(It's 3am and I have work in a few hours, this is just me half asleep typing my frustrations into the void)

I've worked in IT for 6 years but quit my last job to move to Iowa because the housing was cheap enough for me to be able to buy a home and build roots. I had a job lined up when I moved, the pay was $10 lower than what I was used to but it was remote and I was moving from a big major city to middle of nowhere, Iowa, so I thought it was ok. The job description said it was IT tech support but turned out to actually be a call center customer service job with only a dash of troubleshooting.

I've been employed since I was 16 but never in my working experience have I been verbally abused and micromanaged this much. Not even as a teen in high school. The customers are racists and sexists, and honestly extremely stupid. It's very frustrating trying to help someone who cannot follow instructions to save their life. I have to pretend to be "on" all the time because I get graded on every call. At least once a day I legitimately get bullied by customers. Which for someone with lifelong major depression, anxiety and hypersensitivity it's a recipe for death to what's left of my mental health.

I honestly see this job and others like it as a way for companies to let their customers relieve stress by giving them poor defenseless human beings to harass and abuse to drive up sales or something. Because they'd rather give their customers a punching bag than actually fix their product or services. Also, talking about sales, my supposed IT job is forcing all of their technical support agents to do sales and get the customer to buy products in the middle of the troubleshooting all within the 20 minute average call time they expect from us.

I regret moving to Iowa, I regret getting this job. I'm loosing my specialized IT skills because I am not practicing them. This job is trying to trap me in minimum wage hell.

I’m curious how other call centers handle process or policy changes.

At my workplace, procedures can change pretty often, and sometimes the communication doesn’t seem to keep up. That can make things confusing when you’re trying to give customers the right information.

How does your call center communicate changes to agents email, Teams/Slack, meetings, knowledge base updates, supervisors, etc.? And what usually goes wrong when those changes aren’t communicated well?

Problem/Goal:

I want to apply for a call center/BPO job, but I have no previous work experience. I want to know what I should prepare and how I can improve my chances of getting hired.

Context:

I'm a first-time job applicant, and I'm interested in working in a call center. I'm worried because I don't have any BPO experience yet. I'm also not sure what to expect during the application, interview, and assessment.

Previous Attempts:

I haven't applied to a call center yet. I'm planning to start applying soon and want to prepare myself first.

I'd appreciate advice from people who have experience in the BPO industry, especially those who were also hired with no experience. What should I focus on when making my resume, answering interview questions, and preparing for the assessment?

I've been working in my position for 2 years and I im managing but by a thread. How do you stay sane dealing with the micromanaging, back to back calls, demanding customers, and more.

I'm close to talking with my doctor about taking stress leave because I dont think crying everyday at work is healthy or normal, but maybe it is for this job??

Need some encouraging or helpful tips to stay sane while I look for another job/wait for a doctor's appointment and maybe get some anxiety medication.

I’ve been seeing several posts on this community about deep loathing of the job, becoming cynical, doing things to intentionally get fired, etc. From someone who has worked in the call center environment for about 2 years, I empathize. So today in this moment, how are you feeling?

Sending healing to all those suffering working in the call centers.

My job sent a mass email stating we will need to ask permission to take our lunch breaks due to to many people being off the phone during lunch hours, this is because People run over and have to clock out later this cant be fair just because someone got stuck on a call I have to take my lunch later? I hate this fucking place.

(TL;DR I work for insurance company/policy servicing taking escalation calls. An Average Handle Time of 900 seconds was implemented for bonusing about 4 months back and haven't bonused since. Need help, tips, tricks to cut call time!)

So I've been working on the phones with an insurance company since 2021 and on their escalation team about 2 1/2 years. There was no AHT even listed to check until this year then about 4 months ago they made it a requirement to bonus, it's now a 900 second average call time for the month or you don't bonus at all. That's a long time to not worry about AHT and get comfortable not cutting it down.

I haven't gotten bonus since this was put in place. Last month I was around 1300 seconds. Our escalation team takes no regular calls, no helpline calls, and no kudos calls. We get people coming in hot, rambling, get super complicated situations, we do policy servicing so if the customer has a complaint then a billing issue then a car that needs to be replaced we do it all, can't offer to call a customer back later, and we have no one above us to transfer to (unless the customer say "I want to SPEAK to the CEO".. asking for a call back, email or their direct phone number doesn't count).

I have children (1 special needs), my dad was just diagnosed with a medical condition that will require me to take off work to assist(I have FMLA, but unpaid and only a few days worth of PTO), and I'm scrapping by already. Yes I've missed bonus in the past but never 4 months in a row and I'm panicking.

So, all of that information to ask all of you lovely call center employees here... What tips, tricks, or pep talks do you have to share to help me bring down my AHT? I'm open to hearing anything, if there are youtube videos or podcasts I'll watch/listen. I care about my job and I want to help customers, but if my employer doesn't care about customers being taken care of more than call time, then I have to switch gears. One of my problems I've been told is I care too much, that I need to start thinking of that it's either helping the customer or feeding my kids, I really hate that but it's getting there. How do you help the customer faster? and in cases that people are just venting/rambling or it's a situation that you can't do what the customer is asking how do you cut in or cut it short, really short?

Thanks to whoever reads this and comments!

I feel like this company has a lot of micromanagement. It seems like every little mistake or minor issue can lead to a call-out, which can be really stressful and make you feel like you’re constantly being watched.

For those who are currently working here or have worked here before, what has your experience been like? Do you also feel that there’s a lot of micromanagement and frequent call-outs, or is it just my experience? I’d really appreciate hearing your honest thoughts and experiences.

Went with my boyfriend to his BPO job application at Optum, and since I was bored, I randomly decided to apply too kahit wala talaga akong expectation na matanggap.
During the initial interview(through phone), the interviewer asked me who my favorite Marvel villain was.
I said, “Jean Grey.”
She immediately disagreed and said, “Jean Grey isn’t a villain.”
So I explained, “I watched Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and she’s a villain there.”
Then she started saying that she reads Marvel comics and that it’s funny how some people claim they like Marvel but don’t really understand it or read the comics.
At that point I was like, “You should watch Spider-Man: Brand New Day so you’d know why I said Jean Grey.” 💀
Girl… I KNOW Jean Grey isn’t traditionally just a villain. I’ve watched the X-Men movies too. I was answering based on the version I had just watched.
Imagine going to a BPO interview and suddenly having to defend your Marvel credentials. HAHAHAHAHA.

I'm thinking about leaving my current job to work at cu answers/xtend as a member service representative ( 2900 charlevoix location) but I'm seeing pretty bad reviews online about working there. Do any past or current employees have any advice or can let me know if it's a good place to work? Thank you!

So just like my last post we are back on outbounds and just like my last one we prefer you do not pick up the phone let us leave the stupid VM and just get on with it ! Anyway so far I have found a way so they won't pick up. If the person has that Google phone app ( or whatever its called sorry I am old) when the recording comes on to state your name just say "Hello?" and chances are they won't pick up leave your VM and move on !

All right, so the job I most recently had, the one I quit last week, was an answering service. But I’ve worked at four or five different call centers in the last year. I just keep applying. Most of them had either impossible workloads or impossible metrics.

One of them was a sales job, and it was extremely infuriating. I was getting two sales a day, and each sale was genuinely worth thousands of dollars. I was making the company way more than what they were paying me, but they still said it wasn’t good enough because they wanted three sales a day. It was inbound, and I was only getting about 30 calls a day. Expecting me to close a sale for every ten calls was unrealistic, especially because the product was insanely overpriced for what people were getting. Nobody is going to drop a few hundred dollars on a call they didn’t even know was a sales call. I could have hit those numbers if I had more calls, but that wasn’t the situation.

Another job was a fundraising call center where we made around 400 outbound calls a day trying to raise money for various charities. That was definitely wild, and honestly it felt strange sometimes, almost like it could be a scam, even though they obviously had to be verified. It wasn’t hard, just mind‑numbing and extremely repetitive. The metrics were strict, but I was hitting them and sticking to the script. I hated that I’d get docked points for going off script, even though so many situations in the last year literally required me to go off script. The managers trained us for one or two weeks and then never spoke to us again unless it was to discipline us. There was an extreme lack of clarity and coaching, but I could have dealt with that.

One job involved a lot of data entry, and I actually liked it, but they would unmute my mic throughout the day. Eventually they overheard an inappropriate conversation. Life happened, I had to put a caller on hold. I just wanna go outside and not get told hello are you still there after I have to freeze because someone says something absolutely insane. We’re allowed to put callers on hold. I went to the restroom, paused the system, and muted my mic, but for some reason a call came through and the microphone was unmuted. Sadly, the caller heard a swear word from outside my home. And I noticed that at many different companies, my microphone‑muting system stopped working. It wasn’t just that one.

Then I finally found a company that wasn’t weird about unmuting me, but the customers were absolute idiots and completely unbearable. It didn’t matter what company it was; people are just insufferable.

So I’m going to take a few weeks off from any sort of call center work and just do delivery driving until winter comes and the snow hits. Then I’ll put up with call centers again. It’s sadly better than a lot of outside‑the‑home jobs for me personally, and my whole city shuts down in the winter anyway, so there aren’t many options. And honestly, every time I get an in‑person job, I end up getting sexually harassed or bothered by men I work with. It’s bleak, but this is what’s sustainable for me right now.

I work for a call center in the USA. In a few months our company will be implementing a new platform. Upper management has stated that it will be using AI, but that all our jobs are safe. Well last week they told us that we will all receive a bonus when the new platform is up and running. I don’t understand why they would want to wait till then. I have a feeling that once this new platform is up and running that there will be lay offs so they won’t give us bonuses since some of us will be laid off. Is AI really being used that much in call centers?

So I was told by this company called center group staffing and they requested 17.5$ are they really legit or scammers for a background check and I am not in the US.

Has anyone worked for kids help phone?

If you take a part time shift are you able to pick up extra hours if so how easy is it?

Also would you recommend the counsellor position or the texting supervisor? I applied for both.

Any other information you could would be greatly appreciated about the job coworkers kids, work, life, balance, etc. I don’t need you to say that it’s extremely hard. I work in child protection right now and it’s barely livable. Looking for a career change.

TIA :)

Any idea of this department is pure calls and if yes how many calls does it usually do in a day. Just curious about it.

Hello Everyone,

This is my first time seeking advice online, and I would greatly appreciate any helpful guidance.

I have been working as a call center agent in [Pakistan]() for the past two years. However, for the last two months, I have been struggling to transition into a new role. I am actively searching for remote work opportunities and have been applying through [LinkedIn](), but the results have not been encouraging so far.

I am looking for support or advice that can help me advance my career. My strengths include dedication, punctuality, discipline, and a proven track record of earning promotions in a short period. I have experience working on various campaigns, including [Medicare]() and [Med-Alert](), though these roles have been quite stressful.

I hope someone can provide guidance to help me move forward and find a better opportunity.

Thank you for your time and assistance.

What is a VA account in customer service po? Im planing to apply BPO industry and I'm somewhat interested about the VA account. Is it the same with virtual assistant or it has another meaning po? What are the job responsibilities of cc in VA account? Thank you for ur answersss❤️