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Dial 9 for Ben

Ben Austwick explains ten things about working in a call centre.

By Ben Austwick

15 Aug 2011, 13:36

After three long years, I finally completed my last ever shift at a call centre in preparation for my emigration to Spain. I thought I’d share a few things I discovered whilst working there:

1.    People’s voices change. No, I don’t mean the old lady who sits on her wobbly telephone stool speaking like Hyacinth Bucket – I mean the people who actually work here. At the start you speak as you would every day on the phone but after a few months your voice becomes monotonic, you repeat phrases without even thinking about them and your speech becomes annoyingly nasally. I’m not sure of the reason behind it but I think it’s something to do with the removal of your soul.

2.    Customers often go over the top for compensation. I once spoke to a gentleman who was requesting compensation because we’d sent him two copies of the same bill. I’ve no idea how it happened and both bills were identical but because he had to open one more letter than he should have done he wanted to complain as far as he could. He seemed to stop once I’d offered him £20 compensation.

3.    The ‘call centre arse’. For some reason, after a couple of years working in a call centre, women especially tend to get a ‘call centre arse’. Their buttocks expand at twice the speed of the rest of their body and their silhouette ends up resembling a chubby man with a rubber ring around his waist. I can only blame this on the excessive crisp packet-to-mouth exercise and the lack of standing-up-and-moving exercise.

4.    There is a lot of racism about. Like many UK based companies, our debt department was based in India so you’d only ever speak to a foreign call centre member of staff if you hadn’t paid a bill or were missing some payments. Unfortunately, these weren’t the nicest calls to receive and the agents would often receive a huge amount of racist abuse from people in financial hardship. I would frequently speak to people after they’d received a call from our debt team saying how great it was to hear someone English, including a customer on my last day in work saying “It’s no wonder the country’s rioting when you’ve got f**king foreigners phoning us up!” No, I don’t see the link either.

5.    The ‘call centre arse’ v2. Not an arse in the anatomical sense of the word and also goes by the name of ‘the office cretin’. When you’re sat at a desk for more than 90% of your working day, the people around you become either your best friends or your worst nightmares and there’ll always be that one you’re quite tempted to strangle until they’re blue in the face.

6.    Punctuality overdrive. Punctuality in a call centre is an obsession. If you’re 30 seconds late from your lunch or you take a one minute toilet trip and fail to return a minute early from your break, you’re in trouble. I understand that punctuality is essential to any job but when you’ve got a ten hour shift with only an hour where you’re not chained to the desk speaking to irate Scotsmen, you sometimes need a few minutes to relax.

7.    The richest people complain about the smallest detail. If there’s someone trying to wangle 10p off a £700 bill, you can be sure they live in a huge house and have an enormous wage. I’ve spoken to solicitors, judges, business owners who’ve had tremendously large bills but if they thought they could get away with paying a few pennies less, they would try every trick in the book to do so. Maybe that’s why they’re so rich – it all builds up!

8.    Statistic overdrive. Similarly to number 6, it’s not just punctuality that call centre managers will berate you for. If your average call time is slightly longer than usual or you’re taking a little bit more time typing up your notes after receiving an earful from an irate Latvian, a manager will undoubtedly be on the warpath making a B-line for your desk. Never have I worked somewhere where everything you do is so closely monitored - what you’re saying to customers, how often you say certain words, how long you take going to the toilet, what percentage of customers think you’ve improved their perception of the brand and so on.

Now you’re probably wondering why on earth I worked there if I hated it so much – well I thought it would be only fair to include a couple of great things about working in a call centre.

9.    Money. The people at the very top know you’re under an immense amount of pressure dealing with enquiries and complaints on the frontline so give you a salary according to that. For an entry level job, the level of pay is excellent and the harder you work, the more rewarding it becomes. If you hit your targets and persuade a few people to buy some products from you, your monthly salary can increase by over 20%! It’s certainly financially rewarding when you’re feeling motivated.

10.    Other rewards. The rewards aren’t just financial. When you answer the phone and all you can hear is a woman crying that they can’t pay their bill, it’s always a very uncomfortable situation. But once you’ve gone through all options available and done everything you can to help, where they’ve ended the call happy and knowing they’re not in deep financial trouble, it’s very rewarding. Plus the odd quips from customers telling you how delighted they are with you and on some occasions even requesting to speak to your manager because they’ve been so impressed with how you dealt with their call makes you grin like the Cheshire Cat for the rest of the day.

In the 3 years I’ve spent working on the phones I’ve made some fantastic friends and I have to take my hat off to them and all the other staff working full time in a call centre environment. When I initially worked part time due to university commitments it was perfect – excellent pay, short hours, a flexible timetable but when you work ten hour shifts for 4 days in a row it mentally wears you down and I can’t wait to start my new job as an English teacher in Zaragoza*.

*Eagle-eyed visitors to this blog before today may have noticed that I was initially planning on moving to Paris. However, my partner and I were both offered dream jobs together in the beautiful city of Zaragoza in northern Spain so will be moving there in just over a week. Not to worry though - I’ll keep blogging here and on my travel blog  ayorkshiremanabroad.com.