Soon after I finished reading One night @ Call center by Chetan Bhagat, I decided to blog on my call center life..As a former call center employee, I feel not every one will have a happy ending like Shyam, Vroom, Isha or Priyanka.. Call center life is more painful than that..But believe me, it isn’t a bad job as many people think. It is a job that helped me climb one step ahead in my life…
I would love to share with you an SMS I got years back when I was a call center agent. This pepped me to work hard, earn more incentives and enjoy life. It goes this way….
Midnight Coffees, Birthday Bumps..
Accentuated English, Dashing clothes..
Irate Customers, F.M in cabs..
So much Money, so little time..
Late night parties, Mugs of BEER..
Crush on T.Ls……..
Fight for appraisals………
Die-hard friendship, tears for love..
nothing missing, just everything.
People call it CALL CENTERS.
We call it LIFE!!!!!!
This went on to become a hoarding on one of our floors which usually had pictures of the agents who took the best call, agent who earned the highest incentive etc.
I also remember seeing a drop of tear in an agent’s eyes on his last working day in the company. When someone asked him the reason for the mellow dramatic act, he said the hoarding made him miss the time he spent with us. Bloody lier I said, the reason is he got kicked badly.. Yes, our rituals not only included giving bumps on one’s birthday but also on his last working day with us. Due to high attrition rates, we often had chances to perform this ritual. Recently, I heard this ritual is being performed on one more occasion as well. The person who struck s the first sale is also kicked.. Though we were a part of an inbound process, we were forced to sell products to earn incentives…
After attending a couple of call center interviews, I understood what the interviewers needed. The rule- just be dishonest with your replies, this will help you reach their expectations. So, I just answered them dishonestly and finally managed to bag a job in a call center. That’s the thumb rule here, if you are honest, the feedback you get is “you have an attitude problem”.. and Questions like, Where do you see yourself 2 years from now pisses me off.. grow up man, how will I know what will happen to me 2 years from now.
My friends were astonished when my driver came in a Toyota Qualis to pick me at 9pm. I felt honoured, a car waiting at your door step to pick a 20 year old boy.. My neighbours were one of those who refuse to grow up. For them call center agents only sell credit cards and disturb you at work with phone calls.
Cab driver’s have a uniform policy. They will give you two miss calls. The first one is 15 mins before reaching the pick up point, if you give them a chance for the second one, then you are most likely to be in trouble. Because, the second one will come 5 mins after he reaches your place. This means you are un-professional and made him wait. Consequences of this are he will drive rashly to give you a feel that “he is getting late because of you”. Sometimes he might not play any music saying that the player has some issues..This usually happens if you are the first pick in your cab.
The most happening time in your call center life is during the training period. You will under go several trainings that include voice and accent, pronunciation etc.. Rolling your R’s, pronouncing consonants, maintaining AHT’s (average handling time – time you take to handle a call), side jacking your senior’s calls, role plays and finally an assessment which will be a gate pass to hit the floor and put on those head sets..
Things will be tough initially as no work is a cake walk, unless you get a hold of the formula called “how to pataav” the customers and make them listen to you. Its all there – apologizing for no reasons, chumma an argument with customers, flashing your middle finger if you are angry at the customer and even shouting at him with the phones muted……. An irate customer can screw your day and sometimes you might get an appreciation by a customer for the good work done by you.. And the funniest part is sometimes you never know if they are really appreciating you or in sarcasm.. A friend of mine was talking to a person from the UK who had called to get a fix for his laptop.. After the conversation my friend was in a very happy mood and was doing a bit of jiggling and all.. When we asked the reason for his joy, he said the customer told him that he has an Irish accent!! This joy was short lived.. A quality analyst walking around heard this discussion and disappointed our poor dude..She said it was a sarcastic comment and he has to work hard on his accent… As a tech support we have had days which were full of disappointments and the happiest days are during Christmas, Thanks giving day and Glitch day.. Christmas and Thanksgiving will have lots of give aways and goodies for the agents… Though Glitch day is not a festival but its one of my favorite’s.. This day will come un-expectedly when there are issues like internal applications not working, VOIP network down, under sea cable cut (the last two are the best of all the glitches, this will bring the phones down)…
I have to admit that the money was good, you get exposed to western lifestyle but it might take your health a ride also because of sleepless nights and insomnia.. For me it offered a lot more in return than it took from me. I could earn my bread at a very young age. More importantly for youngsters it teaches you professionalism, it teaches you how to be patient and it exposes you to a an environment which is very systematic and structured..
Over the years we have seen call center operations coming to India. An American on the phone across oceans to a “foreigner” named Raj/Rahul/Manju/Priya/Amit, whose job it is to provide service while he represents a multi-national corporation.. This is indeed a respectable job..
What say….
