Why it Sucks to Work in a Call Center
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It’s very easy to get hired at a call center if you’ve never worked for one before. But, if you have worked in one and got fired or quit, chances are every other call center you apply at won’t want to hire you. The reason it’s easy to get hired if it’s your first time, is because all you need is basic computer skills, and the ability to speak somewhat clearly on the phone.
Paid training is always fun, but once that’s over and you’ve been working on your own for a few weeks it starts to wear on you. The customers are rarely nice at all, in fact most of the time they’re flat out rude and disrespectful. The repetitive nature of most call centers can be a good thing and a bad thing. If you’re feeling down and you really don’t want to go to work that day, the repetition can help you handle it. The bad side is at some point you will get very bored, and desperately want a different job.
In my opinion the worst part about working in a call center is their rules about being late. Generally if you are more than four minutes late you get a ‘point’. Once you get so many ‘points’, you get fired. It doesn’t matter how good a job you do, if you’re the best customer service person ever. If your five minutes late, you get fired. And then you have to explain why you got fired every time you apply for a job, if they’ll even bother asking instead of just refusing you.
It’s not a good idea to work in a call center if you have kids, friends, doctor’s appointments, or any other circumstances that might cause you to be late or miss a day every now and then.
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THE REASON CALL CENTER STAY HIRING PEOPLE IS BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE ARE GETTING FIRED FOR STUPID REASON LIKE POINTS AND THE MISTREATMENT THERE. BUT GET THIS THE REAL TRUTH IS THAT THAT MAKE MONEY OFF EACH PERSON THEY HIRE. LIKE %$60,000 A WEEK THE MORE PEOPLE THE MORE MONEY THAT CALL CENTER MAKES BECAUSE THEY HAVE CONTRACTS WITH BIG COMPANIES LIKE VERIZON,AT&T, THE LIST GOES ON. ITS REALLY SAD. ITS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY
It is true that call centers have a very high turnover. This is partly because of the reasons you describe in this Hub. Call center work is not for everyone, especially persons with little patience.
call center sucks, most of the people are rude and stupid and people get worse because the companies do not try to educate the customer who can tell you anything they want and the representatives cant said a thing
Call centers do suck. The part about the free time is true. But the main thing I notice about call centers is that it is a haven for incompetent managers who would or could not be a manger at any other real professional job. They listen to your calls and no matter how great the call went, in order to so-called "coach you" they pull you to the side and begin splitting hairs over how your voice sounded and what words you used and what you could have said etc. I understand the need for quality but I lot of it is BS. Each company has its guidelines as to how they like their customer service delivered so your manager attempts to mandate these rules through call listening based on their own interpretation. The problem is however that whenever you get a new manager (which happens often) they will look at those same rules and interpret them completely opposite of what you were previously coached to do. Its a real joke. There is no consistency and when anything goes wrong, the nature of a call center's operation allows them to ultimately place the blame completely on you. No matter how uninformed you have been about certain job functions or how disorganized (which is typical) the operation truly is it will always be your fault. That's why the turnover is high. If you can help it, stay away from call centers. You don't want a bunch of dumb asses telling you what to do.
What Witness said is totally true. Incompetent people are always at the top of the food chain in call centers, most of them get there because they are friends with someone, it never has anything to do with performance or quality.
The worst part about call centers is that if you need a day off or have an emergency, you practically have to beg.
In the call center where I work we have to ASK for permission to go to the bathroom.
Even worse than that, is that if you have any kind of education, you sit there all day and wonder how the hell, with the skills you have other than talking on the phone, you ended up taking BS from some dumb hick who thinks he's better than you, all while, you, as opposed to him, have a job and are trying to make a living.
cHorrible is the only word I can use to describe BPos/ call centers'. One has to leave respect, forget education, learn to be patient and simply "appreciate" all that is said and done. After six yrs, I stand no where, i have experienced only ignornance, fake accents, fake people; there is NO LIFE here, I am now a person with high tolerance levels whos an idiot. This is exploitation and big money involved of which the mgmnt makes the most and the rest of the team has to survive on cigarettes, booze, causal sex, discos and brands to feel happy and SURVIVE. I wish I was born rich or not born at all.
Commercial call centers must suck based on these comments, but they are not all this way. I supervise a staff of 22 employees who work a call center for a state agency. They are all highly trained, paid well and there is no micro-managing; there is no need. Bathroom breaks are at the operators discretion. I cannot even imagine trying to regulate that for them, crazy! The problems we have stem from too many calls coming in and not enough staff to take the calls so staff gets wore out. State budgets won't allow for any hiring and they are expected to take more calls than is possible. Burn out.
The hiring freeze is just now starting to let up so if you want a good paying job in a reasonable environment with great benefits and educated supervisors look to your state government job listings for a phone center job.
it sucks I only worked for a month and a half. the company will always tell you "you can win a lot of money" which is not all true, i worked to repair cable and people always called angry and if your English is "funny" they get even angrier, but i must say some customers are wonderful and not stupid. the worst part about "video repair" call centers is that you are timed on every single call and some people take too long to turn off their tv hahahahaha and they want everything fixed fast. its just tooo stupid to work at a call center my advice dont even think about working at those places sure its "well paid" "just to take calls" but the supervisors are a pain in the ass I also had to ask to go to the bathroom which is stupid.
Call centers are hell. Being attached to a phone that answers automatically is psycological toture. That last one I worked for the Cable company was really bad. We were ALWAYS SLAMMED. Every customer waited and was extra pissed off. If your shift was 8.5 hours, you got a 1/2 hour lunch(which WTF can you get done in a half hour?) and two 15 min breaks. So otherwise you were live on a call with a customer for 7 hours and 23 minutes of the day. The other 7 minutes was "ACW" time. If anyone here knows ACW time its the small break you get at the end of the call to put in "notes" on an account. Its also the one thing in that every call center just continuously crunches down on. Its your only reprieve and they know that. The whole object of a call center is to keep taking the small things that keep you going away from you. In otherwords to totally demoralize your soul. The Cable company I worked for was particularly evil. What they did was link your seniority and and your monthly bonus(they only think that kept your bills paid and kept you from being a complete drunk, broke loser) to your "call Metrics". In other words call length, ACW time, break acuracy and call reviews. So in other words if you abused ACW time and break time they would cut your bonus and drop your seniorty to instead of working M-F 8-5:30 you would drop to like 2:30 to 11pm with W-Th off. How it worked was if some guy was willing to use little or no ACW time and always took excactly a 1/2 hour lunch you had to compete with that. Or forget $$ and your social life. So you would have to keep using less and less ACW time. And breaks? If some loser customer kept you on past your scheduled 11:30 break, OH WELL, TOO BAD, YOU LOSE. The other Major thing they relied on was a spy program that would once or twice a day record your phone calls and video on your sreen. Management relied on this heavily to ensure you did a good job and did everything you were supposed to. The program was evil and stuck constant fear in the phone reps. It also caused management to become seriously complacent. They did nothing all day but play solitare and go to "meetings" and basically do nothing while 90% of us busted ass. So a few of us got them good. We hacked the program so we knew when we were being monitored. Which turns out was like 2-3 calls a day. It got to a point where we would hang up on any jerk we wanted to, keep people on hold for no reason and basically do nothing too and get paid. In fact I got so savy, I hooked up an MP3 player to the phone and I would either just play more hold music or jam tunes. People thought they were on hold, Management thought I was working. It was a great prolly 15 months I did that before getting a new job. FUCK YOU CORPORATE AMERICA!
Call centers and BPO is the main reason why America is in recession. Shipping American jobs abroad is the main reason why the the unemployment rate is still high... Call center job sucks!
Call centers suck because you have to put up with either idiots, complaints (usually unjustified), and feeling like just a number in a sea of cubicles. You don't receive any praise for a job well done, only grief over something stupid like too much hold time during the day. Maybe you get an email saying good job. Thanks but that doesn't pay the bills. Management only cares about the numbers not the quality of service. Even though, they will lie and tell you otherwise. Pay is just enough to keep your head above water so you end up either getting lucky by getting out of it or losing your sanity by the burn out. Sadly, b/c of the repetitiveness of these types of jobs the burn out can come as soon as six months to a year on the job. I've decided to just say "no" to call centers. I owe it to myself to not being a phone jockey playing the broken record bit all day long! Blah
Here are some examples from my experience working in a call center. An email stating that we needed to deduct bathroom trips from our break or lunch. Sending us home early if the call volume was low. Literally pain from the damn headset pinching my ear all day b/c I wear glasses. Training that didn't prepare us at all for the calls. Coming home beat down tired, stressed, and with a general dislike for humanity. I remember an interview where a CS Mgr. told me that the call ctr. position was available b/c someone working the front counter had retired and one of her reps. moved to fill that role. Wow! What does that say about the position you're trying to fill when someone would rather work at the counter than on the phone. Ha ha. Sadly, the counter work probably paid the same amount and was much easier work. Like the forum heading says..Call Centers Suck!
...You spelled "you're" incorrectly.
I didn't spell you're incorrectly. You idiot. An even if I did, what are you the grammar police.
I work at a call center as well. I work full time the typical Monday through Friday 8-5 and the mandatory overtime Saturdays each month. About 30 minutes ago I just made an excuse to not come in because I dread this job THAT bad (I have only missed a few days over the past few months) and her reply was, "You'll get a call later to see when you can make up the hours you have missed." WTF?
The job is horrible. We have a team lead that is breathing down our necks all day, if you look tired they pretty much tell you that you aren't allowed to look tired. And you cant even sit in a comfortable way because your body language "shows through your voice" And you have to get a certain amount of sales each day or your pretty much in trouble. And if you make too many trips to the bathroom they will send each group a mass message saying "Whats up with the bathroom breaks this is how many minutes each person has taken blah blah"
I WANT TO PULL MY HAIR OUT.
i work for a large cell phone company call center i'm not gonna go into all the specifics of how much this job drains your soul but i am going to say if you can find something else take it even if it pays a little less don't make the same mistake i did....either that or just sell weed :)
Wanted to leave a comment about incentives. I've come across call center managers that think a raffle you are entered in because of a good score on a call is an incentive. Sorry but putting my name in a hat with a dozen other people to possibly when a whopping five or ten dollar prize isn't an incentive to me. It is simply retarded and stupid. It doesn't motivate me in the least and makes me painfully aware of what a ridiculous job I have.
I work in third party call center handling very bad wireless carrier service plus cheap stupid indians and shitty immigrants in canada.
What the hell after i was enjoying my LIfe in many many jobs i am tied on station with headset stupid job
I worked at a called center for almost 2 years, it was a living hell. They made you go to hell to get hired, and when you SAW who you were working with...well lets just say they were not top of the food chain. I worked for Telecheck. I stayed because it fit my life at the time.
I hated the management. I hate the ' Sales' Rep that were ' Selling' terminals they could not program. I started out wanting to do a good job but when I saw the whole ' we are a team' was a load of bull. I let it run wild. I used to hang up on calls ALL the time. The last 6 months I was there, I was a bitch on wheels. It got to the point were I got the rest of the CSR to hang-up, it spread like wild fire. It got so bad that the " Big Wigs" felt we needed to have a meeting...they had every CRS in that meeting and asked them not to hung up on the customer and that they needed us. Bull shit. I kicked it up a notch. I almost got caught, but I did not.
I left there hanging up on a least 100 people.
Call center job is not for everyone. You know what i don't get is seeing employees who choose to show up for work everyday but so disengaged and discrunteled. Why not just quit and end it, if you're sooo unhappy and can't do the work---QUIT!
I only worked at one for a week. Ha ha. My title was technical csr. It was an inbound call center that resembled a cubicle farm. My stomach dropped when i saw it as the 3rd party that recruited me blew fog up my arse regarding what i'd be doing there. The first thing I noticed was the blank to grumpy faces I noticed while walking through the place. Ha ha. It seemed like everyone was miserable. They had me shadowing immediately (day 1). I moved a chair around to three different cubes. Only one of the three people that I was shadowing seemed okay with me sitting beside her. Supposedly, I was suppose to be learning something by just watching these reps click on a smorgasboard of software they had to use. I learned about what someone could have just told me in an hour over three days. Ha ha. Talk about a terrible way to train someone. Next step was nesting meaning getting acclimated to the job by having someone sit beside me if I needed them on a call. Well, the person doing that was more concerned about her nails, texting, and talking about ghetto trash then training me. She also thought it was a real riot that I didn't know what I was doing. Another thing I noticed was that the two managers for my department were never available. They were in meetings all day, how convenient. I would highly recommend avoiding these places unless you have absolutely no other option. Remember that anyone with a high school diploma can do this job which is why you run into people who can hardly speak english much less write. I do have to say that it was funny listening to people complain all day about their phone and/or internet not working. Key word there is "listening" it would have been horrible talking with these people. I would rather clean hotel rooms than take back to back calls like that for a measly so many dollars and hour. Bear in mind that this position had no benefits and was only a temporary contract for a few months. Talk about making it easy for me to bail. Ha ha.
I would suggest avoiding these places they really are horrible. However, if you are just starting out your career, have the patience of job, and can stomach the drama of these environments than more power to ya.
pato 2 years ago
I work in a call center in Argentina and that its really bad. All that you said its true, and here its worst. I´m sorry if I write something wrong but I never learn english. Here the call centers explote people until we get tired. And they pay joust the minimal. For you to now It´s something like $500 a month.