Anyone ever worked in a call center? What's it like?

Fukuyama

Hey Guys,

Thinking about scaling back my self employment and getting a fixed job as I'm tired having to constantly look for new contracts etc...

I was looking at a job in a call center and think I might be good at it seeing as I deal with customers all the time anyway.

Has anyone ever worked in one before? How did you get the job? What was your average day like?

Thanks,
Dean

Volvoboy

Never worked in one but i'd imagine its hell.

m@cc@

Dean0088 wrote: »

I was looking at a job in a call center and think I might be good at it seeing as I deal with customers all the time anyway.

Everyday, a little bit of your soul is chipped away. Wouldn't recommend it as a long-term thing.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

They vary, to be honest. Wildly. Avoid cold calling if possible and try and get a job with inbound calls rather than outbound if you have a choice. That said, I've met some really interesting people working in call centres and had some great laughs. You have to.

Fukuyama

m@cc@ wrote: »

Everyday, a little bit of your soul is chipped away. Wouldn't recommend it as a long-term thing.

Not long term. A few months at most.

Fukuyama

Ikky Poo2 wrote: »

They vary, to be honest. Wildly. Avoid cold calling if possible and try and get a job with inbound calls rather than outbound if you have a choice. That said, I've met some really interesting people working in call centres and had some great laughs. You have to.

Definitly would want one with incoming calls. Cold calling is annoying for people on both ends.

How did you get the job and what was it like day to day?

Rented Mule

It depends on what sort of call centre you are talking about, and what you would actually be doing.

If you are going to be working in a Customer Service/Technical Support role, it might not be so bad if you are willing to have fun with it. A lot of that is going to depend on the people that you are going to be working with.

If you are going to be 'cold calling' people trying to sell things, then do us all a favour and just blow your brains out right now.

Fukuyama

Rented Mule wrote: »

It depends on what sort of call centre you are talking about, and what you would actually be doing.

If you are going to be working in a Customer Service/Technical Support role, it might not be so bad if you are willing to have fun with it. A lot of that is going to depend on the people that you are going to be working with.

If you are going to be 'cold calling' people trying to sell things, then do us all a favour and just blow your brains out right now.

lol

trust me, if I was reduced to being hung up on for a job I'd quickly take the easy way out. Customer support or inquiries would be more my bag

m@cc@

Rented Mule wrote: »

If you are going to be working in a Customer Service/Technical Support role, it might not be so bad if you are willing to have fun with it.

Even that is terrible. Face it, the general public are morons.

Encoder1970

I worked in a technical support centre for 2 years. Even though the job is boring, you get the same type questions over and over again it was a great team and we used to go out all the time. A lot of the peeps in the centre were from abroad, Spanish, Frensh and so on.
If you work for a major company it's a good way to get a foot in the door and advance up. Some people I worked with are now managers and relocated to US and Australia.

kkdoll

I manage some groups in a call centre (inbound, IT)and its not bad at all. Try if you can, starting salaries can vary from 19-22k. Most call centres are looking for languages only, Nordics, Dutch, German French would be the main ones. So its not really easy to get an English speaking role, but they are out there, just keep looking.

The Volt

Avoid this kind of work at all costs

InkSlinger67

Soul destroying work

Dord

Soul destroying.

Wagon

Shít. Just shít.

Fukuyama

Anyone know any companies in Dublin which need tele-staff?

The Volt

Dean0088 wrote: »

Anyone know any companies in Dublin which need tele-staff?

Capita has fairly high turnover

Agricola

Take it on part time if you can. 40 hour weeks in a call center will not do you any good!

drunkmonkey

It's great you get to wear lots of hats and use TLA's like their going out of fashion.

Fukuyama

Agricola wrote: »

Take it on part time if you can. 40 hour weeks in a call center will not do you any good!

PArt time would be ideal

Mr Benevolent

It's not much fun. I have been in a few callcentre jobs that were great fun and well paying though.

Fukuyama

Voltwad wrote: »

Capita has fairly high turnover

Got a website or anything? Couldn;t find them when I searched:(

Fukuyama

Confab wrote: »

It's not much fun. I have been in a few callcentre jobs that were great fun and well paying though.

Got any company names? If you don't mind me asking that is of course.

bnt

Voltwad wrote: »

Capita has fairly high turnover

AFAIK Capita run the Emergency Services (999) lines (among other things), so I'm not surprised if they have a high turnover. I've seen their ads on Monster, jobs.ie and so on, though I haven't looked recently.

I worked in a tech support call centre, on the incoming phones for a year. My experience was probably better than average because I was doing Enterprise support: big customers with big computers, not home PC users, but we still had a good number of muppets calling us. An important thing to know is that everything you do is monitored: punctuality, number of calls, time per call, time on break, feedback, and so on, as well as some of the calls themselves. You're expected to compete against your colleagues to improve your stats.

The Volt

Dean0088 wrote: »

Got a website or anything? Couldn;t find them when I searched:(

They do all of Eircom's telesales inbound and outbound calls. They should have positions advertised on the usual sites.

Mr Benevolent

Dean0088 wrote: »

Got any company names? If you don't mind me asking that is of course.

Both callcentres closed down a few years ago.

HereticPrincess

IMO it sucks..
Working in one at the moment.

First job, & here over 2 years.
Everyone I started with left.

"soul destroying" may be pretty accurate as previously described.

If you're going to do it, don't go long term.:D

TestTransmission

Dean0088 wrote: »

Not long term. A few months at most.

hahahaha, and then 3 years later your still there.

karlog

A typical call

CrazyRabbit

I spent 3 years as a Customer Service Rep (CSR) for IBM, and another 7 years in 'backoffice' roles in a Service Center.
Initially, I provided tech support for the American market (IBM Aptiva computers). These customers where either the nicest of the most vile people to speak to. There was no middle ground.

I then moved to the internal helpdesk which provided support for IBM employees in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Very professional, and frequently enjoyable calls.
After that I moved into other Service Center roles such as Subject Matter Expert (SME), Problem & Change Management (PCM), Work Instruction Lead, Team Lead, Project Manager etc. These are the most 'fun' roles.

In short, this means I have a ton of experience, and I'll give you an honest opinion about some of these roles based on my experience.

1st level tech support : Incredibly scary when you start out. For the first few weeks you will be almost completely reliant on your colleagues experience and technical documentation. Then it becomes much easier and very rewarding for about 6-9 months. After that it becomes a extremely easy, and somewhat boring/repetitive job.
But, if you excel at the role, you can move into other job roles in the centre. This role will vastly improve your 'soft' customer skills and make you very proficient at solving problems logically. These are valuable life skills that will serve you well for a long time.

Subject Matter Expert: They earn more, and deal with more difficult issues. This means more interesting work, and increased job satisfaction when you find solutions to tough issues. You will become a real expert with many common business applications here. Can lead to much better paying technical roles if you specialise in some areas.

Team Lead: Great if you like things organized and have natural leadership skills. Horrible if you are a technical person. Fairly easy job to be honest.

These are the only positions you are likely to obtain in the first 1-2 years.

Stay away from telemarketing. Horrible horrible job and not worth all the crap you have to put up with.

BTW, if you speak Danish, I can get you a job in Blanch

CrazyRabbit

Dean0088 wrote: »

Anyone know any companies in Dublin which need tele-staff?

https://jobs3.netmedia1.com/cp/search.jsp

They are pretty much always hiring. Based in Blanch and Damastown.

Fukuyama

HereticPrincess wrote: »

IMO it sucks..
Working in one at the moment.

First job, & here over 2 years.
Everyone I started with left.

"soul destroying" may be pretty accurate as previously described.

If you're going to do it, don't go long term.:D

Do you mind me asking who you work for? Having trouble finding companies that need English speaking people.

Thanks!

krudler

Hmm, lets see

Crap hours (depending on opening times, our place is 24 hrs, latest we work till is 10pm, that includes weekends, bank hols, even Christmas Day)

Incompetent team leaders, the worst of middle managing morons, you can ask 5 team leaders the same question and get 5 different answers to the same problem,none of them the right one

customers, ah the customers, ignorant, stupid, beyond reproach most of the time, very very rarely you get one thats nice to deal with and doesnt fly off the handle at you for not being able to fix something they've done themselves, but thats as rare as unicorn shyte

Stuck at a desk all day, get barely any time to do your work, constantly being monitored (they can bot see and hear what you're doing on a call, no checking emails while someone is droning on) being given out to when its busy, been told to find work when its quiet, which is almost never.

Yeah,call centres suck, I'd rather work in McDonalds, at least the pay is better

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Agree with the part time bit. It's a lot easier going in knowing you're out in four hours or so. I did night shift for most of my stint, but it was dead for about half that and we could read, study, even play cards. Much more relaxed.

Try the employment agencies - they might have some leads.

krudler

I could (and should) write a book about working in a call centre and various customer service jobs by now, its the crazy people that make the job tolerable, bear in mind, if you scream/cry/go psycho on a call centre employee, you WILL be laughed at while on hold (they will put you on hold possibly so a co worker can plug in and laugh at you as well) I've put crazy people on hold to go make coffee or just slide over and chat to someone for a few minutes, you need to otherwise I'd be smashing myself in the face with my keyboard about 5 times a day

Fukuyama

krudler wrote: »

I could (and should) write a book about working in a call centre and various customer service jobs by now, its the crazy people that make the job tolerable, bear in mind, if you scream/cry/go psycho on a call centre employee, you WILL be laughed at while on hold (they will put you on hold possibly so a co worker can plug in and laugh at you as well) I've put crazy people on hold to go make coffee or just slide over and chat to someone for a few minutes, you need to otherwise I'd be smashing myself in the face with my keyboard about 5 times a day

what route did ou go down to land you job?

The job sites seem to be dead ends because I'm getting nothing back

krudler

Dean0088 wrote: »

what route did ou go down to land you job?

The job sites seem to be dead ends because I'm getting nothing back

I decided I wanted a career built on shattered dreams and lost faith in myself, slowly losing a bit of my humanity every day

or jobs.ie, i cant remember

CrazyRabbit

krudler wrote: »

Hmm, lets see

Crap hours (depending on opening times, our place is 24 hrs, latest we work till is 10pm, that includes weekends, bank hols, even Christmas Day)

Incompetent team leaders, the worst of middle managing morons, you can ask 5 team leaders the same question and get 5 different answers to the same problem,none of them the right one

customers, ah the customers, ignorant, stupid, beyond reproach most of the time, very very rarely you get one thats nice to deal with and doesnt fly off the handle at you for not being able to fix something they've done themselves, but thats as rare as unicorn shyte

Stuck at a desk all day, get barely any time to do your work, constantly being monitored (they can bot see and hear what you're doing on a call, no checking emails while someone is droning on) being given out to when its busy, been told to find work when its quiet, which is almost never.

Yeah,call centres suck, I'd rather work in McDonalds, at least the pay is better

Enterprise Call Centers are much much better. Customers are professionals and much nicer.

(Enterprise Call Centers are centers that provide support to company employees rather than consumers.)

Stench Blossoms

I work in one for 2 years while in college. Wasn't the worst thing in the world, wouldn't be somewhere where I'd like to work for a living.

kenon

Yeh I did technical support in IBM for a couple of months, wasn't awful.

There is a daunting aspect when you just start taking calls as when you start, you listen in on other people's calls and you start to realise how little you know.

I wasn't there long but I'd say it gets quite tiring taking calls. Most people I know who does it, wants to get off the phones and move up to SME etc.

Hauk

I worked in one for 8 months. Soul destroying is the only description.

At the end of my stint there, I'm convinced the Early Learning Centre could make a killing by selling a book on "My First Computer" with every laptop/computer sold. It would have made my life just that bit easier.

Oh the stories.

I did get a job working in house tech support for 6 months for another company. That was much better, and the pace was a bit more relaxed.

Run_to_da_hills

Horrible work and most bosses are as*holes.

There was a call center next door to a previous job that delt with water purification systems. The amount of staff turn over was something else. The boss use to count the fag buts outside the office door and weigh up the amount of time the staff spent on their breaks.

Flyer1

It just doesn't get much worse ! I work in tech support, it's absolute hell and people are so stupid.

HereticPrincess

Dean0088 wrote: »

Do you mind me asking who you work for? Having trouble finding companies that need English speaking people.

Thanks!

I shall PM you.

seclachi

There are all sorts of jobs in call centres, but there is only one I would ever consider taking, and is Game master work for video games, basically you can type your support instead of having to talk to people. I know one company that has pretty good conditions as well.

Ultimately though its not great work, nothing I have heard about it is fantastic, people seem to be graded on everything and the places have massive employee turnover.

me-skywalker

m@cc@ wrote: »

Everyday, a little bit of your soul is chipped away. Wouldn't recommend it as a long-term thing.

I worked in one for 3 yars bud. I completey agree. As for OP If you liek teh job and want to do it. go for it certainly but jsut try retain some sense of yourself and dont let them beat you down!

I was driven to zombification and nullified my spirit and sense of soul. Now im free. Woo.

give it a try for 3 months see how you get on.

banshee_bones

TL;DR

Cold calling?

Soul Destroying. You will pray for death before the end.


/That is all

Dudess

Yep, I've been unemployed and it is horrendous, but I'd still prefer it to cold-calling/door-to-door sales/chugging.

Noelisgod

karlog wrote: »

A typical call

God that was funny nearly had a heart attack from laughing so much

I worked in a call centre also doing outgoing calls - left after a month as most people said its soul destroying and very repetitive.

If i had to do it again I would only do incoming calls.

Considering the job market right now I'd say its actually tough enough
to get one full stop.