Call Centre Stereotypes

Good news everyone! You have all been drafted to work to death in a call centre, 24 hours a day 7 days a week phoning up people in the evenings when they have just settled down for a nice roast dinner with the family and informing them of the great phone they have won/been selected to try/been offered on a great new contract just for them and not let them off the phone until they have paid a vast sum of money for the privilege of getting rid of you.

Or, you are an Indian person in a small dark room desperately trying to get the caller who has been put through to you to follow step 2 on your script. You can't understand them, they can't understand you, and step 2 makes no sense to either of you.

Those are the stereotypes of the call centre. And now I am one of them, having just gotten a new job working in the call centre of the lovely people at www.just-eat.co.uk as a Customer Care Agent. Basically this involves dealing with customer orders that have gone wrong in some manner, either from their own mistake or the restaurants usually, as well as dealing with restaurant queries and any support they need. I'm really happy that this is a customer care job and unusually while there are procedures to work to of course, I don't have to work off of a script, which frankly is a godsend. So already they have broken several of the stereotypes of the call centre, along with that it really does seem a nice relaxed place to work with good people and managers to work with (not that I'm saying managers are not people mind you...but you never know..).

The main problem with the call centre stereotype is the feeling that the person on the other end of the phone is simply an extension of the automated process you had to get through to speak to them in the first place. Now you have finally gotten past the several extra telephone numbers worth of answers you had to input to reach the right department (and then, of course, be told that no, you haven't reached the right department after all and have to sit on hold for another 10 minutes while they transfer you to sales or somewhere you equally don't want to go) and are speaking with a human, you don't consider them human. They are just a voice on the other end of the line which won't listen to what you are trying to say.

I've just started in my call centre and as I said, it seems pretty nice. I've yet to get any really abusive customers that I have had to deal with but I expect that will come with time. On a lighter note, I'll leave you with a epic independent short film that was released about call centres, it is simply brilliant an I advise you to watch all of it.