Phone Rage

[Sonea Fifer]

Anyone else watching this on channel four?

It's all about call centres and the thankless task the agents employed there have. It's also featuring foreign call centres which if anyone knows me knows this is a personal pet hate of mine !

I honestly cant believe they are training up foreign call centre staff by watching dvd's of The Full monty

Am wondering whats everyone else's opinion of this?

 

[Sonea Fifer]

20 second response time? Wish Ocuk could get the same

I didn't start this thread to point out or badmouth any particular company least of all OCUK, my dealings with them so far have been fantastic but thats by the by.

My point was what a farce these companies are - they're taking South African call centre operatives out to buy them new office clothes so they feel good which will hopefully present itself in said operators voice when they're talking to the customer

Mean while back in blighty the team leader is discussing each individuals preformance in front of their entire team at work "your down two overdrafts, your up one loan" etc etc - now thats motovational isn't it !

 

[Sonea Fifer]

They gave them a 1000 rand voucher to get some new clothes.

1,000.00 RAND

=

61.6306 GBP

Are they just being incredibly stingy or does 1000 rand buy them a full suit etc?

You have to bear in mind the cost of living is so much cheaper out there - but then so is the cost of labour. Hence companies outsourcing to foreign call centres - it's cheap slave labour imo !

You pay peanuts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

[Sonea Fifer]

The First Direct team leader just seemed to me to be a yorkshire version of Bill Lumbergh (for anyone whose seen Office Space). Sleazy and manipulative - the kind of man who will walk all over his team to increase his own personal stock. What's more, most of his team seemed to know this already - so not as clever as he thinks he is either.

From my experience so far i'd say thats a pretty good estimate of your average call centre team leader !

The only good guy on the programme was the guy in charge of the Powergen call centre. He's exactly right when he said that customer service doesn't need to be the way it is, but the people who set it up just go for cheap and easy rather than thinking about how best to provide a service for our customers. The Essex call centre actually seemed to work quite well - I seriously might switch to Powergen.

He did come across as the good guy in this particular programme and am sure you'd be quite right in your assumption of what you've seen, whether he can make a difference or not with his company remains to be seen !

 

[Sonea Fifer]

^ MrLoL. there were a couple of centrica employee's watching it at my bit saying the same as you.

Are they still base in Granton?

Am I evil if I actually act interested on the phone for 15 minutes and drag the call out to make people think they have a sale then randomly hang up?

Hell no - thats half the fun

To be fair thats probably half the problem as well - you'll probably find the majority of callcentre employees in this country are only doing it as a stop gap or for beer money while at uni/college, the job itself is still seen to be demeaning by many.

Until that attitude is changed and people start taking the job as a serious occupation then its not going to get any better imo

 

[Sonea Fifer]

Looking over to yer mud hut aye!

Oi Oi - I've got a nice house here in Fife I'll have you know

 

[Sonea Fifer]

cebol and sap are what they kept chirping on about, system wise.

Think its spelt/pronounced Siebel - but they're right it's an absolute nightmare to work with !

british gas used to subcontract all sorts out. I was working for one of these outsourced call centres in leicester when working for them. We were trained on the british gas system ( oh so briefly, only a couple of days) and then put on the phones for whatever task they needed us to do.

A couple of days training - thats all they gave you before allowing you to speak to customers?

Our company just took a load of the centrica trainers on as trainers for our new MOD contract. And they were in agreement as to how horrid the system was.

That says a lot for the training these agents receive when the trainers themselves are in agreement at how poor their system is - is this being reviewed / updated?
Probably not as its much easier and cheaper to simply outsource to foreign lands where you can train monkeys to read off a script and they'll be grateful for the job

 

[Sonea Fifer]

I wouldn't say your above post was an exageration - though am assuming your going back a few years if there's no minimum wage laws in force?

It's all a bit extreme to say the least - putting your hand up to go to the toilet? Errrrr we're all adults here !

I would hope there's no way in this day and age any company in Britain would get away with expecting staff to sit around waiting and not get paid for it - as for holidays, they're your entitlement ! There's still a lot to be said for having a union on your side though granted if your employed by an agency you have to be more careful that your not being walked over.

Am sure there's also a good reason the phrase "21st century sweatshop" was hung on the door of callcentres in general

 

[Sonea Fifer]

see above, that very much still happens. You also have to put your hand up for anything else you might want. Your not allowed to leave your desk unless its your allocated break time. And when you do, your timed to the second. If you're given a 10 minute coffee break, if your not back at your desk within 10minutes and 30 seconds you get a late notice.

Am I the only one that thinks thats ****** up in this day and age?