Customer Service..can YOU do it?

RustyPMcG

Well-Known Member
Let's face it: Everyone's job would be easier if we never had to talk to a customer. (And I'm not just talking about UPS. I'm talking about everything.)

There are a lot of people who can do a good job in a customer service role, but few who can do it day in, day out for a whole career. Dealing with customers will burn-out your mind faster than getting in and out of a package car wrong will blow-out your knees.

Earlier I mentioned that I spent 8 years in a tech support call center, but I didn't spend all 8 years talking to customers all day long. The incentive for going after promotions in a call center isn't the extra money you can make. It's the fact that you won't have to spend the whole day talking to customers!

The only people I knew who spent more than 4 years in a job that was 100% talking to customers all day long were people who I prayed did not own a gun. They were all on the verge of snapping.

Learning to give partial answers just to get the customer to go away becomes a coping skill. Whatever product or service you're supporting, and how well you're treated can change the timeline, but eventually, if you don't get promoted to a job where you don't have to talk to customers all day, no matter what company you work for, you will learn how to get a customer off your phone.

And if you think that as PC drivers you're subjected to a lot of numbers, it is far worse in a call center. The software behind the ACD (automated call director) counts everything. If someone wanted to, they could tell you how long it takes you to dial a phone number.

And the number that all call centers live and die by is AHT: Average Handle Time. The time between when you answer a call, until you're completely finished with it. The myriad of other numbers take turns in being stars, but AHT is always important no matter what the product or service or company might be.

Toss on top of this that call center wages are not anything anyone will brag about.

Working with customers face-to-face is hard enough, but working with them from a call center is perhaps the worst job one could ever have.
 

Babagounj

Strength through joy
hey Sleeve, our panic alarm went off today. Didn't know we had one until the cops showed up, was that something you left behind ?
 
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