Call Center Woe

Hi everyone and welcome to take a number. Today my topic is call center woe. So have any of you out there ever worked at a call center or called into one? If you have done either im sure you can identify with the woe part. Before I go further I want to mention a comic strip called user friendly. It is a comic strip that has quite a bit of call center truth too it. Heres the web site.  www.userfriendly.org If that link does not take you there I will add another one on the links portion of my blog. One great line from one of the strips is "There are no stupid questions, just stupid people." I am sure anyone who has worked at a call center can identify with this. I worked at a call center for a few months however I am sworn to secrecy I cannot tell you the company I worked for. (Even though they would give us stuff with the company name on it) So they probably don't take it to seriously as long as you don't give away their secrets or anything. If you typed in computer or printer in google I am sure the company I worked for has it's name right up there. Also it was outsourced the company I teched for was ____ but I got my check from another _____.  So anyways if you have never worked at a call center but called into one you probably had an experience like this. You called in because something wasent working or a product tasted bad or you found a finger in your pop.The first thing you heard was thank you for calling ___ please state the name of the product you are calling about. If it is a pc please state the product the product number and such. Then you wait to go to the right department so here it comes the wonderfull wait music. Then the wait music switches over but onto more wait music because now your in the call cue. Sometimes your call gets answered right away sometimes you may have to wait for 20mins or so. And then you get onto the actual call the issue. So sometimes depending on the issue you could be on the phone for 5 mins or 5 hours. (My longest call was about 3 1/2 hours) Usually the issue is fixed if it is a pc or printer. But what really sucks about calling into a call center is if your product is a pc or printer and it's just broke. Sorry there is no hope at all kinda broke. Because that adds on about 20 mins to 45 mins of extra calling time. (especially if you suck at making decisions) For service and such. Anyways that is the general feel of calling into a call center. Now on the other end you have the agent who sometimes has had barley enough trainging taking these calls on a product such as a pc. Sometimes they take call after call after call with no break in between. They tech an insane amount of issues and their tools are always going down. If they are understaffed they see that there is over 20 calls waiting and they are ready to pull their hair our not over that stuff but over the fact that a customer is telling them that there is no serial number on this piece of crap. "why don't you make the serial number larger they ask?" "ummm right" you think "because I make that product. " Then if they are misrouted you go through the call system and hear the same crap they must about please have this and this ready and you know what they never do. So on both sides it is very frustrating but of course the customer demands to always be right. Now don't even get me started on networking! Anyways there are good things about call centers if they are run properly. Your own desk sometimes your own cubicle. A computer right there so you can google to your hearts desire and sometimes there is an hour in between calls so nap time! So the call center world is definetly an interesting one but at times very frustrating for both the agent and the customer. Remember when your calling into a call center that the person you are talking to hasent created the product or the software you are calling in and complaining about and be nice so they are nice back.