Category: Jobs and Employment
Ok, so I'm looking for a job right now, and I'm wanting to work at a call center. However, I have some questions for those who have experience in that area.
Made a typo. What I meant was that I'm just asking these questions so that I know what I'm getting into when I get this job.
I worked for NCO, which hired people to work for Microsoft. I was basically one of those tech support people whom everyone seems to hate.
I liked the human interaction, and how most of the time I was able to solve problems with the resources I had access to. I appreciated how much the company tried to accomidate me as far as accessibility. I did not like the questionable moral practices of the company, how I was not allowed to tell people I was from Canada, or how fake the job could be sometimes. What I mean is the empathy you were meant to use seemed very scripted. In fact much was scripted. I also wasn't a big fan of some of the customers. Some expect you to work miracles, and when you can't, they blame you and even yell at you. You have to have a pretty thick skin to work there. But this probably isn't all call centers.
To have a reasonable idea of a day at my job, check out the bit I wrote called Techie Termoil in Writer's Block. It's the worst of the worst, but none of it is actually fiction.
Hi, Michael. I've worked quite a few call center jobs, so I'll try to answer your questions. Well, first, I have one of my own. Are you thinking about doing inbound or outbound calling? Because believe me, they are very different things, and my answers would be very different. Since I have more experience with inbound, I'll answer that way, and if you want to know more about outbound, I can post again.
1. I liked those jobs because I like working with people. I generally like talking to people, and helping them. You talk to all different kinds of people, which can be bad or good, but definitely keeps things interesting. I disliked that often I was doing the same thing, over and over again. that could get monotonous. For example, when I was working for Hyatt Hotels, most of the time I was making reservations for people. That can get boring. That's why I said the variety of people you talk to helps keep it interesting. You'll come up with a lot of great stories about who you talked to.
2. Yes, call centers are a very fast-paced environment. The pro of this is that it keeps you busy. You don't have a lot of time just sitting on your butt doing nothing. The cons are that you sometimes don't have time to catch your breath between calls. Even more, I often found I was not able to provide the level of customer service that I wanted to because of the time constraints. Again, using Hyat as an example. In training we were taught that meeting the customer's needs, treating them respectfully, answering their questions, and so on, was most important. Once we were on the calling floor, it was a different story. Then you were judge on your statistics: how many reservations you made in an hour, how many calls per hour you took, how long each call was. In order to meet the calls per hour stat that Hyatt expected, you'd have to talk to each customer for approximately 60 seconds, 90 at most. Trust me, you can't even make a reservation in that time, let alone answer customer questions or help fix problems that they have. I often did not meet the stats they wanted, because I felt that taking time with a customer was more important.
3. The call centers I have worked for were generally very accommodating when it came to my accessibility needs. They were patient in that regard at least, and were prompt about fixing accessibility issues when they did come up. Of course it was in their best interest to be that way, but many businesses don't recognize that fact. They were also pretty good at giving me feedback: what I was doing well, in addition to where I needed to improve. I appreciated that.
Every place is different, but there are my experiences.
I'd honestly agree with pretty much all of that when it comes to my own experience. Well-stated, Sister Dawn.
Agreed! I worked in a pizza order-taking call centre, and for TicketMaster. Both had pros and cons. Thankfully, TM didn't have any problems with accessability needs, and neither did the pizza place... it was easier than I thought it would be! Both had good and bad days... for a part-time job, I liked call centre work, but full-time just isn't for me.
At the rehab center where I used to work, there were computer teachers who were happy to go out to job sites and help both the blind employee and their supervisors deal with acccessibility issues. As long as there are state counselors willing to pay for a rehab teacher to make job site visits and the staff at the call center are willing to learn and perhaps make some adaptations for the blind employees, everything should work out.