Journal logo

6 Things a Call Centre Worker Wishes You Knew

How Not to Hack Us Off

By Kimberly StylesPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
Like

When working in a call center, you have your good days and your bad. I'm here to give you 6 tips on how to interact with call center staff so you don't make their day a bad one.

Make sure you have your information ready.

When you call us, you know you are likely to need to go through some form of security. This is standard for most companies unless they have some form of automated security. We honestly do want to give you your information as quickly as possible and get the call sorted but when you call us and don't have your information ready, you are not only wasting your time and my time, you are also wasting the time of the people who are sitting in the queue waiting to get through.

Don’t yell at us for things that aren’t our fault.

This is something that happens to me daily. Someone else within the business asks for something or doesn't do something when they were supposed to, and we are the one that gets yelled at. Please just don't. We haven't done anything wrong and you are probably just going to put us in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Also, if you are going to yell at us, don't say "Sorry, I'm not angry at you. I'm just annoyed at the situation." Or something like that. If you aren't angry at me, don't yell at me.

Don’t ramble. Just get to the point.

When we ask how we can help, we don't need a whole backstory. If you start going on about things that aren't relevant to what you are calling about, you are wasting your breath. 99 percent of the time we have notes on our system and can see what you've called about before. Please just say to us "I want to check…" and we will be able to figure out the rest. We have had extensive training in almost all areas of what you would want to ask us about and if we don't know, we will try our very best to find out. If you are rambling on though, we can't help you efficiently and most of the time we have zoned out to read the notes which will probably take us half the time.

If you’re nice to us and talk to us, we will do more to help.

This sort of continues one of my previous points but I feel it needs to be mentioned separately. If you are nice to us, we will try harder to help you. We like talking to people who are nice to us. Honestly, if things have gone wrong and you have asked how we are or started to talk to us about what the weather is doing, we will try to help you because we will happily keep you on the phone longer. We would rather help someone who talks to use like a human being but has the hardest query than someone who starts yelling at us just for a basic update. We are there to do our jobs just like everyone else, but you will make our days ten times better if you try to make conversation with us.

If you’ve made a mistake, don’t think we can magically fix it.

When you call us and have made a mistake, we can't always fix it. We only have so much power. If you have canceled a direct debit and incurred charges, there isn't much we can do. If you have spent more money than you have, there isn't much we can do. You oversee your accounts, whether it be for a utility, a bank account or just a membership. We can't do anything if you have knowingly done these things. If it was a genuine mistake, then we can try but we may still not be able to help. This leads nicely on to my next point.

Don’t ask for our managers.

If you ask to talk to a manager, nine times out of ten they will tell you the same thing. They aren’t miracle workers either. They have the same knowledge we don’t. Sometimes they don’t even have that as they have been trained in management and don’t remember the information that consultants need to recall daily. If you want to speak to someone more senior, ask for a senior adviser. They are still likely to tell you the same thing but, at least if we are wrong, they have the knowledge to correct it.

These are my tips on how to make sure that you get the best service when you call through to a call center. Remember, though, we are only human and we do occasionally make mistakes.

workflow
Like

About the Creator

Kimberly Styles

I’m 20 and from the uk. I work full time. That’s about it.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.