What is it with telesales jobs in large offices and call-centres?

Ilios said:
Oh and I forgot, the thrice daily 'smoke breaks' that lots of people simultaneously were allowed to take - including several managers. I don't know what phone setting they were on for this, but I'm pretty sure if I said I was a sex addict and took 2 or 3 self-declared breaks a day to have a w*nk in the toilets, I'm pretty sure that would be raised in a meeting. :lol:
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Probably ‘raised’ in the toilet as well. Fnaaar Fnaaar.
 


RestlessNatives said:
Not having a go here but what was she expecting to get?
A call centre can be a great foot in the door to lead onto leadership and management roles. How would you feel being managed by someone straight out of uni with no work experience?
There are graduate trainee roles out there but you'd still be doing the grunt work to start out (probably including call centre work).
A degree doesn't get you a job in your chosen profession, it just helps you be a step ahead of those without one.
My advice, from years of recruiting and managing graduates, is for her to excel at the shit call centre work, get herself noticed, and then use what she's learned at uni when applying for more senior roles.
There are plenty of well paid jobs in Sunderland, I'd love to see more, but you don't just roll out of uni and straight into one. Nor would you expect to if you lived in London.
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Very true - we never hire graduates fresh out of university with no work experience. I don't care if it's in a call centre, stacking shelves in a supermarket or flipping burgers but it shows a willingness to get stuck in rather that sitting around waiting for the ideal job to come around.

The likes of Tesco, McDonalds and even Wetherspoons have some excellent graduate management schemes but they all involve starting at the bottom. I have a university friend who is now very senior in Tesco but had to start doing overnight replenishment to get to know the business.
 
I did the call centre stuff after uni until I got myself on a graduate scheme. I honestly think that time has had more value in developing my career than my years at uni. You learn a lot about understanding and dealing with people.

It was also a good laugh at times and there was a cracking social life that came with it. Mind you, my experience clearly wasn’t as bad as some in regards to the timekeeping judging by what I’m reading here. That would have been annoying.
 
Ilios said:
I've done it a couple of times, including a stint for 3 months just to give me some cash between terms at Uni.

Awful, soul destroying experience. My teammates were terrific and we often got drunk together after work, and stayed in touch after I left, but that was the only positive. Some of the highlights:

'Why did you spend 57 seconds in 'aftercall' at the end of a call at 11.23 on the 4th of June?'

Me thinking: 'How the fuckitty piss do I know what call that even relates to, I've made hundreds of phone calls since then and you've provided no distinguishing features beyond a timestamp'...

My actual response: 'I don't know, perhaps it was a more complicated/long call that required considerable notes at the end of the call.' I'm going to need more information than a date and time'.

Them: 'You should be using minimal aftercall time at all times, as you're effectively avoiding work if you're in aftercall'

Me: 'Is it avoiding work to effectively annotate a person's account after the call, using a function expressly labelled for that purpose, so that next time they call, everyone knows the history if their complaint in legible English?'

Them: 'No, but you be doing that during the call.'

Me: 'So instead of doing everything I can to fix their problem, firing back and forth between screens and departments, and making sure I'm listening carefully to what they're saying, you're more concerned that I write up aftercall notes while they're still on the phone and I'm still dealing with it, because I can't use the aftercall button to record things after a call...what is the point of the aftercall button?'....

...You were 90 seconds late signing back in after a break 3 weeks ago, do you know why?'

Me: Not specifically. But my break starts the second I hit the button, and I then have to log out, get my headset off and lock my PC. The break areas are a full 2 minute walk from my desk through 3 fobbed doors and down a flight of stairs, and the male toilets are in a different location again. Assuming I had time to squeeze in a trip to both, I can't bring a drink back to my workstation, which means I have to neck it on the spot and run back. When I get back, it takes me about 90 seconds to get signed back into multiple systems with multiple passwords/get headset back on and change my phone back...so maybe that day I needed a slightly longer wee, or there was a person in front of me at the coffee machine which has tipped me over my allotted time'...

Also me: have you also added up all of the times I stayed on a call which lasted beyond the end of my shift? Or when I got on a long call just before lunch, and had my lunch delayed by 50+ mins, which meant the end of my lunch and start of my afternoon break ended up only about 15 minutes apart?

As you can see, I was fully aware that I only needed to do this for a few months (they weren't mind) and so I was a bit more pointed in my responses than the poor battery hens who had to put up with this kind of crap longterm.
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Worked in them for around 18 years in total, 17 at the same one. The periods where I was just call handling every day, months on end were soul destroying. Was lucky to work on different things from time to time but was glad to eventually get out 6 years ago although at the time I would do a morning a week max on the phones so didn't mind it the last couple of years. Mind I met some great people there, some I class as my closest mates.
 
Ben Gardner said:
  • BT - as above, but this was in the days of 192 so you'd expect little else.
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I only ever worked at one and that was 192 in town during the 90s for a few years. It was straight after uni and the high turnover of female staff held my interest, but I f***ing despised the job. Grim place to work.
 
Speaking to other staff at the one call centre job I've had it seemed to be a common opinion that it's not as shit if you are working at an in-house call centre, directly for a company, rather than an agency or outsourced call centre.

This call centre was the latter, where common sense, good service and knowledge of the work involved was Seemingly not important, the main thing was the holy "available online" time as that was essentially the only metric the outsourcing company was measured on. This was for NHS direct at the time so you'd think the other factors I mentioned would be important but they really weren't valued imo.
 
As someone who is currently working such an environment I sympathise with a lot of what’s being mentioned on this thread but as someone who’s currently doing TL cover work, some people are just bone idle and think that they’re owed a living despite not doing what they’re paid to do.

These are also the same people who moan about making shit commission every month, yet when you give them constructive, relatively easy to understand coaching on how to improve with actual examples from higher performers, they don’t do it. Then whinge when their commission statement comes out at the end of the month.

You can lead a horse to water as they say.
The Rolls Royce said:
Speaking to other staff at the one call centre job I've had it seemed to be a common opinion that it's not as shit if you are working at an in-house call centre, directly for a company, rather than an agency or outsourced call centre.

This call centre was the latter, where common sense, good service and knowledge of the work involved was Seemingly not important, the main thing was the holy "available online" time as that was essentially the only metric the outsourcing company was measured on. This was for NHS direct at the time so you'd think the other factors I mentioned would be important but they really weren't valued imo.
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By all accounts this is true. Some of the horror stories I’ve heard about Parseq in Doxy sounds like it was like working in a sweatshop.
 
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halfman said:
I only ever worked at one and that was 192 in town during the 90s for a few years. It was straight after uni and the high turnover of female staff held my interest, but I f***ing despised the job. Grim place to work.
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That's the one behind Joplings (as was)? Yup, plenty of eye candy but the canteen was rank.
Just ended up making me own bait and sitting in that "common room".
Oh, that had a free phone iirc, was great for phoning a uni friend I had in Poland!
 
Ben Gardner said:
That's the one behind Joplings (as was)? Yup, plenty of eye candy but the canteen was rank.
Just ended up making me own bait and sitting in that "common room".
Oh, that had a free phone iirc, was great for phoning a uni friend I had in Poland!
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Yeah, that's the one. Arthur the security bloke on the front desk/door. Everyone sat in that common room, tutting, while waiting to use those free phones. I still keep in touch with a couple of people from back then. As grim as the job was, everyone hated it so there was decent nights out with the folks from there. It was at that stage in my life I realised that lasses are not only just as bad as blokes on nights out, but usually a lot wilder. Shit times, but I do have some great memories of the people who worked there.
 
MackneyHackem said:
She has the option to move away but won’t. Can’t see the problem.
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Agreed, there is a good personal reason she doesn’t want to move away or I’m sure she would like, don’t want to go into that,
Darlo1973 said:
Surely someone with a BA in "Leadership" (is there anything you can't get a degree in these days?) would know that to further your career you often have to take the initiative move to where the opportunities are. That's what I can countless other people from the NE have done over the years.
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Totally agree mate, see above.
RestlessNatives said:
Not having a go here but what was she expecting to get?
A call centre can be a great foot in the door to lead onto leadership and management roles. How would you feel being managed by someone straight out of uni with no work experience?
There are graduate trainee roles out there but you'd still be doing the grunt work to start out (probably including call centre work).
A degree doesn't get you a job in your chosen profession, it just helps you be a step ahead of those without one.
My advice, from years of recruiting and managing graduates, is for her to excel at the shit call centre work, get herself noticed, and then use what she's learned at uni when applying for more senior roles.
There are plenty of well paid jobs in Sunderland, I'd love to see more, but you don't just roll out of uni and straight into one. Nor would you expect to if you lived in London.
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Spot on, she says she’s getting fantastic experience of how the banking/financial system works.

She’s a hairdresser, wanted to move on into higher education and lecturing (if poss), did all her Hairdressing/beauty/barbering teaching/assessor etc qualifications, AFAIK you now need to have a degree to move into that field (Hence the BA) with all the education cuts that hasn’t been possible.

I think she is almost doing as you advise, at the moment they are having a big push on quality of calls, and she’s getting some fantastic reviews from other managers (listening to calls) and most customers, but of course the call times are too long as she said to her manager “you can’t have both”

Thanks for the positive advice mate, appreciated
 
Management is difficult and you don't get to learn it until you do it (this can probably be said for any job role). You have to manage the business expectations on one side and individuals of your team on the other. You never feel like you can be in one camp or another because the needs of your team sometimes conflict with the business and vice versa. You never really learn management until you have to make decisions that affect people and/or the business. I think you gain better judgement through experience of making decisions and the range of issues you face helps you in future decisions you need to make. Some personalities are better suited to management than others and anyone hot headed or with their self interests at heart won't make a good manager.
 
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The missus works for Barclays, as a whole she quite enjoys it after running pubs and restaurants for years. She’s more customer complaints than inbound or sales etc, guess from the comments she just enjoys it as she a bit of a milf and everyone of the lads that work there must fancy her 🤔😉
 
Most gaffers will be bellends in the eyes of people below them

My team tell me they like me and love how supported they are but i know behind my back i will be a twat
 
The soap powder said:
Most gaffers will be bellends in the eyes of people below them

My team tell me they like me and love how supported they are but i know behind my back i will be a twat
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As I say to my team. The only reason anyone goes for promotion is because they think they can do a better job than the idiot already there. Then, on the day they get promoted they become the idiot.
I’m fully aware of what my team think of me. They all love me and worship the ground I walk on.
 
wigs said:
Twats a bit harsh on yourself mind !!! :rolleyes:
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Truth though mate haha
The Krankie Returns said:
As I say to my team. The only reason anyone goes for promotion is because they think they can do a better job than the idiot already there. Then, on the day they get promoted they become the idiot.
I’m fully aware of what my team think of me. They all love me and worship the ground I walk on.
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They all now worship their idiot !!!
 

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