Thursday, February 14, 2008

Calling the shots

Being in the call center industry almost all my professional life, I know the focal point of the business. That is delighting our customers all the time.
Call center is big in our country. Reports show that US and European countries are investing their customer services in call centers here. For two major reasons, cheap labor and Filipinos adaptability in terms of shift changes and accents.
Usually, the call centers here cater to US and British clients so one must pass through rigid training to ensure that the agent would sound American or English.
So when I call international offices, it makes me think if I'm speaking with my people. I usually try to make comments in my native tongue just to check if I'm being understood and if the person on the other line would reply. Ofcourse with call handling checklist, he/she would not answer back even if he/she understood otherwise, he'll/she'll be marked X.
I work for a local telecoms call center as an e-mail correspondent. Majority of our trasactions are postpaid accounts and when the situation calls for it, we do call outs. Ofcourse before we do that, we should be equipped with the right customer profiles. More often that not, we also handle foreign clients who are living in the country. Good part is, we don't have to pretend that we are of the same nationality. Thing is though, we love to make fun of ourselves. When we know that we are about to speak with foreigners, we would tell our teammates to pray not to suffer from epistaxis. Here on our side of the planet, difficulty speaking or understanding English would cause brain hemorrhage or just a simple nosebleed which is a figure of speech obviously. Though we are confident about our good command of English, talking with foreign clients makes our hearts flutter and become diaphoretic no matter how cold the environment is. Oh well, I'm speaking for myself here. Plus the fact that you'll be heard by your teammates you can expect that you'll have your not so good 15 minutes of fame after the transaction.
So where I'm exactly pointing at?
Wait for my next installment.
I need to doze off.
Hint: it's about Paypal.
For now, I'm leaving you with a sidestitch. Just click on the image to enlarge or use a magnifying lens whichever delights you. LOL

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2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh I love the bravo/boy one! Too funny! I used to work in a call center for Home Depot and we got some stranger calls sometimes. :)

MUD said...

I worked as a trainer for a call center and loved to tell stories about the calls received by new agents. One night when they were all sitting around, someone decided to go into the master file and query any name with La attached. LaDonna, Latonia and they found in the LA area there was almost any name with La added in the data base. One student went to the floor her first night and got a caller that breathed heavy. She got up and walked out without telling anyone. That guy is probably still there breathing into that phone. MUD