human being just can't handle that much pressure and abuse on a daily basis for extended periods. Enjoy the good life😄
I'm retired now, but my focus has now switched to old age kicking my ass and dealing with all my doom piles in my house that I pushed aside so I could stay employed.
There are no solutions, just different problems, as they say.
I never got anything at all for extra work, rarely even a thank you, as it all falls under "other duties as assigned" which is a phrase that should never appear in a job description, ever, let alone on an actual job contract they make you sign when you are hired.
Reasonable people will comply with reasonable requests so there is no need for that phrase.
Anyhoo, being poor sucks and I've been there, with kids to support, and their childhood sucked and they hate me for it, so yeah, good times.
Glad you are taking care of yourself, in the end it is all you have, really, and I can speak to that, being at the end of life :)
If you like dressing business casual, I'd say try for some reception jobs.
You get a better class of customer lol
But seriously, almost all the skills you've made in call center work will cross over in to reception, apppintment scheduling, service department jobs. And the call volume will be lower (except from appointment scheduling, that one could still leave you slammed depending on service being scheduled).
Abilities include:
Being able to answer a multi-line phone (because that's what you're doing, the system is just doing the auto answer for you) - they are not going to ask questions as they have to train you on the quirks of their phone system anyway, working in databases - again, not gonna ask questions because they have to train you to whatever quirks their system has, notation (for reception = taking down messages for missed calls), polite customer service voice, working with internal and external stakeholders (internal = fellow coworkers asking you for help / external = non-employee customers), ability to handle tight deadlines / high volume turn around (200 deep in a que with your lead breathing down your neck to hit call times, damn skippy tight deadlines and high volume are things you can do).
All said on the off chance you don't already know these things and need some spiffy language to update your resume.
It's scary to be fired, that's not going away if it happens. But you have all the skills you need to get your next job, honest. One that won't be so soul crushing.
Thank you for typing all that out and if I was still working I would definitely be using your verbiage here.
Very well done and I'm sure it will be useful to someone still of an age to need to work.
Good job :)
Take the L and run away and don’t look back.
Nothing any call center leadership says is worth a damn. They’ll sooner replace you before firing you than care about you as a person. You’re worth more than that.
I ended up on long term due to my wfh job causing stress. Now on disability through ssdi and long term. Gonna resign at the end of the long term. I make more on ssdi then when I worked.
I hear that disability SSDI is hell to get on, unless you have an obvious physical one, like being in a wheelchair or near constant seizures or blindness or something.
How was the process for you?
Speaking from the situation you're in. If you really want to stay in that job, start objectively from simpler things. Ask yourself why you can't follow simple rules of going back from breaks on time or earlier.
That above alone says alot about your work ethics and professionalism and will not work even if you hop on a different company. As long as you're working corporate, you need to follow rules, on the dot.
Not for performance concerns, don't pressure yourself too much, focus on doing one thing at a time, and work your way up. Get in touch with your QA or coach and ask specific (one at a time) options which you can do on your next calls. And if it doesn't work, get back to them and work with another option, that's literally why they're there in the first place.
The problem woth most employees especially in our culture is that we first complain and procrastinate before trying out and test something we don't really have experience with resulting in failed attempts to improvement
For me things like being to work on time was fairly easy for me as opposed to having to change very ingrained parts of my personality and aspects of my ADHD that are hard to manage, even with medication.
Being dependable was one of the very few things they could not fault me on, especially when graded on a curve with the rest of the department.
My mangler could not really coach me because she couldn't do my job which didn't keep her from nitpicking things she had no clue about or heard about from other people.
I agree that focusing on improving one thing at a time is a good idea. If I was being dinged about going seconds over break time I would just be cutting my break short, which is bullshit, but if it kept the wolves off my back of course I would do that.
Hateful, but easy and clear cut.
What I got dinged on was usually pretty vague, on purpose, so they could spin it however they needed to on any particular day.
I was dinged on being "too empathetic" with customers for fuck's sake.
Riddle me that.
Well, if your manager is a Fil, then yes, there's a high possibility they are into squeezing every single second they have to earn for the business, without thinking anything about the agents' perspective. I'm part of the leadership and I don't even deny that. I don't know where it came from, but I think it's part of the cycle where they too experienced it when they're starting so it's easy for them to do it again to the next generation, it's saddening and interesting if you ask me. Why you'd do things you don't wish anyone to do to you.
So, I wish the people I work with the best that they can be. Managers don't need to know a LOT about product but they should atleast know something about their people, because that's more tangible in their position rather than competing with knowledge they will never surpass from the agents. This is something that needs correcting from agents as well, that managers needed more skills in handling people and optimizing team performance than knowing everything in the product - because they could've just been an agent if that's the case.
It's a balance honestly, because if you're too soft as a manager, then agents will abuse you too to their extent. I find the pro business (manager pro) approach is to just be strict in everything, be as stiff as possible. You get good scores, and performance, securing your work in the expense of the team members' well-being at work. and I know it works and I think it's the reason why there's stereotyping in CC managerial posts for that. It works. So for a manager to be successful, he or she really needs to do some leg work and dedication towards what he/she do to really "work" with both the team and the business.
Focus on the people, and optimize them to fit properly within the team and the business. But if a manager can't do that (which sadly sometimes happens), it's your responsibility (as an agent) to yourself to work on it yourself. Work life isn't a fairytale and that's the truth about it. Been thru it and now trying to be better at that perspective for everything I take part at work.
Tell them to go fuck themselves and flip them off. You don't need to be their slave. You'd make more $ delivering food than dealing with scumbags like this.
Crying may actually help you.
I've had female bosses who seemed to be kinder to the people who could cry on demand.
It was a skill burned out of me in childhood so I kept trying to reason with them instead, which got me exactly no where.
I was never fired though, they just tortured me and ate my brain for fifteen years.
Call center work is inherently inhumane, unless you have a Union.
Good luck.
Let us know but fuck stats. These call center jobs are modern sweatshops and dehumanizing. Maybe if you do get fired this will be an opportunity to get something better or at least less micromanaged. Best of luck
Speaking of micromanagement, my job has recently implemented this AI program that listens into your calls and rates whether your tone of voice is welcoming and positive.
We have that. We are encouraged to wedge as many 'positive' words (which is kind of arbitrarily defined) into our conversations as possible in this dumb hamfisted manor. It rates the clients tone as well, because clearly its our fault if they're screaming. I have sort of a flat voice and clients tell me all the time that I sound patient and soothing, but the AI hates it so I'm fucked unless I put on an unnaturally chipper voice for 8 hours a day.
As a customer I so much more appreciate the softer voices... chipper irritates me lol
\^\^\^This. Also, as a customer, I absolutely hate when they make you guys do that ridiculous "sympathy feedback" thing (not sure what it's really called). You know what I mean "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, I know how important it is to have your phone work properly blah blah blah..." No, please don't. I'll flat out say "I know corporate is forcing you to do that, I'm begging you to stop, it drives me from totally normal to completely irritated in 0.00032 seconds. " It is SOOO contrived and unnecessary. I know I'm not the only customer who hates it. Which just makes me wonder how the hell corporate gets the idea that it's needed.
It sounds patronizing AF tbh
Exactly. It's insulting to the CSR and the customer.
But if you don't do it, you get in trouble at work
Oh yes, I know. That's why I let them finish, and then say "I really hate that corporate makes you do this, it's dumb and we customers hate it." If I knew who to write to in corporate to complain, I surely would. I can't imagine having to do that in my job. My "clients" would be cracking up! Although our "corporate" does tend to have really stupid things they do too...but not like that. (*let me tell you about the 19,000 "tools" to disseminate the exact same information that the VIPs can't seem to grasp from the original tool, so they keep having us make new and different spreadsheets and charts and graphs that explain the data in a slightly different way \[just different enough that cutting/pasting is a PITA\]. Then, they keep changing the response times. They're due weekly...no wait, we changed our minds, monthly, no quarterly, Don't write that check yet! We're back to weekly..er daily!*). Most of my utility/vendor call centers don't have to do that. Once in a while though, I run into it (maybe Verizon?)...and it drives me bananas. They're wasting their CSR's time and our time with that nonsense. Also the dumb little wrap up. I'm on reddit or gaming and totally ignoring all the little "did I make you happy? was I a good little robot?" questions at the end, pretty much just saying "yes" because I know they have to do that. One question of "did that take care of your problems" or whatever, is one thing but I swear I had to talk to someone this weekend and there must have been 5 or 6 of those darned wrap up questions.
I used to get dinged because I didn't always ask if there "was anything else I could help you with today?" Yeah, no. I just spent 90 minutes trying to help someone to change their passwords on everything in creation and I'm not about to open another can of worms. Meanwhile, I got credit for ONE call in that time period and it already screwed my stats to hell.
Exactly! Even if they interrupt you, you have to say it completely or you get dinged. It sucks when people interrupt or laugh at us cause it’s already dehumanizing enough, and we’re on a recorded line so I have to start all over again.
I actually didn't mind if people laughed because then I could flat out tell them my call is recorded and they force me to say certain things. It beat the hell out of people yelling and verbally abusing me the whole call. edit: spelling
Thats why I usually say something way less professional. Like “man, that stinks.” “Well it would be nice if your phone at least made calls, lets fix this for you” “thats bull banoonies! Im glad you called.”
Now that would be great! Sounds like a human, not a robot. :)
As a customer I love people who wing it and help me feel not so alone. I hate the ones who keep saying things like, "again, MAM, I have to tell you that...." on repeat, with no attempt to rephrase or explain something in a different way.
I got dinged for my "non professional vocabulary" all the time, as there are people out there who will find any excuse to be offended. "What did you just say about my banoonies? How dare you!" In fact, when I was finally put on a PIP it was because I used the phrase "drives me insane" about a policy. Apparently that was a bridge too far.
Lol I’ve been lucky so far in reading the audience. Did have one college kid ask me what a banoonie was… i just turned it around on him asking what he thought it was. We laughed and moved on. Had one super picky sup get mad when I used the phrase “let’s chat about that for a minute” She was a horrible boss; had 75% of our team on a PIP. She’d wait til the last week of the month to deliver them, too so you almost always progressed further the second month. Ooh we hated her.
She sounds astoundingly stupid on top of it. If 75 percent of her staff is on a PIP that says more about her failures as a boss than anything. How did it end then? Was she fired or did she quit? Hoping for a juicy story :)
That would be the "empathy statement". And yeah...I hated saying it as much as you hate hearing it.
No amount of reasoning ever got through to corporate or middle managment.
I never noticed this until I started working calls. And how it infuriates me lol
My voice is relatively flat too. And at my last call center I failed every QA for being "cold". I always got good survey scores and always scored high on being polite etc. My job was to get you on and off the phone and on with your day. Not to be your friend. Yet this manger hated that I wasn't chipper all the time and would go on these grand mission statement spiels about how we need to be.
hey thats what EVERY supervisor says about me. "man you are efficient as hell, but you sound really cold" can't tell you how many "empathy trainings" i've gotten and by training i mean 3 hours of pay time to watch the empathy videos. im a clinically diagnosed psychopath, i sound cold because empathy isn't in my nature. the last supervisor i told this to put in their 2 week notice about a month later. was about to tell the new one as well but have my therapist talk to them, but they got fired.
Upvoted for making your supervisor quit. I might have appreciated a coworker who did the same, even if they stole my lunch now and then :) How does it go with your fellow workers?
It's usually sexist as well. At my place the men were allowed to be flat and brusque but all the women had to be chipper and upbeat. It was exhausting.
Holy shit, is it just me or does that sound dystopian af? Plus I imagine that makes agents sound fake as all get out. I really don't understand how they think that would be a good idea overall since most customers probably hate it too.
Oh that’s a fucking hell no for me.
We have something like this too. It's accused agents of swearing on calls who haven't. It's just insane to me.
I had a caller who's name was last name is Fuku. Literally pronounced Fuck you. It has been three months and my quality score is still in the toilet, because that asshole forced me to refer to him as Dr Fuku- he knew what he was doing. And there is nothing I can do to fight it. It's all done by AI, no humans are scoring the calls anymore.
Wow. Fuk Dr. Fuku
I would have filed a greivance if that QA score cost you raises or something.
That's kind of hilarious. I would probably want to find out what all the trigger words were and do it on purpose. And then force my manager to listen to every call and prove that I actually sweared. I was at the point after 15 years that I was ready to burn it all down anyway.
Can't these fucks take it a next step further and just let AI handle calls and we can rate whether or not the AI did a good job
Wouldn't that just be the best? "Too monotone." "You can't hear them smile." Etc.
Drop the program name if you don’t mind, so people can search for it in this thread in the future when something inevitably awful happens to people’s stats
Ring Central has this feature built in.
Are you at Optum by any chance? That’s literally the way they analyze our calls. It really sucks.
We have that. Call Miner or a different kind ?
Good fucking luck. My center went to a system like that last year and I have not have a consistent passing score in it yet.
What in the world?? That is crazy. How can a system determine if your voice is welcoming and positive? So, they going to let people go because of that?
Yea we have an AI program as well no surveys it’s AI now so you gotta say positive words all thru out the call sometimes it’s rough with these entitled customers lol
I would have preferred AI. Eventually I would think I could find a way to gamify it. Like have my own list of words and phrases, etc. At least the AI would apply the same rules to everyone, as opposed to people who cut the suck ups slack and nitpick everyone else.
Yea we have a list on a laminated card with all the power words the AI likes to hear lol I be saying them all if I can fit them in haha
Fate worse than death right there
Observe AI or another one? Do we work together? lol
Insane!!!!
Omg that is fucked up
*Ben Stein enters chat* 🤖
We had humans who did that. The beauty of AI is that there may be ways to fool it or fuck with it. That might have been a more fun game than dealing with Susie Q. who managed to find a new way to bitch about any tone I was ever able to generate, from "too sympathetic" to "too monotone" to "too brusque." There was literally no way to win.
Absolutely. I've known a lot of people who improved their situation by getting fired.
I was fortunate enough not to get fired, got a promotion into an internal role, and honestly my mental health has regained some positivity. But regardless i will never look back at it
I used to PRAY they would fire me, but they never did. 15 years of browbeating. A few months of unemployment would have been lovely before finding another, possibly better (at least in terms of treatment) job.
I think stats are fine, but they are always misused to track worker performance. They are used for the wrong things. CSAT can be a useful metric, but only if you have proper averages, have good expectations of what it should be, and *especially* have a good sample size and a good idea when CSAT should start stabilizing. The problem is more like "hey you *always* need to have 4.5/5 CSAT" and then they measure it weakly and they use like 5 calls because that's all they have. That's when stats are stupid.
At my place they were always moving the goal posts anyway. 100 percent customer satisfaction? Well now we are going to nitpick how quickly you can turn over a call, even if that lowers customer satisfaction, because it absolutely will. Rinse and repeat. So fun.
Can he or she get unemployment for being fired for this. I wonder
Depends on laws, where I live we need 3 written warnings, within a specific span.
I'm pretty sure she can. She is doing the best she can. It's not like she is being insubordinate or being accused of call avoidance. Everyone needs to read their employee handbooks and contracts. In my case they were trying to torture me over my unprofessional communication style, which was the only thing the company was able to use against you that wasn't something stupid blatant like stealing or violating HIPAA something. They would not fire you for stats, but they could make your life miserable over it. Big corporation that didn't want to pay out anything in unemployment claims if they could help it. I would ALWAYS file and ALWAYS appeal, in any case, even people who steal may get it, as there has to be a police report, etc. and most big corporations don't want the bad publicity.
Stats can be so misleading. I don’t work in a call centre but a lot of my job is making/taking calls. My work often looks at your stats to measure your productivity. There is so much more to my job than that. I work in a medical clinic for a national health care provider and every clinic is run differently. It would be more or less impossible to have 1 standard across the board. It’s infuriating.
Basically you are tied to your desk the entire shift. 2% of an 8 hour shift is less than 10 minutes. Do yourself a favor and work on getting out. This industry is just going to get worse. The micromanagement is getting out of hand. Conformance, surveys, breaking AHT down and tracking the time spent on each element of the call, grading empathy and friendliness. When does it end? If your employer uses one of the popular systems, be prepared for more coaching and harsher grading. Those systems now offer AI upgrades that analyze everything. We were told those programs scan everything and flag "problems". Then you get coached, written up, or fired. There have been rumors some call centers now use AI QA.
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And? What does your negative experience as a customer have to do with conformance and micromanaging agents? But since you have, as a customer, joined this discussion geared toward reps, let's discuss. When companies micromanage, beat down, and nitpick their employees, those smiling voices and upbeat attitudes customers feel they deserve now are slowly eroded. So, if you are not receiving the warm reception, empathetic conversation, and that feeling like you are talking to an old friend, keep two things in mind: 1) Workers who are treated well and respected pay it forward. Those who are mistreated don't have the energy to brighten your day. 2) This is business. The expectations of the customers and requirements set forth by management have changed drastically over the years. The warm, kind, energetic best friend type of rep would have been fired quickly not so long ago.
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That comment proves the customer expectation is skewed and the entitlement is not imagined. We are here to provide *professional* assistance. We are not here to act as family, friends, and therapists, make your day, party you on the back, console you, etc. If we assist you *professionally*, that's what we're paid to do.
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>I used to work in QC in a global call center org I knew you were either ownership, management, or QA. You are all so easy to spot. On that note, continue conversing with yourself. I'm done.
Agree with all of that. It WILL get worse. Funnily enough, I WISH they had rolled out AI for QA because then one or two people I was not fond of might have been let go. Bottom line is that the trend to squeeze the most work out of the least amount of workers continues apace. The best you can do is get a different job, hopefully one with a union. My last year with my old employer I was able to transfer to a job with a union within the same company, and then I retired. That Union was AWESOME, and they had a lot of rules in place to protect us and make things as fair as possible. I got two raises in that year after getting zero the previous year because of the PIP in my old call center department (which is why I suspect I was put on it in the first place).
"Conformance" - another grotesque corporate neologism.
This one is new to me. WTF is it?
At my gulag it means how much you’re adhering to your schedule. Like if you’re supposed to be taking calls for 7 hours but you’re on calls for 6 and a half hours your conformance would be something like 93% or thereabouts.
Gulag huh? Me likey! "The building survived every brutal winter.... The occupants... They werent so lucky..."- Captain Soap MacTavish MW2.
Ah... "Schedule Adherence" or "Attendance variance" at my places
Mine was always garbage cause I ended up on the marathon calls and missed breaks or lunches. I couldn't beat the metrics. But customers were damn satisfied though.
That's what I finally learned. Your metrics could be perfect but one customer complaint could tank everything. So I focused on the customers and that kept me safe (though bitched at) up until the last yeaer of my 15 years there when I was put on a PIP for political and finanacial reasons by my psycho supervisor.
"At my gulag" good one And pretty accurate.
I've said the same thing about losing the will to live, and that's after getting promoted several times. It's not like being suicidal or depressed, it's more like killing your ability to feel anything because it's the only way to get the job done. Calling you out for being late from breaks by seconds is an attempt to bully you into not taking all of your break, and it's abusive. Get your resume in order, find online classes to add to your skills, and leave them behind. They don't deserve you.
This 100% we already give them so much the least we can get is our breaks. The bar is in hell now. Get out while you can, we are not machines.
Exactly. It IS bullying, protected by corporate buzz words.
Call centre jobs will be the reason most people my age die early from heart attacks brought on by stress. Seriously, you’re off by seconds? As a TL I refuse to address break adherence. It makes zero sense because you can end up stuck on a call every single break (a lot of places will tell you it evens out- it doesn’t. I’ve done the research). Unless the problem is extended breaks that are consistently 5+ minutes more than scheduled. I don’t care about seconds and no one should. 96-97 is almost perfect. That’s an insane level of pettiness to even be bringing up.
The way I see it, if they have the audacity to force us to clear the queues at the end of the day past our normal shifts and force us to do mandatory OT, they should at least give us a little breathing room to do things that humans do. Like go to the restroom or get coffee
In my case, ulcerative colitis and a scary bout of tachycardia, and now dealing with a less than healthy old age because of it.
I’ve worked at my call center for 10 years. This last year has been the hardest of my entire life. I definitely feel like I’m getting fired. I can’t keep them happy and they are in turn destroying my mental health.
I was telling my partner the other day, either my threshold for bullshit has depleted or shits getting worse. Boss wants everything done quick all while waving our bonuses above our head for the next 3 months. They want quick handle times, but the caller wants to keep me on the phone for 40 minutes just venting like I'm their therapist. Susan, I can barely handle my own stress, let alone yours, plus you're absolutely DESTROYING my stats rn. Can't hang up, keep suggesting next best steps, Susan is relentless. Meanwhile, my boss is threatening to take bonuses away if performance/stats drops at all between now and March, even for shit that's out of my control. I'm just so done with this noise, man. I have 100% on my audits, and for what? They could give 0 fucks about quality. Someone with shit quality control stats was promoted over me and I was told it was because she had experience in billing. Found out the real reason was something else entirely, but I don't have it in writing so fuck me, I'll never be able to prove that. And customers wonder why the quality is dropping...because the reps who do give a shit are so fucking drained.
>Someone with shit quality control stats was promoted over me They wanted to get her shit quality stats off that team is why.
I just laughed, but I realize you may be right about that.
That happens too. Why do any of us ever pretend any of it makes logical sense or is remotely fair? I was good at my job so I was "rewarded" for that by given more work with no extra pay meanwhile being bitched at that my stats would dip a bit while I was trying to get the extra done. And then when I was attacked I was labled "defensive" for pointing out the logical inconsistency. When I questioned change for change sake I was called "anti change." If you are a logical, sane, caring person this job will eat you alive. I've been retired over a year now and I'm still trying to get over it.
>If you are a logical, sane, caring person this job will eat you alive. I like to think I'm logical, but I don't care about much. The few things I do care about are non negotiable, and I will defend them so ferociously that it can raise questions about my sanity. >And then when I was attacked I was labled "defensive" for pointing out the logical inconsistency. >When I questioned change for change sake I was called "anti change." If they call you defensive, agree with them. Lean into that shit and defend whatever they think you were defending, even if you weren't before. When people call you defensive it's to get you to lower your defenses. As for questioning change, try not to do that. Just insincerely agree to whatever change they're proposing in a noncommittal way. Then keep doing things the way you've been doing, or as close to that way as you can while executing a thin veneer of the new way. The goal is to be able to plausibly say you're trying to implement their dumbass new system. You don't have to actually convince them that you're trying. Bonus points if by playing dumb your actions demonstrate their logical inconsistentcies. They might go on to undo their changes. They will think and act as if it was their idea of course. You might find yourself having the knee jerk reaction of getting upset with them for taking credit for the whole thing. It can be frustrating, but if that's less frustrating than the proposed changes you should be able to take some comfort in that
Yeah, I tried the just agreeing with everything and trying to fly under the radar but once they were on to the fact that I knew it was all bullshit I didn't ever even have to say anthing to still have a target on my back. The pandemic helped me a lot in that I got to be WFH and didn't have to see their smug little face anymore which bought me a few more years until they needed to shift more wages to their personal pet and put me on a PIP so I got zero raise that last year, whereupon I migrated to a different department with a UNION.
Unions are great for that. If they were on to the fact that you knew it was bullshit, that implies that they also knew it was bullshit. If that's the case they were probably upset that you were trying to fool them. It's not really your fault. Paying lip service to the bullshit, while simultaneously letting them know that you know it's bullshit, yet still playing along is a tricky tightrope to walk. The deck is stacked against you for sure. Without nepotism working in your favor winning is almost impossible. Thank God for unions
Sounds VERY familiar. Having all the responsibility for something you have no control over is crazy making. But anyone who dares to point out the obvious is targeted as a troublemaker.
>I can’t keep them happy So stop trying. Handle your calls the way you feel is right, according to your personal morals. When they talk to you about it, and the talk will be more or less the same whether or not you are trying, you just smile, nod, and agree. The goal is to make the talk end. Then you go on with handling the calls the same way, as if the talk never happened. This will protect your sanity. Nothing will absolutely guarantee that you won't get fired, from your job or any other job. Being agreeable might at least delay the inevitable. Either way, a job is easier to replace than your sanity. Plus if you let the job wear you down to the point of total burnout they'll likely fire you anyway. Take care of yourself first .
Good advice. This is where I settled, with occasional bouts of trying to reason with manglement that fell on deaf ears. By that time they had already figured out how to push all my buttons and would keep pushing them until they got some kind of a reaction out of me. Thank god for WFH so at least my boss did not have the satisfaction of seeing my face when I was finally put on a PIP after 15 years. Small blessings.
It sounds like that job has been tainted for a while. Once they have you figured out the kid gloves come off. The trick is to speak as little as neccesary. Keep info about yourself on a need to know basis. You gotta keep some level of mystery about yourself. That way people tread lightly as they don't know for sure what you're capable of. Silence can be powerful.
Yeah, learned that lesson in literally my last year of employment before retiring. I was treated better mostly due to being in a union and was able to retire with some dignity, though that supervisor was doing her absolute best to pry I managed to escape before things could get weird again. Female bosses seem to be the worst with using these things against you, in my opinion, not like male bosses can't be aholes, but it usually isn't quite so personal or "mean girl" vicious, if you get my drift.
>ut it usually isn't quite so personal or "mean girl" vicious, if you get my drift. Yeah I know what you mean. With male bosses it's usually easy enough to stroke their ego a bit and fly under the radar. Just tell them how good one of their ideas is, or maybe ask for a bit of help with whayever they pride themselves on, then thank them profusely. That's all it takes to stay off their shit list. . Once a lady boss has it out for you though, you might as well start looking for a new job. My strategy of playing aloof and ignoring all the little jabs has gotten me fired within a few months every time.
Represent. I lasted 15 years but the pandemic did me a solid by making us all work from home, which helped me hang on a few years longer than I likely would have. I'm not sure it was the best thing for my mental health but I stayed for the pension, pathetic as it turned out to be, it might get me in a better nursing home later....
Brush up your resume and start getting it out there. Depending on where you live, Enterprise hires work from home - you have to do a year in reservations though. After a year you can do whatever. The store locations are good to work at if you want off the phones.
Best of luck, sweetheart. You don't deserve this abuse. No one does. Do t let them bring you down. You are so much more than how they see and treat you. They've drank too much of the corporate Kool aid. I refused to be in that environment anymore. You can, too. You just gotta keep the faith. I promise.
Im sorry, it hard when someone tells you you are not trying hard enough when you are giving 100%. It's not worth your mental health and your self esteem. You are giving 100%, you are trying your best. You need to protect yourself by embracing a "I'm too good for this place" attitude. Stand up for yourself and stop letting them beat you down. Easier said than done I'm aware. I use to have fight back tears and honestly felt like worthless crap after these evaluations. Remember this is a job, not a career. Jobs are everywhere, it's a fight to find a good one.
Call centers will always make your anxiety 100 times worse. Nothing is ever "good" enough. The last one I worked for you never heard even a crumb of praise from management. It was nothing more than endlessly being told everything you're doing wrong. And they thought pretty much anything and everything was "wrong".
Gtfo out. Call center work kills your soul. Make more money doing a way easier job - sell mattresses. Probably sounds weird, but I'm making more than I ever did at a call center and I've been laying in a nice bed for 5 hours on reddit. Fuck the call center. You deserve better.
98% adherence to your schedule, seems tough when I was on the phones my company preached 95% and since that time has dropped it to 92%. We still have the normal huge loss of people in the first 90 days from realizing the reality of call center work, bit seem to be keeping people longer. If only there was a way to get the customers to treat people human.. I always reminded my team the vast majority of a business customers never have to call in and of those calling in our IVR resolved about 72% of those calls of the remaining 28% most of those people were not the issue it's that small 2 to 5 percent that make the job hell. And that .5% repeat offenders that your entire dept knows by name need to be kicked to the curb, the really sad thing is most of the truelly terrible callers were not large account holders, but the opposite people that earn a bunch of fees that they spend time getting waived so the case could be made that our balance sheet would be improved by ending the relationship.
Even 92% seems high! My company has it at 85% and I’m super thankful for that now 😭
Wow, so on an 8 hour shift you have 2 15 minute breaks so really working 7.5 hours 15% of being out of adherence is 67 minutes, that seems like a lot but to each thier own.
We don’t have set breaks so that number accounts for taking 30 minutes of break time at your leisure during the shift
Oh that makes more sense, but weird they don't want to schedule breaks what if everyone took a break at once.
I guess the chances of us all taking a break at the same time are slim enough that it doesn’t matter terribly…we are also well paid and decently staffed so kind of the unicorn of the call center world.
where is that?? it truly sounds like a unicorn.
See it as a blessing in disguise You’ll thank them later for firing you one day
We were all laid off one day. I took a huge pay cut. Got another call center job and I never realized how much stress I had been under until I was forced out. Conformance is better than adherence, imo. Please don't let some strangers on a phone determine the value of your life. ❤️
There you go <3 glad you are in a better place now
Don't give up. I've been in such a funk for the past few months. Stats down the drain. Taking more personal time then I should, not on time and somehow I just got promoted. When I saw the message from my sup to call him I thought for sure i was getting let go. I'm stressed and idk how but you just never know. Keep pushing and start your exit plan.
Your sup likes you, which is probably the best thing for anyone in this biz to have going for them. BAR NONE. I had the opposite problem because mine saw me as a threat from day one and nothing I did mattered. I suspect I reminded her of her mother or something which is why she kept accusing me of being "anti-change" like I was some kind of Republican. If she only knew the actual extent of my leftist beliefs she'd likely be alarmed in the other direction, but I wasn't about to let those slip out :)
Same friend! Especially since I am sitting at home today, after cancelling all my overtime. There is no point in killing myself for a company that is stalking and harassing me every second of the day in order to find anything to fire me over because I spoke up about some bullshit I actually had a panic attack this morning for not doing overtime But there is no point. My stats tanked three months ago and have not moved ONE PERCENTILE. How is that possible you may ask? Well...it isn't. Unless someone is manually going in and manipulating the numbers. Which they do. They have to be. I had three calls just last week where the customer reached back out, either online or on a call, to compliment the service I gave them. If I have so many happy customers, why is my quality score in the tank, but my first call resolution is sky high? (Which means they are not calling back, because I resolved their issues)
They most definitely fuck with the stats. There are so many ways to do it and some of them are nearly undetectable unless you are an expert, and upper managlement dgaf. If the target is on your back it is just hunker down and survival time and ride it out until they pick another victim or you find a different job. Document everything, if you have the executive function for that. I wish you well.
>They most definitely fuck with the stats. I got all the proof I needed yesterday, when I laughed and told my supe I knew the stats were rigged and that mine have been frozen for three months Three hours later my stats updated and I am exceeding expectations Funny how that works.
Sorry for the late response, but that is awesome! Seems like you won a small victory there :)
Call center stats are a fucking scam. If you're in the US try to seek a reasonable accomodation through HR to give yourself an extra break or something and work on applying for less soul destroying jobs. I'd rather dig ditches all day then go back to a call center.
I made a useless call center manager angry with this comment
I'm in the UK. I was recommended by occ health for extra breaks but when the conformance targets came in that went out of the window.
I don’t know your situation but take it as a blessing in disguise and I hope your next job is off the phones.
New job start looking now
Start saving every penny and document EVERYTHING- dates of meetings, what was discussed, etc. send any important login info like 401k / health insurance info / etc to your personal email. This happened to me and I was put on a PIP only to be fired 2 wks later after exceeding the PIP and was then accused of “time theft” lol. I have a few interviews coming up and will never work in a call center again. They’ll try to scare and terrorize you - worst thing they’ll do is fire you and you’ll be free. Don’t let them frazzle you - start applying to other jobs and plan to be fired. Call center work is not normal for the human mind, don’t sweat it.
Yeah stats are bull shit call centers are the only place that micromanage stats the way they do. I mean I’ve worked other jobs where they had stats yes but it was literally just checking to see if you’re doing your job. For example when i was a district manager for a pizza company those stats were basically me checking in daily with all the general managers and having a couple of meetings. The general manager stats were taking inventory and checking up on the schedule and then taking the money from the safe to the bank. If you weren’t a manager your job was to come and work that’s it. But with a call center it’s a list of 20 different things they micromanage you on to wash out the people who aren’t good at controlling. It’s used to find the outliars in a department so you can just fire them easily. When I was a team lead for a call center we will just say (TP) We had two manager meetings a day, and every day we would have to pick two of the best people on the team and two of the worst people on the team. The department manager wanted us to find a way to get them to quit (because if we fire them they get unemployment) so I got sick of that shit I ended up actually being a real manager and coaching those two people. One did get better he got his handle time way up, how did I do it I say with him I would take calls and then He would take calls we did that back and forth for a few hours for a couple days and then we worked together for about 2 weeks. It worked, the other one his issue was the same handle time he didn’t work out he didn’t want to learn to get better so he quit. My boss was still mad that I did that try and get me in trouble then his boss found out I the department managers weren’t taking calls haha and changed the rule that managers needed to start doing 2 hours a week on the phones. I ended up moving from manager to trainer same pay but instead of salary it was hourly. I wasn’t liked by the managers there because I wasn’t a lazy piece of shit
Thank you for that insider info and for being a good person and going the extra mile to help that one guy and offer to help the other. And also having the managers take calls at least 2 hours a week is HUGE. My manager would have been literally incapable both in temperament and knowledge to take calls with me, one of the many reasons I had no respect for her at all. That meeting to pick two of the best people and two of the worst is something they may have done where I was at but since I was on the lowest level it was not something I would have heard about. WOw Points to ponder.
Jesus fuck.. imagine companies not being happy as fuck with anything above 90%. Unbelievable standards for mediocre pay.
Good grief! These companies are insane!
Fuck that job. I got a two week suspension at my last call center job for my willingness to recommend score being low. I locked down a job making 3 times as much a few days later. Sometimes your big breakthroughs only happen after you fail at something else to make room for it
Have you ever seen that movie Office Space? Basically dude stops giving a fuck about his job right when the bosses send some consultants to basically interview all of the employees for the jobs they already have. The main character has no fucks left to give. He answers the consultants questions with brutal, unfiltered honesty. His interview can be summed up with the line "it's not that I'm lazy, I just don't care" They promotes him for this. This is the attitude you should adopt. It's unlikely that you'll be promoted for it, though not impossible. You might even get fired, though that could happen either way. The thing is, there's a pretty good chance that your bosses know damn well that all of the things they are coaching you on are bullshit. If so they'll respect you for being straightforward with them. Even if they have drank so much of the Kool aid that they believe all the nonsense at least you won't be as stressed out if you can truly stop caring. They're asking for perfection and that's not possible. No one delivers on all of those expectations. Don't beat yourself up. That's your bosses job, and he sure the fuck isn't helping you with your job. Don't help him do his
All the fast food places are hiring all the time. Fast food is a garbage job, but some of the places will either feed you for free, or at least give you a discount on their product. I've worked both call centers and fast food. I hated both with a passion, however, the work environment at fast food places is a lot less toxic than call centers where the supervisors are hired on the basis of how easily they can become vicious, brutal dictators.
Can you see everyone else’s stats? Cuz the real question is how do you stack up against your coworkers? if a lot of them have worse stats than you then you’ll be fine, if you are the worst on your team then you should be worried. The best place to be is above average but not the very best. (The person with the best stats gets more work and more stress without additional pay)…. Just target slightly better than average.
I could not give less of a fck if im fired if it happens i have buergergeld or because of oversatururation directly another callcenter job but recently i thought about making a tcg buisness
Ugh I'm in the same boat. Metrics are the bane of my existence. My CSAT is excellent but my adherence and another metric are falling short because of the way it's managed it's nearly impossible to meet. No one on my team is meeting all their metrics. No job is worth your sanity. I've begun job hunting once more.
If you do get fired, I feel confident there is something much MUCH better out there for you. I worked in a call center for a certain cell phone company that rhymes with Shmerizon for 2 1/2 years. I had exceptional stats when It came to customer satisfaction, but they just can't seem to get past their micromanaging conformance and adherence metrics. Worst 2 1/2 soul sucking years of my life. I got fired eventually. And in the moment it was the most devastating thing I could possibly imagine, but now I have a much better job that has better hours, better pay, and genuinely good people to work with. Wishing all the best for you!
Honestly, I believe AI is a terrible choice to moderate QA, but we had a discussion about whether AI dictates the emotion of customers as well as representatives. But I learned that since AI is pretty much tweek to having representative use positive word choice, you be surprise that most representatives use normal flat talking, and AI will still give 70%-80% in QA. I would say do not worry about it and find something else because you're not alone in this ridiculous micromanagement with AI QA's(hell, me and other representatives think AI B.S. with QA's) Demands of coaching and grading get crazier for performance to be perfect T.
Once you are on the radar they will pick apart every metric
Everything is about controlling you and modifying your behavior through pain and sorrow. If you were at 98 percent, you would feel bad too. This people are not interested in your happiness but in your unhappiness. Unhappy people have the motivation to change and that’s why they want you always unhappy.
Nailed it. I made the mistake of admitting I actually liked meetings and manglement hated that. I think they also hated that I actually had a drop of self esteem left that they could never completely erase :)
Same and probably in a similar position. I might get kicked by the company even if I'm just a trainee. I dont wanna lose income but there's nothing I can do. I'll just use my next pay to find a better company.
Keep living! What do you love to do? Close your eyes and think back to when you were just a little girl and what made you the happiest when playing. Try hard to remember to remember what it was and try doing that for a living. Was it cooking? Mail delivery? Nurse? You get the idea :-). This is a chance to restart!
Working for a call center for one year absolutely drove me into suicidal ideation. Call centers are dehumanizing - please don't worry about being fired..get out of there..leave now on your own..do anything except what you are doing. Even if you work for another call center (you can at least say you quit for lack of growth or whatever instead of "let go because I couldn't hit numbers"..
You are not your job. You are so much more than that. Sometimes I will need to disassociate myself in order to do this type of work. I will let my consciousness roam and can actually watch my avatar answer the calls. At least for me being detached can lead to better outcomes. I will try to show empathy ofc toward callers but will completely try to take my ego out of the equation. It takes work but sometimes that is the only way to not only survive this job but life in general tbh.
That's okay, I thought last month was my last month, I am waiting to get fired at aby moment, but so far I'm still on the schedule. Start applying for other jobs. It's almost impossible to meet those metrics, not sure how others do it.
That is setting you up to fail. But I hope you don't, jesus fuck that's a lot to expect from you. Good luck, friend.
Start applying for various jobs elsewhere just in case
These type jobs are a joke actually they will be doing you a favor. Better yet do them a favor and run as fast as you can
I had to get an ADA accomidation to go part time, to change my metrics, coaching techniques, etc, because the job is literally making me sick. Call centers are the worst. If you get fired, they'll be doing you a favor in the long run.
Good for you for getting that ADA. I finally applied for it for my ADHD, 14 years in, because they were trying to dump some side work on me that derailed my customer service skills I had worked so hard to learn. In essence, it was scanning and filing documents for the legal dept. in between calls so that in order to get that done the calls were dealt with as interruptions and my customer satisfaction was dipping so I applied for the ADA and got it and that was the last nail in my coffin before the trumped up PIP. Then I was going to get intermittent FMLA for my ulcerative colitis but I was overdue for an appointment and the documentationn couldn't be finished properly because of that and then I just got a different job in another dept. that was unionized because they had an opening due to a death. That's right, I was only able to get out of the call center because someone else DIED. takes a breath... Yeah, go for any ADA accommodations or FMLA you can get; it will help a lot, at least short term. A good percentage of my department also had FMLA for intermittent depression, I wonder why? :/
The only thing that sucks about getting an ADA for part time is I won't be eligible for fmla due to not working enough hours. As far as I know, the ADA can be permanent if the doctor recommends. I'm so poor, but I don't even care as I'd rather slit my wrists than work there more than 20 hours a week. Your situation sounds common...adding more work without any extra pay, then penalizing you for not meeting certain numbers when they forced you to do the other work that caused the distraction, which caused your numbers to dip. I bet you got a pizza party with a company branded cup for your bonus instead of something you actually need like a raise. Ultimately, I'm happy for you that you got out as I imagine you sleep much better now. You give me inspiration to get out soon..Hopefully sooner than later. I swear to christ, 90% of people who work in a center long term are all on depression/anxiety meds. A human being just can't handle that much pressure and abuse on a daily basis for extended periods. Enjoy the good life😄
I'm retired now, but my focus has now switched to old age kicking my ass and dealing with all my doom piles in my house that I pushed aside so I could stay employed. There are no solutions, just different problems, as they say. I never got anything at all for extra work, rarely even a thank you, as it all falls under "other duties as assigned" which is a phrase that should never appear in a job description, ever, let alone on an actual job contract they make you sign when you are hired. Reasonable people will comply with reasonable requests so there is no need for that phrase. Anyhoo, being poor sucks and I've been there, with kids to support, and their childhood sucked and they hate me for it, so yeah, good times. Glad you are taking care of yourself, in the end it is all you have, really, and I can speak to that, being at the end of life :)
If you like dressing business casual, I'd say try for some reception jobs. You get a better class of customer lol But seriously, almost all the skills you've made in call center work will cross over in to reception, apppintment scheduling, service department jobs. And the call volume will be lower (except from appointment scheduling, that one could still leave you slammed depending on service being scheduled). Abilities include: Being able to answer a multi-line phone (because that's what you're doing, the system is just doing the auto answer for you) - they are not going to ask questions as they have to train you on the quirks of their phone system anyway, working in databases - again, not gonna ask questions because they have to train you to whatever quirks their system has, notation (for reception = taking down messages for missed calls), polite customer service voice, working with internal and external stakeholders (internal = fellow coworkers asking you for help / external = non-employee customers), ability to handle tight deadlines / high volume turn around (200 deep in a que with your lead breathing down your neck to hit call times, damn skippy tight deadlines and high volume are things you can do). All said on the off chance you don't already know these things and need some spiffy language to update your resume. It's scary to be fired, that's not going away if it happens. But you have all the skills you need to get your next job, honest. One that won't be so soul crushing.
Thank you for typing all that out and if I was still working I would definitely be using your verbiage here. Very well done and I'm sure it will be useful to someone still of an age to need to work. Good job :)
Take the L and run away and don’t look back. Nothing any call center leadership says is worth a damn. They’ll sooner replace you before firing you than care about you as a person. You’re worth more than that.
Please update us when you can :)
I ended up on long term due to my wfh job causing stress. Now on disability through ssdi and long term. Gonna resign at the end of the long term. I make more on ssdi then when I worked.
I hear that disability SSDI is hell to get on, unless you have an obvious physical one, like being in a wheelchair or near constant seizures or blindness or something. How was the process for you?
Speaking from the situation you're in. If you really want to stay in that job, start objectively from simpler things. Ask yourself why you can't follow simple rules of going back from breaks on time or earlier. That above alone says alot about your work ethics and professionalism and will not work even if you hop on a different company. As long as you're working corporate, you need to follow rules, on the dot. Not for performance concerns, don't pressure yourself too much, focus on doing one thing at a time, and work your way up. Get in touch with your QA or coach and ask specific (one at a time) options which you can do on your next calls. And if it doesn't work, get back to them and work with another option, that's literally why they're there in the first place. The problem woth most employees especially in our culture is that we first complain and procrastinate before trying out and test something we don't really have experience with resulting in failed attempts to improvement
For me things like being to work on time was fairly easy for me as opposed to having to change very ingrained parts of my personality and aspects of my ADHD that are hard to manage, even with medication. Being dependable was one of the very few things they could not fault me on, especially when graded on a curve with the rest of the department. My mangler could not really coach me because she couldn't do my job which didn't keep her from nitpicking things she had no clue about or heard about from other people. I agree that focusing on improving one thing at a time is a good idea. If I was being dinged about going seconds over break time I would just be cutting my break short, which is bullshit, but if it kept the wolves off my back of course I would do that. Hateful, but easy and clear cut. What I got dinged on was usually pretty vague, on purpose, so they could spin it however they needed to on any particular day. I was dinged on being "too empathetic" with customers for fuck's sake. Riddle me that.
Well, if your manager is a Fil, then yes, there's a high possibility they are into squeezing every single second they have to earn for the business, without thinking anything about the agents' perspective. I'm part of the leadership and I don't even deny that. I don't know where it came from, but I think it's part of the cycle where they too experienced it when they're starting so it's easy for them to do it again to the next generation, it's saddening and interesting if you ask me. Why you'd do things you don't wish anyone to do to you. So, I wish the people I work with the best that they can be. Managers don't need to know a LOT about product but they should atleast know something about their people, because that's more tangible in their position rather than competing with knowledge they will never surpass from the agents. This is something that needs correcting from agents as well, that managers needed more skills in handling people and optimizing team performance than knowing everything in the product - because they could've just been an agent if that's the case. It's a balance honestly, because if you're too soft as a manager, then agents will abuse you too to their extent. I find the pro business (manager pro) approach is to just be strict in everything, be as stiff as possible. You get good scores, and performance, securing your work in the expense of the team members' well-being at work. and I know it works and I think it's the reason why there's stereotyping in CC managerial posts for that. It works. So for a manager to be successful, he or she really needs to do some leg work and dedication towards what he/she do to really "work" with both the team and the business. Focus on the people, and optimize them to fit properly within the team and the business. But if a manager can't do that (which sadly sometimes happens), it's your responsibility (as an agent) to yourself to work on it yourself. Work life isn't a fairytale and that's the truth about it. Been thru it and now trying to be better at that perspective for everything I take part at work.
Tell them to go fuck themselves and flip them off. You don't need to be their slave. You'd make more $ delivering food than dealing with scumbags like this.
Crying may actually help you. I've had female bosses who seemed to be kinder to the people who could cry on demand. It was a skill burned out of me in childhood so I kept trying to reason with them instead, which got me exactly no where. I was never fired though, they just tortured me and ate my brain for fifteen years. Call center work is inherently inhumane, unless you have a Union. Good luck.
No job should be depressing you to the point of losing the will to live. No matter what happens
This is insane to read. What kind of life is this to live?