Having co-worker sacked due to poor moral?

LegacyUser

Hi! First of all, i've been at this job for 2 years now, and i really do like it. It's in IT, with several different departments.

However, due to budgetcuts and other stuff, alot of people had to either be relocated or go.
Because of this my department now have, how should i put it... IT-illiterate newcomers?
And when you are dealing with customers it's mandatory to be nice, how irrate that customer even might be.

Solve the problem, and after the call solve your own issues. Sounds fairly sound, right?
Well one of our new staff disagrees. (Hereby known as Agent)
Not only being a novice with computer this agent don't fear to shoot the mouth back.

Not to seldom you could hear stuff like
"-This user would not *cursing* listen to what the *cursing* i said." While the veterans on the desk clearly heard that the agent has completely failed in troubleshooting, followups and whatever you could to track down the issue.
Headsets are flying, Agent is screaming and acting up.

Telling this person to calm down is like throwing kerosene on a bonfire.

All this has created a wide rift between "the new" and "the old" staff on my department. The new staff (including the agent) is holding their own, while us oldies counts the curses and basically talk thrash about the agents acting. Seems to be 80% show and 20% real anger (If i don't scream and shout no one will notice i'm here and i'm out off the cool-group sort off issue), but still very annoying.

This has put the entire department in dismay and people are actually quittng because of this situation.
The Agent keeps telling everyone how much this and that sucks, and stuff like "-I'm leaving this place.. These users are ignorant and complete idiots." Again, playing on the insecuritycard to get the "new" staff to come for comfort.

Is there anything that can be done? I've personally talked to my boss, who is informed and understand the situation.

The_Conductor

Its a management issue. A good manager would sort this immediately- their department is imploding......

LegacyUser

True.. But i have a faint feeling that this agent has managment (atleast part of it) in the hand, so to speak.

It's just the part of acting worse than my 6 yo nephew that get's to me.
If not screaming out loud about stupid users, there's a monologue on about how great the partner is in bed, or what protection is the best and so on and so on.

The_Conductor

Unregistered wrote: »

True.. But i have a faint feeling that this agent has managment (atleast part of it) in the hand, so to speak.

It's just the part of acting worse than my 6 yo nephew that get's to me.
If not screaming out loud about stupid users, there's a monologue on about how great the partner is in bed, or what protection is the best and so on and so on.

This doesn't sound like any IT section I know. Interactions and chat are normally kept to an absolute minimum, unless outside the office- and woe betide anyone who disrupts anyone else.......

If they are behaving like this with the knowledge and acceptance of management- you have three options:

- get those of your colleagues who are similarly put out together and find those elements of management who disagree with this sort of carry-on and make a case to them
- put up with it
- leave

I'd be inclined to get your colleagues who feel similarly aggrieved to make a case to someone sufficiently senior, who feels similar. Its all well and good one person having a problem- but when all the knowledgeable senior staff profess themselves to be similarly aggrieved, its a wholly different situation from one person being annoyed.....

nmesisca

smccarrick wrote: »

This doesn't sound like any IT section I know. Interactions and chat are normally kept to an absolute minimum, unless outside the office- and woe betide anyone who disrupts anyone else.......

If they are behaving like this with the knowledge and acceptance of management- you have three options:

- get those of your colleagues who are similarly put out together and find those elements of management who disagree with this sort of carry-on and make a case to them
- put up with it
- leave

I'd be inclined to get your colleagues who feel similarly aggrieved to make a case to someone sufficiently senior, who feels similar. Its all well and good one person having a problem- but when all the knowledgeable senior staff profess themselves to be similarly aggrieved, its a wholly different situation from one person being annoyed.....

You have never worked in an IT call center have you?

OP, as a former manager of one (of the biggest) my suggestion is that you need to speak with your manager and suggest:
- a formal training plan for the newcomers
- time allocated for call shadowing (even 1 hour per day would be beneficial)
- buddy system, for which any newcomer is assigned a more expert engineer which will go through the newbies new tickets every few days (depending on number of tickets should not take more than 1.5 hours) with the goal of highlighting the weak points of the call and suggest a quicker resolution path
- engage training department and arrange for half a day of CS upskilling BEFORE the newbies have gone 'live'
- if the agents performances are evaluated, make CS skills count towards this. thats a big push generally.

I have been there, I know some people can be very disrupting to the call center environment. most likely this is caused by the person not feeling up to the task (either technically or customer-service wise) or feeling that it is a dead end job with no carrier prospects. Make them understand that it is a daily learning experience and that, no matter if they want IT as a career or not, upskilling is ALWAYS a positive side of any job (especially during a recession).

Hope this help, you're welcome to pm me at any time if you want to hear more.

N

The_Conductor

nmesisca wrote: »

You have never worked in an IT call center have you?

4 years with Clientlogic, 2 years with Dell and am a systems analyst at present.

nmesisca

smccarrick wrote: »

4 years with Clientlogic, 2 years with Dell and am a systems analyst at present.

I win

Compaq, Symantec, HP, Microsoft

for a total of 10 years.


.. seriusly though, there is nothing more beneficial to a call center than interaction and chat between engineers. how do you think they learn stuff? and an IT department is very different from a call center.

The_Conductor

We should be sitting down in a pub with a few whiskeys comparing battle scars

nmesisca

smccarrick wrote: »

We should be sitting down in a pub with a few whiskeys comparing battle scars

Anytime mate! Drop a mail and lets have the nostalgia flow out..

Im IT Manager for Ireland for a big firm (wont say the name or I will get swamped by messages) and the countless scars are now slowly closing :S

LegacyUser

omg ,sounds like a hell hole, thank god im unemployed

HashSlinging

bet this guy ends up being the OP's supervisor..

novarock

I did a year and a half in clientlogic, and a few ISP's after that. There are going to be people like that in every office, who are melodramatic, and think that every customer is out to get them, when all they want is for their problem to be sorted.

unfortunately from a helpdesk point of view, unless the agent in question acts like this on the phone to a customer, there are very few managers in my experience, that would do anything about this. But at the end of the day, if you are getting call after call on a helpdesk, some people have to vent some frustration at someone. Unfortunately that is always going to be a colleague. Its part and parcel with having to be constantly polite I think.

I was always relatively calm when it came to being on the phone. I almost broke the mute button on a few occasions in Clientlogic though. Feckin speedtouch...

doolox

From a totally different area of work I used to curse and swear and vent my frustration while attempting to fix PC desktop motherboards for a living. The combination of ever increasing workloads, ever decreasing time to fix things and new products every few months or so meant you never really mastered anythng and were constantly playing catch up. I was put on counselling for the outbursts but eventually managed to leave the organisation to pastures new and I am now having a great time with good work colleagues doing much the same work on different range of products which do not change as often as the PC stuff did so allowing one time to learn how to fix them.
Everyone needs time to look at the direction their career is going and if they are finding the going tough they may have to examine their interests and aptitude for a particular line of work and make changes.
Luckily I didn't have to make a big change. I just had to realise what my style of work was and go for a job that allowed for this style. On areas that I am weak on I have to acknowledge them and look for help in getting good at them. When I went to school you were always encouraged to hide gaps in your knowledge and aptitudes for fear of corporal punishment, bluffing and making do was the order of the day. Unfortunately in the modern age precision and authority at all times is the goal and can only be accomplished by teams working closely together and knowing the limits of their expertise.
Customer support needs endless patience and tact and in our effort to get through as many calls in a limited time it is hard to keep patient with novice users but support people must.
Unfortunately users tend to vent their frustration and anger out on the support people as they believe they can't fight back and must take abuse as part of their job.
It has taken me years of private counselling to get to the stage where I can keep my temper, look at the good side of every situation and put in a decent days work. He needs to get on this road to a saner working life or his health and the health of his unfortunate co-workers will suffer.

the_syco

Unregistered wrote: »

Well one of our new staff disagrees. (Hereby known as Agent)
Not only being a novice with computer this agent don't fear to shoot the mouth back.

Is his name Enda, and from Cavan or Navan? Sounds like a f**ker that got sacked. His CV had a llst of IT certs, and years of IT knowledge, but HR never checked them out: he couldn't do the most basic of checks.

=-=

Having worked in Eircom (briefly), Clientlogic, and HP for a while, having a bit of banter about the dumbness of the customers is one thing, but becoming stressed about it will ensure a bad environment.

=-=

OP: go with a few who feel like this, with a list of people who quit because of htis, and let someone up high know about this. If the management is any good, they'll see that a lack of knowledge with the senior people leaving will be very bad for the company...

LegacyUser

nmesisca wrote: »

You have never worked in an IT call center have you?

OP, as a former manager of one (of the biggest) my suggestion is that you need to speak with your manager and suggest:
- a formal training plan for the newcomers
- time allocated for call shadowing (even 1 hour per day would be beneficial)
- buddy system, for which any newcomer is assigned a more expert engineer which will go through the newbies new tickets every few days (depending on number of tickets should not take more than 1.5 hours) with the goal of highlighting the weak points of the call and suggest a quicker resolution path
- engage training department and arrange for half a day of CS upskilling BEFORE the newbies have gone 'live'
- if the agents performances are evaluated, make CS skills count towards this. thats a big push generally.

Sure be active, raise issues and sooner or later you will realize that those are waist of time. In call centre environment the only thing you need to do is take calls and more calls, ticket or call quality does not matter too much, as long your manager will get nice stats, that is it. And usually, after 3-4 months when the agent knows his/her jobs, she or he will leave and circle starts again.

And sorry to say but most call centre managers or TLs are useless people, afraid to make decisions or completely lack of any technical info. This is of course the reason why they are managers:)

[Jackass]

If you're not the manager, it's none of your concern. You've brought it to the attention of the manager, they will decide what course of action, if any, is required. If what you say is right and something needs to be done, but isn't, then you've just got a sh*t manager. Welcome to the world my friend. But what exactly can you do about it? The people with the problems need to convey this to management also, maybe if enough stink is kicked up, they might do something.