A few call centre secrets

Bob Fleming said:
When I worked at london electric in the late 90s there was loads of bucking garn on. Are they still rife for sordid affairs?
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BT had tiny rooms for doing private one to one reviews in. A couple were caught in there.

I got told off for bursting out laughing during a team briefing when the team leader was reading the information out and said "two people have been sacked for having sexual relations in the one to one room" :oops::lol:
 


Just visited the biggest call centre I've ever been in - 200 staff. Pretty impressive place quite frankly. They're not all bad.
 
Never worked in a call centre myself but visited the Npower Rainton site a few times and was impressed by the canteen and on site leisure facilities.
The whole place is made of glass so I'd be surprised if some of the shennanigans mentioned on here go on there.
 
Butcher's Coat said:
Is that where the dodgy flatpack furniture gets made?
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i think they actually had a call centre for a short while in sunderland, opposite the Peugeot garage end of the queen alex bridge... used to park down there on match days and have a memory of it being open for a short time, might be a gym now or something obscure...
 
BT (behind Joplings) – in the days of Directory Enquiries (inbound). Mind-numbingly boring, often had tears rolling down my face from yawning. Some right thick twats would ring up asking for the number to all sorts of places. Not as thick as the middle-managers, mind. They’d run around like the f***ing world was going to end, full of their own self-importance. The experience gave me a good grounding as to what call-centres would be like.

Royal Mail (opposite Greggs at Doxy) – easy money whilst a student. Worked nights banging in post codes that their system couldn’t recognise. Did my quota by half way through the shift, then went to sleep.

Citi / Future Mortgages (opposite Barclays at Doxy) – worked as a mortgage underwriter, only phone action was speaking with brokers. Staff were great, senior management were canny. Middle managers were generally arseholes, megalomaniac bullying arseholes. Others just had it in for you if your face didn’t fit. Great day when they paid everyone after the financial crash.

2 Touch (Doxy) – spent a whole year there after I graduated. Staff were great, senior management were canny. Middle managers were generally okay, but everyone knew it was a dead-end job. Worked on the BT broadband calling existing customers, so still no real cold-calling, thank fuck. Had this H&S wife called Lynn(?), the fat twat. Used to try and talk down to people for the most stupid of reasons. One lad wrote a formal letter calling for her resignation because she was so rude!

Barclays (Doxy) – everything the OP said was true. And the tale about someone transferring money into their account. 100% true, I watched him get taken away by the plod. It’s a canny job, if you have the right attitude, but it also needs your inbound customers to have a decent attitude, too!

It was hilarious having scratters ringing up and asking if “their pay” had gone into their account. “I’m sorry Sir, there’s been no salary deposited today but I do see a JSA payment”.

And you ARE told to put a customer on hold, but it really is to see if there’s away of either saving or making them money. You only got £1 for opening a savings account, and little more arranging loans, credit cards & insurance etc.

Never heard about the ranking thing, but premium customers had their own number to ring. Barclays’ problem at the time was the big boss was Bob Diamond, who had just screwed over The City and the Bank of England by fixing LIBOR rates. Because of that, compliance became the only thing they cared about, knowing that the FSA would soon be coming down on them like a ton of bricks.

As usual, fellow staff were great, although nepotism was rife. Never saw the big bosses in their Ivory Towers but middle managers, as usual, were a bunch of pricks. Megalomaniac bullying pricks.

Utilitywise – South Shields and then Cobalt. Great income if you put the effort in, calling businesses. Went downhill with the move to Cobalt because it went from being a family-run company to a PLC. Nepotism rife, taught to lie and cover obvious pit-falls of energy contracts. Staff were canny, senior managers were okay, middle managers were a complete bunch of toss-pots constantly looking for an easy life. Helps if you’re happy to shag around – FACT.

Choice Future Planning – under Queen Alex Bridge. My first stint at cold-calling the public (flogging funeral plans to the over 50s). Made me ill as I hated it so much. Luckily, someone grassed me up after a fortnight because they saw me corresponding with recruiters via email.

So, call-centres have played a big part in my working life. Made some decent friends and learnt an awful lot about human nature. Those are probably the only two good things, to be fair. Oh, and the bonuses at Utilitywise helped me pay off my credit card debt!
 

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