working in a call centre

[Job]

BT myself, Data manager for the Ericcson switches (pieces of crap)

Broadband is sucking us all in, many highly skilled data engineers ending up answering the complaints phones.
They abso-fukin-loutly hate it, nearly every guy over 50 has lasted a few months then taken early retirement.

They have gone from being their own bosses, scooting round the country fixing hardware/software faults to sitting in a giant room, having to log when they go for a piss.

Now the company says they are going full broadband/voice over IP by 2008, I can feel the suction.

We don't know if they are going to use the original switches or just bang in huge servers, the latter means about 1000 people working for BT, ALL ANSWERING THE COMPLAINT PHONES!!!!

 

[plomien]

I had to deal with an old lady who was most put out when an install crew put cable into her house and managed to drill through her cat in the process...

Being the supervisor on call (joy) I had to go take pictures in order to file the claim. It's amazing what a rather large one-inch masonary bit can do to a cat after drilling through a foot and a half of brickwork.

The old girl - bless her socks - knew more swear words than me, and THEN produced the purchase receipt for her pedigree moggie to the tune of £500. We ended up giving the old dear a cheque for nearly a grand after she sent us the cleaning bill for the blood, and to have what remained of our wiring removed and put right.

Those were the days........

that is old same as the one where 2 techs were caught in a customers bedroom . (apart from i heard it was a dog that got the drill and it span the dog round and round).

 

[Tilda]

Erm, this may sound a little suicidal, however, I'm in need of a job for the summer! How did most of you manage to aquire such a job in a call center?

Tilda

 

[Breon]

Erm, this may sound a little suicidal, however, I'm in need of a job for the summer! How did most of you manage to aquire such a job in a call center?

Tilda

Most call centres theese days use agencys to recruit people.

 

[[SS]Gamblor]

Erm, this may sound a little suicidal, however, I'm in need of a job for the summer! How did most of you manage to aquire such a job in a call center?

Tilda

i just saw a advert in a paper .. applied and b00m .. i'm not spamming FH and getting payed for it ... did i say spam .. no i mean answer customers calls

 

[Binky the Bomb]

Tilda, seriously, think about this. Flipping burgers in McDonalds isn't as bad as it sounds. Swallow pride and just do theat first, learn how to loose and gain your humility (one by applying and working, the second by quiting) before trying the call centre route. Trust me, it's not worth it for a summer job, the metntal agro and the almost constant stress from taking peoples crap isn't worth the minimum wage.

The only job worse than those two are working at marks and spencers (I have it on resonable authority, that the jobs at M&S are about as thrilling and challenging as dangeling your genitalia in soy sauce. How my friend knows this exactly is a bit of a mystery, and thankfully, it's going to be an unsolved one).

 

[Funkybunny]

hehe.. been there gotten fired from that

i worked at a call centre.. and the funniest things were when the problem was OUR fault.. like if our email-server went down or something.. we at tech-support never got to know what was wrong, so we often just made up reasons... coz the customer always wanted to know what was wrong.. even though they would have nooo idea what a server was...

one of my favourite answer was a almost 10 min long explanation that we just had moved server-offices and the new one didnt have its air-condition up (bla bla bla) and the server who handeled all the emails had been standing in a hot spot in that room and gotten over-heated... and by all luck, our technitian who had responsibility for that computer was visiting his mother who apparently had broken her leg that same day... and he wouldnt be in for an hour or two.. but we were working on getting him as fast as possible back bla bla bla... when the real reason was that we just had installed a spam-filter that used wayyyy to much resources so the entire thing crashed... (this might not be so funny.. but when the call costs over 2£ per minute, and ppl demand an explanation... you get tired of saying the same thing 200 times)

 

[Tilda]

Tilda, seriously, think about this. Flipping burgers in McDonalds isn't as bad as it sounds. Swallow pride and just do theat first, learn how to loose and gain your humility (one by applying and working, the second by quiting) before trying the call centre route. Trust me, it's not worth it for a summer job, the metntal agro and the almost constant stress from taking peoples crap isn't worth the minimum wage.

Ive worked at Mcdonalds before and it wasnt at all great. The worst was the air-borne grease and the smell. You could run a car on what I wiped off my face after a shift there (I'm not a very greasy person tbh) and it took 2 days of showers to get rid of the smell Yes (imho) McDonals is as bad as it sounds.
I worked hard there and quit because I had exams, but now with uni approaching I need cash. I'd rather have a job where I can sit down and get shouted at, that one where i'm on my feet all day, in an atmosphere with an 80% airborne greese saturation.

Tbh, i'd rather have to deal with mental and vocal aggro than work for Mcdonalds again.

Tilda

 

[TeaSpoon]

I'm a lifeguard.

Nothing more fun that a pissed off dad coming upto you mistaking you for somebody else and telling you "You almost just let my daughter DIE!"

 

[Addlcove]

too which you reply

"oh I´m sorry, next time I´ll do a proper job of it"

 

[tris-]

Oh, and from working in real technical support, when people are rude, ask them if they'd speak to their mothers that way.
If they say yes, ask if you can have her address, and ask if you can record the conversation and send it to her. That shuts them up very very fast.

i duid use to work in tech sup in a face 2 face environment. i got em to shut up by saying "do you want me to do the job or would you like to take over".

btw im not sayin the job is shit . u get calls where it sounds like the lady is having orgasms cos you just helped her. thats good knowing you helped. then the calls where the customer is goin to sue you and kill you. thats good cos its funny as fuck.

 

[[SS]Gamblor]

i've worked in the face2face as well for the internal IT dept for Gateway.
It was the best job i've ever had, yes you had some gits to deal with, but on the whole it was great fun.

Plus the sweedish market was always nice to go down to and jsut look at the pweety womens =)

the german side on the other hand was very scary

 

[Moo]

how about instead of 'we dont support that' you replied with 'we dont support that, but if you go to www.somesite.com or phoned 0800 welovemicrosoft you will find people who can help you...'


if you tell people who've been waiting 1 hour on the phone that you basicly aint even gonna try to help and its not your problem then ofc they're gonna be fucked off.

 

[Moo]

what generally used to piss me off about phoning up BT was like someone said earlier, you having to fucking explain to them whats happening, and getting passed on to someone more technical then again someone even more technical after which uve explained ur damn story like 10 times to 10 diff people after a 1h phonecall to a national rate number.

Classic one was trying to explain to 6 different people in a row what Packet Loss actually was. (when i was getting 90% packet loss to anything outside bt's own sites.

 

[tris-]

how about instead of 'we dont support that' you replied with 'we dont support that, but if you go to www.somesite.com or phoned 0800 welovemicrosoft you will find people who can help you...'


if you tell people who've been waiting 1 hour on the phone that you basicly aint even gonna try to help and its not your problem then ofc they're gonna be fucked off.

i never said i didnt try to help. when we cant support something and its not busy we help. if itsa busy we RTV or give them a number/website to check on.

had a corker tonight "i dont have a windows 98 disk, and i cant afford win xp its your fault i demand you cancel the contract!"

what generally used to piss me off about phoning up BT was like someone said earlier, you having to fucking explain to them whats happening, and getting passed on to someone more technical then again someone even more technical after which uve explained ur damn story like 10 times to 10 diff people after a 1h phonecall to a national rate number.

nothing like that in wanadoo (or at least our centre). we dont pass people on as we have 2nd level peeps walking around who will answer in an instant. and you can only goto 3 depts, tech/reg/general CS