CSR’s say the dumbest things

Kids, out of their innocence, says the darnest things. CSR’s (customer service representative), out of the unknown reason’s and things they do in the workplace, say the dumbest things. Let’s face it; no one is perfect at work. We all stumble on things we do and say and job-related bloopers can be funny.

Blooper #1: “The other right click”

We serve diverse personalities everyday, diverse IQ’s as well. There are those who are really intelligent that you would think they can memorize the value of PI, or they can give you 100 proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. Others are average, and how do we deal with the group I didn’t mention? Go down to their level. The [computer] mouse, probably the only computer device that we know how to use even without looking at it, is one of the friendliest invention the computer world has ever known. It lets us tour the world on our desktops and laptops. And the reason for its success is its simplicity. I mean, look at it, the most modern of it has 3 parts, a rollerball on the middle, and a clickable area on the sides. And please don’t tell me you can’t tell where the left and the right clickable area are. The computer gurus give them sensible names as well, left click and right click. So when we say “please right click on the icon that has My Computer label”, we expect that you will get the familiar little submenu window that has “properties” on the bottom. But what will you do if the customer tells you, “I don’t see properties here, I see Icons with letters C, D etc…” are you thinking what I’m thinking? So CSR’s innovate, and this is the reason why we say “Ma’am/Sir, please do the other right click” and if you were in our shoes, I bet you do the same.

Blooper #2: “Can you repeat that again”

This familiar hybrid of the phrases “can you repeat that information please” and “can you say that again” is what you get if you are multitasking. And CSR’s always multitask. We type and talk. If you don’t multitask, good luck to you stats. But you can’t serve 2 masters at the same time, and you can’t fish on 2 lakes at the same time. My point is, multitasking is possible with the tradeoff, either you messed up with the talking or you messed up with the typing. If you do the latter, then you just did a call center crime, and that’s incorrectly gathering customer information. You don’t want to substitute the first letter “F” for the first letter of the word “LUCK” or you will get messed up. So what’s not okay in English classrooms is considerable in the cubicles of a call center. Just don’t let the communication coaches catch you.

Blooper #3: “The My Computer”

I did a little research online on this to remind us of the basic grammar. Let me switch the topic to the programming world first. Everything you see on your desktop like icons, date, wallpapers, taskbar etc. are known to programmers as “objects”. To relate this to the English language, their names can be referred as nouns. If I’m correct nouns are names of objects, so it just makes a little sense. The word “my” as defined in Wikipedia is one of the 7 possessive adjectives (You could tell I did a research). It modifies a noun by attributing possession to someone or something. While the word “The” (Article in English grammar) is combined with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Seems like there are multiple noun modifiers involved here. And grammatically speaking if you take “My Computer” as 1 noun, then The My Computer can be accepted grammatically. On my online research, I found out that instead of saying “Please click on the my computer icon” you can make it grammatically correct by saying “Please click on the icon that is labeled My Computer”. What do I care about this grammar thing, as what I said, in the call center cubicles, as long as the communication coaches are not listening, everything is permitted. And there is 1 stat that you need to take care first, that’s AHT or average handling time. This is the time it takes for you to dwell on that call from start to finish, and you should keep this as low as possible without sacrificing the quality of service you are giving. It all boils down to innovation, and CSR’s are the best on it. Think of the time you spent speaking the words grammatically correct compared to the generally accepted phrase that takes care of your stats.

Blooper #4 “Thank you for calling”

The ever famous spiel “Thank you for calling…” You are not speaking to a customer service representative if you don’t hear this phrase either on the opening or closing part of the conversation. So how can we be wrong with this spiel? We can never be wrong except when we are the ones calling. Yes, CSR’s do the calling as well, it is called outbound. But even inbound CSR’s calls customer sometimes. If the customer was suddenly disconnected and it’s really a life and death situation for their company, you really have to call him/her back. And then the inevitable, forgetting that you are calling him back. So at the end, you close it with “Thank you for calling, have a nice day”. In the end there was no harm done to you and to your customer. And what’s wrong with being polite?

life’s puzzles

Have you tried solving the Rubik’s cube? Lately in cebu more and more people have been hooked on this square puzzle. I myself tried putting my hands on it, and believe me, I did not give up, not until all colors line up to where they’re supposed to line up. Its really impossible to ressolve this puzzle if your a begginer, so just like anybody else, I went online, search the web and luckily i found a website that has visuals for ressolving the cube. Sounds like cheating? It’s up to you.

My main point is not the Rubik’s cube, it’s about life’s crazy puzzles. And just like the cube we can draw a few similarities to our own life.

#1 Its very easy to mess up an arranged Rubik’s as well as its very easy to mess up our life.

I bet you will agree. With just a few turns with the Rubik’s, the formerly arranged box is messed up, and you will need not less than 10 steps to arranged it back. We are not that careless in dealing with our life however, but if you are really thinking of messing it up, I need not suggest what you need to do. And when everything is in a mess, it would take you years to make up for it. Our life may not be even as lucky as the Rubik’s because the former can be arranged back perfectly as before, but our life, once messed up, will never be back to what it’s supposed to be.

#2 In life’s challenges, believe me, the best solution has already been done before.

When you stumble on a problem,  and you think that your problem cannot be solved, and if your a bit religious, go open the bible to Solomon’s book of ecclesiastes, and you would read something like this “what is new under the sun?” more or less like that. And he was correct right? nothing is really new, and everything has been done before. Even the solutions to life’s trials. We always hear people on the radio offering advices, people writing on the local paper giving advices to thier readers. The point is that, these people already have experiences on the subject matter, if they don’t, maybe thier friends already had. So relax, if you stumble to a difficult situation, just think that you are a begginer of the Rubik’s cube, go online and get the cheat sheets, and everything will be fine.

#3 Frustration leads to giving up.

When my co-workers saw me trying to ressolve the Rubik’s, I heard almost the same comment from them, “Gosh, I did try that, but I got frustrated and dumped it”. A problem always have a solution, the only thing that stops us from arriving to the solution is “FRUSTRATION”. In my struggles, I often took comfort from the lyrics of a christian song by Chris Christian, It says “When it seems you really want to be is someone you never become, just look how far youve come.”

So do not be afraid of the Rubik’s because if you do, you are also afraid of your life’s own puzzles.

4 call center hypes

Intro–

I admit that i’m new with blogging, but I have been reading blogs for quite some time. To be a good blogger, you must be a subject matter expert. How can your reader believe you if you are not. So I asked myself, “what subject matter do I have expertise with?”. I have always been half-cooked in everything, a frustrated guitarist, a trying hard web programmer etc. I have not been an expert in any field except one, my job, and that’s being a call center agent.

hype #1: “call center job is a no brainer job”

I admit, i laughed at the idea of being a call center agent after I passed the ECE board exam in 2005. Its just not worth it. After 9 years of schooling, 3 years in a computer technician course, and 5 years in an engineering course, and 1 more year taking the review, my mindset is really at landing a luxurious engineering job. That’s true until you wake up to reality, the reality that there are tens of thousands of engineers dreaming of the same job, and there are only a couple of good companies offering such positions. As soon as reality sinks in to me, I found myself applying as a call center agent. I can imagine your surprise. Hype #1 is both true and false, call center industry is very diversed. And if your an applicant, you dont really have the luxury of choosing into which type of account would you be assigned. Call centers caters almost all types of businessess from airline companies, credit card companies, computer manufacturers, ISP’s, communication carriers, etc. You name it, and there’s a call center for it. There are accounts which are really very easy to handle like directory services. There are also accounts which requires high technical skills.

hype #2 “sky is the limit for shopping, partying, etc..”

Yes, call center job is a high paying job, or at least its above the government mandated minimum wage. But just like any other job, its never unlimited spending. In fact 1 senior manager from my account resigned due to sky-rocketing debts. Dont get me wrong, it was his attitude that worries the company and not his debts. There’s this call center lifestyle called “extravagance” that non call center workers frequently notices. But not all of us are extravagant, others are thrifty as well.

hype #3 “call center job is not a long term job”

True and false. Again this depends on the company that a call center is employed. Luckily for my company, if you get regularized, then you will have an assurance. If you do good by not breaking simple rules, and be effecient, then you have a good chance of being promoted. There are even companies, like ours, that provide early retirement plans. If you stay for a good number of years, then you can recieve a lump sum after you retire. Its just the stress, the lifestyle, and the schedule that prevents the agent from staying longer in the company. But if your tough, then 10 years is not impossible.

hype #4 “This industry is already saturated”

Absolutely false. Atrition in the call center industry is very high, you might have heard that call centers are always hiring, yes that’s true. In fact in every job fair that you can find, call centers are always there. The true story is that call centers are still booming and continues to grow. In the company that im employed with, they are even short of manpower.

I hope i got your interest in this post

-slitherine-

INSTANT MONEY, can you believe this SPAM?

Note: This is a SPAM

MICROSOFT AWARD TEAM
Microsoft Corporation
Thames Valley Park,Reading Berkshire RG6 1WG.
United Kingdom.

Ref: BTD/968/08
Batch: 409978E

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You are advice to keep your Reference Number and your Batch Number out of
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=============================================

I copy and pasted this SPAM letter from this link:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.mail.misc&tid=13dc2e62-816d-4f21-8470-35c3198cedbc&cat=en_US_a9ea77e6-4369-4a29-a6b1-0074d8d085f8&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=&p=1

Instant money huh? Imagine getting $1M without doing anything, without even investing a single cent. Yet as absurd as this message is, im still amazed why so many people are fooled by it. In fact, my very first call today is about this SPAM. The caller told me he recieved this email and knew that it was a spam. If he knew that this message was a spam, then he shouldnt have bothered to call customer service and verified if it was indeed a spam or not. As usual, I pulled out familiar scripts thanking the customer for the information and that I myself already created incident report about the issue, which i really did about 4-5 months ago when this chain email started to create a sensation. But can they really stop it? can they really trace the email and its capture the culprits? If so, then somebody should have been penalized already right?