Training

The first 6 weeks were training for the account I would be taking calls for. Now this call center actually handled 6 different accounts. None of these accounts were related to each other, they were all different companies that the company I worked for was handling the customer support or service calls for.

The training included classroom time and on the phones training. The classroom training was suppose to cover everything you might need to know about the account to resolve any issue the customer of the company we were taking calls for might have. Now they claimed that they could train anyone to take these calls and did try to do just that. The other people in the class with me included a wide range of age, from retires looking for another job to college students who would be part time during the school year. And we also had just about every race as well. Not to mention sexual orientation.

At the end of the training we took a test and no matter what the score was that you got, everyone passed and the actual results were destroyed.

Then you spent a week on the phones under supervision with consultants right there to assist with the questions you might have from taking calls. Since we broke often to meet and discus the calls we had taken and how we handled them, we actually only probably took three or four calls a day in this part of our training. So actually we only took maybe 30 calls the whole week. And then the next week we were on our own. We were expected to take calls and resolve the customers issue as if we had been there for years. Not to mention when a customer calls in we are suppose to convince the customer we actually work for the company that they need the assistance for. Not a third party company employee.

Now as a call center employee your work quality is measured by your metrics. These determine your ranking and your pay raises. In my next post I will tell you about those and they measure.