Space_Dandy
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2014
Fresh out of college with a degree in a completely unmarketable major, I was looking for a job. Someone suggested I work at this one call center, which used to have a different name but has since been bought out and renamed Concentrix. How bad could it be? After all, this was just a stop gap while I continued looking for something in my career field of choice. Training is 6 weeks long? I might even find something before training anyway, what do I have to lose?
This place does (and still does to this day) contracted customer service for other major companies. If you've called customer service relating to cell phones, tv, internet, there's a chance you've talked to this place or another similar third party. Some locations do a variety of companies like Sam's Club, Starbucks, Home Depot, United Healthcare, Mercedes Benz, and others. The location I worked at primarily, and eventually exclusively, did customer service for a major cell phone carrier.
Not just any customer service actually, the program I was assigned to was retention. It was reverse sales. Our job was to convince customers who were apparently seeking to cancel, to stay. Our base pay was pitifully low, only a little above minimum wage. However, we were given several different avenues for 'performance based incentives.' Somehow 90% of the time your paycheck was lower than expected because they'd scrutinize the hell out of your calls. You'd get a report (that you didn't have time to read) of all of your calls that qualified for commission, but if you made one mistake in your notes or didn't jump through the right hoops in the system they'd take them from you. It resulted in a very unreliable paycheck and the feeling of being robbed.
A lot of the performance metrics were tied to how many lines of service we would 'save' during the call, but it would eventually include such goals as selling certain products (yep selling a customer products when they don't even want to stay), survey scores (actually pushing metrics for customer surveys when they already want to cancel), quality assurance (this actually meant hitting certain talking points, like giving empathy or making certain mandatory statements), and of course average handle time because accomplishing all of the above wasn't hard enough so they added a time limit.
If that sounds stressful and impossible that's because it was. There were two saving graces of this that made it, almost somewhat possible, sometimes. The first is that the majority of customers didn't really want to cancel, they were transferred from regular customer service because they were getting irate about something, or they were just trying to manipulate us into giving perks. We were given a changing and rotating selection of certain credits and promotions we could use to help convince people to stay. They knew that and took full advantage of it. The other saving grace was the ability to game the system to manipulate our stats. I won't go into details but there were certain things you could do in the system to cut corners to either save time, or prevent a survey from going out, etc. I found most of the 'superstar' top performers were habitual system gamers.
Taking those calls for me was incredibly stressful. At first I was motivated to overcome that, I felt like if I became skilled and experienced then I could emulate the confident indifference some of the veterans had when taking their calls. But it never really came and I think that's just because I'm an extremely unconfident, non-confrontational kind of person.
We'd wear headsets and had to listen for a tone that meant a call came in. This was so stressful to me, that 'beeep' is ingrained in my memory. My heart would race and I would sweat, it was like getting stage fright. "Oh I'm on! What's my line? I can't remember!" I heard playbacks of some of my calls during coaching sessions with my manager, and I sounded like absolute shit. I sounded like a kid who didn't know what they were doing and had zero confidence, because that's exactly what I was. Many customers saw me that way too and just asked for a manager when I began fumbling. I think they only kept me because they REALLY needed people back then and they allowed some pretty awful people to work there.
My actual stats weren't that bad though, there's no metric for sounding like you're going to pass out. Escalating to a supervisor wasn't really tracked, it just kind of aborted the call, so that probably indirectly helped my metrics. Somehow I managed to actually achieve some moderate success. One of my biggest wins was 'saving' a 19 line corporate account, that gave me a little bump and some recognition from management. Promotions were coming around right after that happened, and well I applied, and somehow they hired me. They hired a ton of people to be 'managers' at that time since we were going through rapid expansion and I think I slipped in.
So yay, I became a 'manager'! Except not really. Customers escalated (asked for a supervisor/manager) so often that the actual managers would have time for no actual managing if they took those calls, and still wouldn't handle a fraction of the escalation calls even if that's all they did. We outnumbered the real managers by quite a large margin and the calls seemed to never stop. We were given a little more latitude to bend the rules, I was given a 'manager override' that I could use to bypass certain restrictions. It felt good, it felt like I earned something. But after a while it felt like I took a demotion, despite the small pay increase and the new title. This is because of the calls we had to take.
Remember all of those metrics we were subjected to as regular agents? Well after a while the 'customer' that we provided service to realized call flow wasn't being followed for these escalations and decided we needed to have those same metrics. So now being escalated meant little difference. We had to hit the same talking points as the rep before us and do pretty much the same things. I guess they just hoped that we were experienced enough to overcome these obstacles.
The escalations could be as easy as calming someone down who was upset, as hard as untangling an account that had been fucked up by other departments and shady salesmen, or as unreasonable as trying to tell some greedy asshole 'no' to their unreasonable demands. I felt like most callers were just trying to abuse our goodwill by getting promotions out of us. They knew if they threatened to cancel and asked for a manager, they could probably call our bluff and get special deals out of us. And it was often true, unfortunately. But that pissed me off intensely. I felt so taken advantage of when I was made to give in to that obvious manipulation.
I became that asshole you talk to on the phone and say, "Why is he in customer service if he's just going to be a dick on the phone?" That was me. I became intensely defensive when customers gave me a hard time or asked for special treatment. Anyone expecting credits or a new phone from me would get none of it. I became a brick wall and dug my heels in. I took no pleasure in it really, I didn't like who I had became, but I couldn't help my inner feelings from exploding outward. I'd regret the way I talked to some people, I knew I bit some people's heads off that didn't really deserve it.
If you're wondering how I didn't get fired, well at that time the 'supervisors' weren't monitored for quality that closely. They'd grab like 2-3 of our calls per month out of over 100. And I knew enough of the inner workings to know the calls they'd pick. For example they wouldn't listen to a 45 minute call, they wanted like 10-15 minutes. So if I fucked up and said something on the phone that would get me fired, I'd find a way to drag the call out as long as possible. It wasn't foolproof but I got lucky and they never really said anything to me.
I grew bitter over time. And depressed. I couldn't help but take that stress home with me, it ate me up inside and overwhelmed me. When I got home I didn't want to do shit. The slightest thing irritated me. I became extremely possessive of my free time, not wanting to go out of my way or do anything unpleasant because I felt so drained that I felt like I needed all the R&R I could get. I started treating my girlfriend like shit and our relationship spiraled downward. We got into real fights, we had never screamed at each other before, and I have to take most of the blame for that. We did get through it and we are married today now many years removed, but those will always be remembered as some of our darkest times.
I applied to other jobs but got nothing back, as if my application went into the void of space. I found myself getting offers for customer service and sales positions, but I refused. If I were to have a change I wanted a real change, not out of the frying pan and into the oven. It seemed that was the only role that existed for me. I was trapped. I felt hopeless and almost gave up on the job search, I really felt like it wasn't worth trying after a certain point.
Looking back on this time, I'm amazed at how little I remember. I must have taken thousands of calls, and yet I could only tell you about a small handfull in any detail. I think my mind just blocked most of it out. I can even remember.. remembering more, like having these conversations with friends and telling them all kinds of stories. Now it's all blank, a huge part of my life.
One of the few calls I can vividly remember is when I talked to Jon Rubinstein, closest thing to a celebrity I ever got to talk to. I said, "Oh so you got to work with Steve Jobs' and he replied, 'for better or for worse...'
I'm gonna wrap this up because it's long enough, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on for days. I worked there for several years, and I'm not even going to go into the last 6 months of it that I spent as a trainer for new hire classes. I finally got a job that I considered better. It would turn out shit too, but I left that one about a year later and finally got an actual good job that I love and still have, nearly 5 years now. I never forget how I felt there and never take my job for granted. I thank God every day that I'm out of that place.
This place does (and still does to this day) contracted customer service for other major companies. If you've called customer service relating to cell phones, tv, internet, there's a chance you've talked to this place or another similar third party. Some locations do a variety of companies like Sam's Club, Starbucks, Home Depot, United Healthcare, Mercedes Benz, and others. The location I worked at primarily, and eventually exclusively, did customer service for a major cell phone carrier.
Not just any customer service actually, the program I was assigned to was retention. It was reverse sales. Our job was to convince customers who were apparently seeking to cancel, to stay. Our base pay was pitifully low, only a little above minimum wage. However, we were given several different avenues for 'performance based incentives.' Somehow 90% of the time your paycheck was lower than expected because they'd scrutinize the hell out of your calls. You'd get a report (that you didn't have time to read) of all of your calls that qualified for commission, but if you made one mistake in your notes or didn't jump through the right hoops in the system they'd take them from you. It resulted in a very unreliable paycheck and the feeling of being robbed.
A lot of the performance metrics were tied to how many lines of service we would 'save' during the call, but it would eventually include such goals as selling certain products (yep selling a customer products when they don't even want to stay), survey scores (actually pushing metrics for customer surveys when they already want to cancel), quality assurance (this actually meant hitting certain talking points, like giving empathy or making certain mandatory statements), and of course average handle time because accomplishing all of the above wasn't hard enough so they added a time limit.
If that sounds stressful and impossible that's because it was. There were two saving graces of this that made it, almost somewhat possible, sometimes. The first is that the majority of customers didn't really want to cancel, they were transferred from regular customer service because they were getting irate about something, or they were just trying to manipulate us into giving perks. We were given a changing and rotating selection of certain credits and promotions we could use to help convince people to stay. They knew that and took full advantage of it. The other saving grace was the ability to game the system to manipulate our stats. I won't go into details but there were certain things you could do in the system to cut corners to either save time, or prevent a survey from going out, etc. I found most of the 'superstar' top performers were habitual system gamers.
Taking those calls for me was incredibly stressful. At first I was motivated to overcome that, I felt like if I became skilled and experienced then I could emulate the confident indifference some of the veterans had when taking their calls. But it never really came and I think that's just because I'm an extremely unconfident, non-confrontational kind of person.
We'd wear headsets and had to listen for a tone that meant a call came in. This was so stressful to me, that 'beeep' is ingrained in my memory. My heart would race and I would sweat, it was like getting stage fright. "Oh I'm on! What's my line? I can't remember!" I heard playbacks of some of my calls during coaching sessions with my manager, and I sounded like absolute shit. I sounded like a kid who didn't know what they were doing and had zero confidence, because that's exactly what I was. Many customers saw me that way too and just asked for a manager when I began fumbling. I think they only kept me because they REALLY needed people back then and they allowed some pretty awful people to work there.
My actual stats weren't that bad though, there's no metric for sounding like you're going to pass out. Escalating to a supervisor wasn't really tracked, it just kind of aborted the call, so that probably indirectly helped my metrics. Somehow I managed to actually achieve some moderate success. One of my biggest wins was 'saving' a 19 line corporate account, that gave me a little bump and some recognition from management. Promotions were coming around right after that happened, and well I applied, and somehow they hired me. They hired a ton of people to be 'managers' at that time since we were going through rapid expansion and I think I slipped in.
So yay, I became a 'manager'! Except not really. Customers escalated (asked for a supervisor/manager) so often that the actual managers would have time for no actual managing if they took those calls, and still wouldn't handle a fraction of the escalation calls even if that's all they did. We outnumbered the real managers by quite a large margin and the calls seemed to never stop. We were given a little more latitude to bend the rules, I was given a 'manager override' that I could use to bypass certain restrictions. It felt good, it felt like I earned something. But after a while it felt like I took a demotion, despite the small pay increase and the new title. This is because of the calls we had to take.
Remember all of those metrics we were subjected to as regular agents? Well after a while the 'customer' that we provided service to realized call flow wasn't being followed for these escalations and decided we needed to have those same metrics. So now being escalated meant little difference. We had to hit the same talking points as the rep before us and do pretty much the same things. I guess they just hoped that we were experienced enough to overcome these obstacles.
The escalations could be as easy as calming someone down who was upset, as hard as untangling an account that had been fucked up by other departments and shady salesmen, or as unreasonable as trying to tell some greedy asshole 'no' to their unreasonable demands. I felt like most callers were just trying to abuse our goodwill by getting promotions out of us. They knew if they threatened to cancel and asked for a manager, they could probably call our bluff and get special deals out of us. And it was often true, unfortunately. But that pissed me off intensely. I felt so taken advantage of when I was made to give in to that obvious manipulation.
I became that asshole you talk to on the phone and say, "Why is he in customer service if he's just going to be a dick on the phone?" That was me. I became intensely defensive when customers gave me a hard time or asked for special treatment. Anyone expecting credits or a new phone from me would get none of it. I became a brick wall and dug my heels in. I took no pleasure in it really, I didn't like who I had became, but I couldn't help my inner feelings from exploding outward. I'd regret the way I talked to some people, I knew I bit some people's heads off that didn't really deserve it.
If you're wondering how I didn't get fired, well at that time the 'supervisors' weren't monitored for quality that closely. They'd grab like 2-3 of our calls per month out of over 100. And I knew enough of the inner workings to know the calls they'd pick. For example they wouldn't listen to a 45 minute call, they wanted like 10-15 minutes. So if I fucked up and said something on the phone that would get me fired, I'd find a way to drag the call out as long as possible. It wasn't foolproof but I got lucky and they never really said anything to me.
I grew bitter over time. And depressed. I couldn't help but take that stress home with me, it ate me up inside and overwhelmed me. When I got home I didn't want to do shit. The slightest thing irritated me. I became extremely possessive of my free time, not wanting to go out of my way or do anything unpleasant because I felt so drained that I felt like I needed all the R&R I could get. I started treating my girlfriend like shit and our relationship spiraled downward. We got into real fights, we had never screamed at each other before, and I have to take most of the blame for that. We did get through it and we are married today now many years removed, but those will always be remembered as some of our darkest times.
I applied to other jobs but got nothing back, as if my application went into the void of space. I found myself getting offers for customer service and sales positions, but I refused. If I were to have a change I wanted a real change, not out of the frying pan and into the oven. It seemed that was the only role that existed for me. I was trapped. I felt hopeless and almost gave up on the job search, I really felt like it wasn't worth trying after a certain point.
Looking back on this time, I'm amazed at how little I remember. I must have taken thousands of calls, and yet I could only tell you about a small handfull in any detail. I think my mind just blocked most of it out. I can even remember.. remembering more, like having these conversations with friends and telling them all kinds of stories. Now it's all blank, a huge part of my life.
One of the few calls I can vividly remember is when I talked to Jon Rubinstein, closest thing to a celebrity I ever got to talk to. I said, "Oh so you got to work with Steve Jobs' and he replied, 'for better or for worse...'
I'm gonna wrap this up because it's long enough, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on for days. I worked there for several years, and I'm not even going to go into the last 6 months of it that I spent as a trainer for new hire classes. I finally got a job that I considered better. It would turn out shit too, but I left that one about a year later and finally got an actual good job that I love and still have, nearly 5 years now. I never forget how I felt there and never take my job for granted. I thank God every day that I'm out of that place.
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