My call centre? Similar to yours?

[callcentressuck]

Are all centres the same? I work for Vodafone and this is what its like, Im considering change but I want to know will it be the same?

1. Team leaders are often slags who compare themselves to supermodels, they often have big egos and talk about shopping and complain when you go up to them and ask for help. They also have a tendacy to be two faced. The men are worse they just have a ego on them but theyre are one or two who are REALLY nice.

2. Team leader manager - Asswipes who lick Vodafone all over, they often deal with you in meetings for disaplinaries - theyre whole life is Vodafone.

3. Human resources - You ask for something to be done, days go by, weeks go by, its a new year and it still hasn't been done. Maybe you want to change your schedule something really simple, it won't be done.

4. The surroundings are filth, you can see bitten fingernails, crumbs of food below the keyboard and you feel sick coming into work.

5. Nobody knows what they're doing - most of the people like team leaders, team leaders leader, human resources are often customer advisor's who were on the phone, whilst some of them know what they're doing most of them don't have a f******ing clue what they're doing.

6. Tossers who come into work and do nothing but lick managers ass all day long and seem to have it easy.

7. Lazy good for nothing waste of man kind - all they seem to care about is banging the finest bitch, fucking, drinking alcohol, doing drugs - I was a pretty good student in school and I cant believe I ended up in this shit hole.

8. They got no respect - they speak to you in a manner which is extremely unacceptable, they always point the blame at you, they always say your not good enough (when you are) - theyre rude, disrespectful, dont have the basic manners. Arghhhhhhh

9. You have a bad call, you sigh and silenty say fuck Vodafone, everbodys agrees on your table.

I did however make my life easier by giving customers theyre money back ALOT of the times and there would be months where I would give 1,000's$ back each month and I didnt even get paid that much! Numerous times Ive sent 16GB memory cards out multiple times in a day, ive sent out all the possible accessories for a blackberry storm for one customer, I gave a customer 60$ back for going over his minutes. My sweet revenge for shitty Vodafone.

I feel stressed, everyday I wake up for work I feel depressed, my health has deteriorated and I suffer from depression and take pills. I have frequent headaches, that beep beep on every call I would love to blast the prick with a shotgun whoever made that, couldn't he have a light flash!! You get timed on everything your breaks your lunches - its like boarding school.

So im thinking of switching, whats your call centre like and please tell me some better places to work???

[Hyndis]

Why are you still working there if it sucks so much?

Your average fast food job sounds like a better place to work than that call center.

[MaggieTheCat]

Yeah, that...is really bad. I don't think the call center I came from was managed very well, but at least it wasn't like that. Our managers were REALLY strict with rules and such, all the supervisors have to be 100% professional 100% of the time, there's no chit-chatting between calls, HR was...well...useless most of the time, but at least they pretended/tried to help.

Definitely look for something else...there is better out there.

[Akasa]

That sounds like call center hell. Get out and find another place to work.

[Plank]

I once worked for [tinyforest(plural)] catalog company call centre. I've managed to repress most of the memories from that place, ill probably post them on here as and when THEY resurface (usually around 3am). But the call centre was just 1 big windowless, humid room that stank of sweat. Breaks were arbitrary so you couldnt arrange to talk with friends over lunch because theirs would start as yours ended and the condition of toilets and drinking fountains can only be described as unfortunate. Coworkers were alright for the most part, I think they got a lot of students but management seems oddly despairing, as though they realised the sum total of their existence was contained within that building.
There was a regular 'game' with prizes where you had to sell extras to the customers and whoever sold the most would get a £5 voucher or similar. That sounded alright until I got to the 2nd game. It was exactly same, they just changed the name as though that would fool us into thinking it was something new. By about the 4th or 5th I realised it was a case of "Hey plebs! Lets see how much extra tacky pieces of crap (the extras were really quite depressingly pathetic) you can foist upon your poor unsuspecting customers! Earn the company about an extra £100-200 and we'll reward you with a fiver!"
I used to get nightmares where the *beep* *beep* woke me up and I'd have to try to take the order from a random dipshit despite knowing I was in bed and nowhere near a computer. After taking a few orders Id start swearing until the customer hung up so I could get back to sleep. Then I would here the beeps again *shudder*.

My advice? Run. Run and hide. Then thank crap Nunavut was outside your catchment area

[draggar]

My "call center" was support, not customer service but.

#1 - No, my leads were pretty cool.
#2 - The leads have supervisors? I never met them. They had the leads do all of the dirty work.
#3 - HR? We had one?
#4 - True and don't you DARE take someone else's headset - even if they stole yours.
#5 - The leads knew what they were doing - the support staff it was the luck of whoever answered your phone.
#6 - None of those, the leads didn't tolerate it.
#7 - Yep, we had those.
#8 - Who? The callers or the supervisors?
#9 - Yep.

[Gravekeeper]

Damn, dude.

1. Our team leaders are great and actually know what they're doing.

2. Managers are good too....

3. HR can be a little slow, but they don't jerk anyone around or anything and have an open door policy really.

4. My call centre is immaculate. Cleaned and vacuumed daily by custodial staff.

5. Sure there's a couple people that are clueless in my office, but I mean that's the same at every business and they are by far the minority.

6. Nope. Since our software keeps call stats, you can't just slack off.

7. ....no, none of those.

8. No again. No one even close to that in my office.

9. Nope.


Really, to be bluntly honest, my company is pretty damn good. I know my boss and my managers have my back over anything that happens. The office doesn't have any douchebags or cliches or anything. I don't think I've ever posted a new thread in Cursing Out Coworkers.

The only problem I have at work is the stupidity I put up with from callers. Aside from that I have no problems my actual office. Just the people that call it.

[Calud]

You should leave right now. I work in a "callcenterish" environment but my place of work is nothing compared to yours.

[friendofjimmyk]

1. My call centre has layers of managers....I have my direct supervisor who reports to my department manager who refers to our operations manager who refers to the director of the call center. It's not like Office Space though, if I do something wrong - I usually only hear it from my direct supervisor unless I really louse things up and that hasn't happened in a long time. My supervisor is actually a really nice woman IF you come to work and do your job - if not, she will make your life miserable and I can't say I blame her.

2. I supposed my supervisor is like your team leader and my department manager is like your team leader manager. Our department manager really is a nice lady, however, a bit clueless sometimes. I do an excellent impression of her getting caught like a deer in headlights. Everyone loves it and it's a hit at water cooler gatherings.

3. Our human resources office is actually on the ball. There is only one issue I had with them and that was concerning some medical condition brought on by surgery...I don't think she quite understood what the doctor was talking about in his letter...it took sometime, but she eventually got it.

4. Our call centre cleanliness varies. We do have a cleaning crew here most days and evenings...however, the communal desks that make up my teams dispatch area are absolutely appaling at times. Each shift I take over, I wipe EVERYTHING down with lysol wipes. The keyboards are disgusting at these desks. Looking at it now, I think I cleaned it recently, but it's nothing to see food and whatever among the keys. The carpeting underneath the desk I am currently sitting is torn up and filthy. My regular desk, which I share with another part-timer, I keep clean except my new desk partner is a sunflower seed muncher and it disgusts me when he misses the trash.

5. I wouldn't say that nobody knows what they're doing here - it's the inconsistency that pisses me off. It's the constant changing of policy and procedure brought on by higher ups (way above my call centre director) who sit in corner offices, with six figure salaries, crunching numbers to come up with better methods WITHOUT asking those of us in the trenches if it will actually work.

6. I used to have a MAJOR issue with a few folks that I could not understand how in the hell they still had their job. They did JACK SHIT! I was not the only one who would complain either. A few months ago, they started to post our productivity numbers on the board for the ENTIRE department to see. The "tossers" that did no work...it was there in black and white. Their numbers were SOOOOOO low that I never had a need to complain again - all I had to do was point to the board. Of course, there are a few of them who seem to believe that they can cheat the system and fake the numbers...whatever, more power to them.

7. I just steer clear of those whose behaviors I don't like. I come in, do my job, ignore them, and go home.

8. It sounds as though there is no hope for your current place of employment to redeem itself in your eyes. Not all call centres are as you describe. If you can't get out...learn how to tactfully put these folks in their place ...or sit back, know that you are better than them by not responding to their antics, and put together your resume to get ready for a better opportunity.

9. Overall, my company is great...I know that I have to take the good with the bad everywhere I go...it's not limited to one place...

[callcentressuck]

well its nice to know there are better call centres out there, I may be getting sacked anyway I got a meeting tommorow and they will let me know whether I can keep my job as I been suspended.

http://www.customerssuck.com/board/s...ghlight=sacked