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.