Varci – thanks for the first hand account. This is consistent from what I heard from other sources. I think one of the problems with the call center business is that they are using the wrong metrics to measure performance.

Sigh…

Forgot to add that one of the star performers according to management was a drinking buddy of mine in the next cubicle, who never left notes, transferred people to the wrong queues, and had no idea what he was doing. But he went through customers so fast that his team leader had to ask him to slow down his calls a little. Despite this, he was a ‘star performer’, even though he would be the first to admit he didn’t really know what was going on. :)

Soul-crushing work.

The only way to do tech support the right way is to do it in-house, and not use some idiotic metrics

I worked the phones for three months in customer service for Primus. A man’s gotta eat, I’m not proud. But I will happily report that I was abused for fixing people’s problems rather than getting them off the phone. I’d field all sorts of calls where the previous phone jockeys didn’t understand what was going on, didn’t leave notes, didn’t look up histories, didn’t escalate where appropriate, and I’d fix them. And leave notes. Those customers wouldn’t call back. And I’d get told off for helping customers instead of disposing of them.

Hell, customer call-back was such an issue that there was a manager-level guy on our floor whose whole job was studying call-queue phenomenon including call-backs.

But two things to remember are: call centres are the modern-day factory job. It’s where you work when you can’t work anywhere else. If you believe the promotional photos, you’re kidding yourself. It’s a hard, annoying job, and as a result the only people there are the ones that can’t go anywhere else. The other thing is that you were using residential, which is arse-end class. Your company has made the decision to save money by having you on the phone during incidents like this instead of having a higher class of service.

LOL Preemptive fails!

If it makes you feel better, there is also a WIN captcha somewhere in there. ;)

and you should add “teamcoltra” or “travis” to your capatcha, because “fail” didn’t make me feel too much better when i was writing that. :(

thats my favoite quote (made by me)
“All women are crazy, so date a hot one, so at least you have something to look at”
I made this quote after dating a fat chick because she had a fun personality.. and she turned out being the fucking psychopath of the year. :D

Actually, in my experience tech support tends to always be bad when it’s outsourced – whether it’s an Indian company, or domestic one, it doesn’t matter. If the tech support doesn’t have access to the company’s internal tools, access to the high level technicians, and developers then it will suck.

I read this interesting story recently (I think in 2600) – it was written by a guy who was working for a outsourcing support company. They were fielding calls for some undisclosed ISP. They noticed that some poor guy’s email was hijacked every other week because of some exploitable bug in the ISP’s sofrware. All they could do however was to change his password back, because the ISP did not give them any way to report these sort of things upstream.

The only way to do tech support the right way is to do it in-house, and not use some idiotic metrics (like time to close a ticket) to measure their performance. This way, worse comes to worse, they can actually escalate your problem to the point when you get the dude that actually wrote, designed or built the actual product on the phone. And that’s the way it should be.

In my experience, when it comes to sucky support, the Indian guys on average seem to be nicer, and more courteous. Dudes from domestic call centers tend to be as clueless but also sometimes rude.

Ricardo

Heh. I guess you need to report on the most important topic on them all. Tell me about the girls. :mrgreen:

Travis

Sigh… Sometimes I think that all women are fucking crazy. Some just hide it better than others when you first meet them. lol

Well, out of the blue she broke up with me… told me she didn’t love me (although she has recently taken that part back) and said she wanted nothing to do with me… while the night before she was talking about how bad she wanted me there and how much she loved me.. yada yada… after 2 years of this same thing.. i should be used to it.. .but i am not.. and i can’t blog it this time because she will get more pissy that i am spreading our bussniess on the internet. >.

fucking ex/current girlfriends…

lol

Girls! But how to live without them, right? :D

Not that it was needed but apologies accepted…

yeah, i pretty much feel like an ass :)
I just read a figure somewhere that its like 1/10 people are phone support… and i didn’t think as much YOU did.. but someone you KNOW did.
Still i feel ashamed i grouped you. :D Probably do alot cooler job then me… err at burger king.

Ugh, fucking ex/current girlfriends… :D
My appologies..