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About six years ago I worked for BT making outbound calls trying to sell call minder, second lines, ADSL etc. It was a pretty awful job, low pay but with big bonuses for if you met sales targets. I was completely rubbish, failed to meet any target set for me. Eventually (whilst I was on holiday) my boss had me moved to another team so i didnt fuck up his stats. I was moved to a dept where we mainly took inbound calls from people changing back to BT, occasionally we would make some outbound calls to ex customers trying to pursuade them back with temping offers like Friends and family. Not quite as shit, but still shit.
I did it for about 2 years, mainly because of the people i worked with (usual excuses for staying in a rubbish job), when we worked Sundays we used to drink gin and tonic and never answer the phone, ahhh great days. Normally in a call centre you have to wear a headset, so if a call comes through thier voice just appears in your ear, we complained that the head sets were giving us ear infections, so when a call came through the phone would ring (unless you turned the ringer off) and you would pick up the hand set. Usually when it would ring you would hit divert, and the call would bounce to whoever was sat next to you, who usually was doning the same thing as you, so would pass the call on again.
Most of the 600 odd people who worked in the call centre were graduates (usually with useless degree's , i have an Illustration BA, my mate had one in Philosophy and another has one in oceanography) BT has a real problem retaining staff as most of the people there were doing it whilst looking for a proper job, so i have some sympathy for the poor shmucks who call me when i'm "dropping the kids off at the pool" and i have to rush to the phone getting skid mark on my boxers. I've worked in a few different call centres since then, and there all shit, but are easy jobs for the money, and you can usually take the piss quite a bit.
I didnt do this, but when you get someone give you grief on the phone, a lot of people would do stuff like order them a second phone line, add stuff to their bill, send an engineer to their house, remember its not worth getting pissy with these people.
But, what really pisses me off is when you answer the phone and say hello, no answer, Hello ?(again) wait a bit, "hello this is chris calling from........" what this usually means is that he is having a conversation with the person sat next to him in the call centre and has the phone on mute whilst he finishes the conversation. Annoying, and it confuses my Gran, although most thing do that.
The only problem with the telephone preference service is that it doesnt cover call centres abroad, with call centres (or contact centres as they like to call themselves) in the UK there not allowed to make outbound calls before 09:00 or after 19:00, or on sundays, but this doesnt apply to the overseas ones. |
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but for charity I hasten to add, and not cold. Walking off doesn't work, they'll call you back, a swift 'No' works wonders, or just say you're on the TPS and they'll piss off- sales companies get charged a grand for phoning tps people.