Chronicles of a Call Center pt.3 ( AHT)

AHT (Average handle time) - the time it takes to take care of a customer (how long your on the phone with them, in layman's terms.)

Here's a comic I though would be perfect for this topic. I've got an agent that I was working with on his AHT. Everything else was great with his call. He never forgot or missed anything QA wise. His talk time was about 2 minutes as opposed to 4.5 - 5.5 min. I had to say something when I monitored his call one day and heard bluh duh duh blah blah, which sounded more like a foreign language. Don't ask how his customer undterstood. His AHT is now, 3.5 min. After much work with him, I've learned that this is acceptable. He just talks that way. You should hear him when he does his different accents. Although it's not the tru him, the customers never know so of you won't tell, I won't.

Chronicles of a Call Center pt. 2 ( the rumor mil)

Ever wonder how people know your biz, all the time. How about the stories about you that never happened? This sort of thing seems to happen when you work in a place that has as many people as some call centers have.

I'm going to turn the clocks back a bit. It's been about 4 years since I was an entry level agent at a call center. At that time I was making roughly $7.50 per hour. I was and still am a well know guy in the center. I was friends with this girl who probably made twice as much as I. Key word, "friends." She had 3 kids and was a bit older than I. She was well off by then. At that time, I was single and I did like her a little, but she was older and had kids, so I knew it wouldn't ever be more than friends. All of a sudden one day, I hear that she's sleeping with this guy for his money. I have to admit, it was a little heart breaking. Not too much longer than that, I found out who she was sleeping with...IT WAS ME!! WTF, Where was I?!?! Was I good?!?! As far as I knew, we never even kissed, unless you count that time I kissed her toes in a hot tub, but that's a totally different story. *evil grin*

Fast forward 4 years. Up until recently I haven't had any rumors fly about me or mine. My wife (yes I got married and not to the one in the story) made a friend on the project she works. Oh I should also say she works where I work. This friend of her's is also a frind of mine. The funny thing is, she's all of a sudden sleeping with him. What's even funnier, she's slept with him when she was with me. They are friends at work, and out of work sometimes too. Everytime they're together, there's someone with them. Not that I've always got an eye out, (which I could if I wanted to), it just turns out that way.

In a recent class I was teaching at work, I mentioned to the new agents to watch out for the mil. One of them actually heard of My rumors, which I think is a gas.

Here's a challenge, if anyone reads this. Start a rumor about yourself and see how long it takes to get back to you and how much it's changed. Have fun with this.

Till next time

Chronicles of a Call Center pt. 1 (Why do things go wrong when I'm not there)

Since, no one will probably read this, I feel comfort in posting this. You know there is that whole 1st amendment thing too.

This is the first installment in my Chronicles of a Call Center. For those of you who don't know what a call center is, it's the place you call when you speak to a customer service department or your bank, etc. They also house the people that annoy you in the middle of dinner and "aren't allowed to hang up", so you can leave for thirty minutes and they'll be pathetically waiting for you on the line. I'm actually a supervisor in an inbound call center (the people YOU call). I've been at the same one for over five years. Oddly enough, in a center our size (500 employees) in a town our size (75,000), there is drama to spare. That's what this series is going to be about, as well as a complaint session.

So, to the good stuff.

Why do things go wrong when I'm not there. Let me start off by saying my pay rate is determined on my agent's attendance and attrition. Basically, they can cost me $4.00 per hour for a month if they really screw up. Actually, if HR were to really crack down, they could cost me $6.00 per hour for a month which is $960.00. Tell me that's not messed up. I'll get into that on another post, who knows, maybe this'll be a two post night.

For the past two weeks, I've assisted our training department. The trainer in charge of my project moved to another city. That's two weeks without being able to manage my team fully. My team is a weekend team and training takes place durring banker's hours. I had to enlist the assistance of my lead agent, keyword AGENT. Our attendance for the last week was 87%, by HR's calculations and 89% by mine. Our objective is 93%. Now now, I know 89% isn't much better than 87%, but whith a company that doesn't consider 92.9999999999% meeting objective, it makes a difference in money to me.

When the attendance report comes out today (my first day back from training), MY manager emails me. "Has John (so we'll call him) been given the tools to keep up with attendance and make up time." Well shit (pardon the french), I gave all the tools he needs, and can use as an agent. In my opinion, he did a stellar job while I was gone. He took over my role on the call floor. My role on the call floor is that of an unofficial SME (subject matter expert). Don't ask me how I took on that role. I'll get into more details in another post. Back to my point, attendance sucked for the past week. Then again so did the whole center. So oh well, I can get that back.

My second and most troubling issue while I was gone is attitude. Why do I never have a problem with it when I'm there. Every time I have either taken time off (unpaid of course), or worked another schedule from my team, there has been major attitude problems. This past week, an agent of mine was fired for attitude. The thing is, Most of the "supervisors" have been in leadership roles (not counting parenting) for less than 2 years. Even fewer have had any actuall leadership training. At 26 yrs old, I've been in leadership possitions for about 8 years. I've been working since I was 16 yrs old, you do the math. Some just don't know how to be a leader. Some just worry about making money and their status as a "Supervisor."

There was an incident between my agent and another supervisor, on my day off. This particualar agent has never been an issue to me. I always got the result from him I needed. Needless to say, the words "I'm a supervisor," and "I'm gonna get your ass", were witnessed by my agents coming from the supervisor. Shortly after, he was fired, with out me being there. That royaly PISSED ME OFF! I asked John, his feelings on why I never have those types of problems. His responce "You give respect while demanding it." I spoke to that other supervisor and just wasn't convinced by everything. You see, my agen, does have a short fuse, but some of the things he was accused of; I just can't see him doing/saying. He's real big into karma and Budism and has told me befor, he's scared it would come back to him. Will it change anything, no, he's already termed. Will his employment be reconsidered in the future, probably not. Could things have been different I'm sure, but the bottom line is, I'm still responsible even though I wasn't there. Go figure.

Myspace

Hello,
This is my first post. As you can tell by the Title of this blog, it's basically, reviews of stuff. I'd like to make a couple disclaimers.

1. I'm not a representative in any way to anything I review. I'm just excercising my Freedom of Speech.
2. I'm not an English major so my grammar / spelling won't always be perfect.

So to the good stuff. Exactly how many people are on Myspace? Who knows. At this time, the infamous "Tom" has 107,758,777 friends. And that's because quite a few people remove him when they sign up. In my current possition at work, I catch people, almost daily, on Myspace. I have two accounts myself :).

The actuall owner of MySpace is a genius. His name isn't even Tom, go figure. Last year, he raked in an astonishing $47 million. That's a long way from having to send faxes from Kinko's. I can't say I'm not jelouse. The sad part is, most of us won't even make half that in our whole lives.

Everyday new users, including celebrities, are "pimping" thier profiles. Infact, there are many sites out there making a pretty penny off of free premade templates.

I guess the reason it's so attractive to new members is the number of features it offers. You can create your own blog, to share videos and photos. Many musicans also become featured artists and have their songs played on countless profiles. The crazy thing about this, is IT'S ALL FREE. Did you catch that? Of course, there are terms and conditions but who cares, it's free. Perhaps my favorite and is the No Nudity policy. Don't get me wrong, I like my share of riske pictures and such, it's just that MySpace is so large, it would get flooded by the crap. There's already those people who "just moved into town" or "liked your profile" who have links to other sites, but that's it. Overall, I give it 2 thumbs up.

Check out my profiles.
www.myspace.com/bigmatus
And for those of you into the paranormal;
www.myspace.com/parasouthtx