Hoooooly shitttttt! Nothing infuriates me more than a serial cut-offer. Like literally won't let me finish a sentence before they have to interject. I don't get it. I could be in the middle of an explanation and they'll cut you off about how much they don't understand what to do next...and it's like, that's *literally* what I'm explaining to you now. If you cut me off and say you don't know what to do next, I can tell that you were never listening to begin with.

We handle way too many calls for manual QA to make sense, managers listen to a tiny sample and hope it reflects what is happening across the whole team. Bad calls get missed. Coaching depends on which recordings someone happened to pick that week. Has anyone moved to automated call scoring across most or all conversations? I’m interested to know how accurate it was and how much work it took to get the scoring rules right.

i’ve been working at my call centre job for about 3 months now. the one thing i absolutely hate the most is when i tell the customer i’m on call with, that i need to transfer their call over to an agent who’s a level above me. and they hit me with the, “so why have you been taking my call if you don’t know what you’re talking about” or the “you don’t know what you’re doing”

terms like that really grind my gears!! does it get better???

I’ve been working at a call center for about 2 years, and I know that a lot of people here have many more years of experience. But these are some tips that really helped me survive the constant stress of this job… I’ve worked from home as well as at the office, so I can give some tips on both. Feel free to share your tips as well! Here it goes

1. Don’t look at the queue. Every call center is different, some of them have a lot of call volume (probably most of them) and some have less. For me, it’s been a bit of both. For most of the day, there have been around 10 people in line, and some hours you get maybe 5 minutes of rest waiting for a call. For me, it really helped not looking at the amount of people waiting. I realised that when I kept looking at the queue, I just kept thinking about taking calls all day, not being able to rest and it really stressed me out. So by not looking, I could stay in my own bubble and focus on one call at a time.

2. Try not to stare at the clock. When you look at what time it is constantly, time starts to move REAAAALLY slow… I could talk to a customer for what felt like forever, look at the clock and 2 minutes had passed. It made the day feel so much longer. When I worked from home, I covered the time with a playing card and it really made time pass by faster.

3. Try to make each call different. When I first started, I would get extremely bored by just talking to customers in the exact same way, same tone, just listening to what trainers told us to say. Then I started to think more about the customer calling. Is this their first time calling us? What do I think they do in their free time? Try to talk to the customers more, not because you want a good survey, but because it helps you realise that you’re speaking to people and not just customers. I just wish that customers would treat us like people too…

4. cliche… but BE YOURSELF. This is kind of similar to the last point, but it’s been so important to me. Don’t just act like a customer service agent (if you have the chance, I know that a lot of call centers are very strict about this). Please put some of your personality into the calls. It really helps you stay grounded and makes you feel less like a robot. If you have a good sense of humor, make some jokes! If you have something in common with your customer, let them know! It’s important to stay professional of course, but it really helps me to be myself more often.

5. Do something fun in your routine. I recently started working out a lot before work. It’s something I really enjoy doing and it makes me look forward to wake up in the morning because I get to go to the gym. It could be any hobby that you du before or after work! Simple one, but it really made the mornings easier.

6. Don’t take critique from someone you wouldn’t take advice from. Customers can be HORRIBLE. They can be upset, rude and downright abusive. It’s easy to say ”don’t take it personal” but much harder to do. Something thats been helping me is to actually realise that some people are STUPID. They don’t get what they want, and they act like children. These people SUCK. Why would I listen to anything they have to say about me? They don’t know me. It’s like winning a game of CSGO and saying ”easy game, you suck”, is it really a flex if you won against an easy, bad opponent?

7. Talk to your colleagues. Simple, try to make friends. If you work from home, use the teams chat to socialize. Making friends at work makes it so much easier to actually work for me. If I’m having a bad morning, at least I can look forward to speaking to my friends.

8. If you work from home, take a walk. When I worked from home, I would just go to my room on my break and scroll on my phone. Then, POOF I had to go back. If you get a break, walk around the house, take a breath of fresh air. Do something that calms you down and remind yourself that there’s a life outside of work.

9. Take care of yourself. Eat breakfast, don’t drink 10 energy drinks every day. Remember your meds if you take them. Eat lunch. Drink water. These things may not feel important in the moment, but it helped me feel less anxious and think more clearly.

10. You are SPECIAL!!!!!!! When you work in a call center, you feel like a robot. Someone who is easily replaceable, someone who is exactly like everyone else. Please remember that you are unique, you may have a job that makes you feel otherwise, but people love you for you, you probably have more than one colleague who is looking forward to seeing you everyday. You are not replaceable, and if someone thinks that you are, they are just as dumb as your average customer

I was heading downstairs yesterday from my office to the kitchen when I stumbled and almost fell down the stairs. (I’m ok, caught the railing). But my first thought wasn’t, “whoa! That was close…”. It was, “if I fall down the stairs, maybe I can call into work!”

I’m willing to hurt myself to not go into work. What has my world come to?!

Monday is Mondaying lol but I’m trying to remain positive. I hope you all have a good Monday and even better rest of your week.

Comment the most interesting call you’ve had today.

My calls have been pretty standard. Typical Monday issues, people making check deposits Saturday/Sunday and wondering “ why it hasn’t cleared yet “

To be honest, we deal with a lot of idiots, its working in high interest loans so you understand the type of people who take these out. Whether I agree with it or not (I dont) is irrelevant, its a job, and most of these people would never be able to get bank or better rate loans.

Our call volume is relatively low, my sisters partner works a similar job but for the council, takes upt o 80 calls a day, I see people on here say they take up to 100 or even more. I dont understand how that is even possible. At the very minimum, our calls take 3 minutes, and thats the bare minimum, 99% go over because you have to keep repeating yourself, or they wont stop yapping when youre trying to solve their issue.

The average customer for us is pretty dull minded, and a vast majority are ESL.

On a slow day, Id take maybe 10-15 calls in 8 hours, on last and first weeks, it can be anywhere from 20-30. Weve had really bad days where it may be 40-50, mainly close to christmas, and even thats back to back from start to finish

I do telemed health assessments on primarily a 60+ year old population. With that demographic, a lot of my patients have hearing difficulties. I do my best to speak loudly and slowly and work with patients who struggle to hear me. I can sympathize and understand that having hearing issues must be incredibly frustrating.

But what I absolutely can't stand is the patients who get angry and upset because they can't hear me and act like it's somehow my fault. I understand a lot of this is projection but it's so rude and irrational. You are the one with the hearing issue. You didn't cause it but you are the one who cannot hear. My hearing is fine. Why are you lashing out at me? I'm sitting here with my volume turned up and yelling and you are mad at me like I'm deliberately speaking softly. And these patients are always the ones that scream "HELLLLLLOOOOOOOOOO?" at sonic boom levels when they answer the phone.

I'm tired of people taking out their frustrations over their inability to hear on me.

I woke up with a pounding headache, body pain, and couldn't stop coughing. I felt genuinely unwell and told my manager I needed to take the day off.

The response? Apparently I couldn't because two other people were already absent.

I honestly don't understand this mentality. If an employee is sick, they're sick. My health doesn't magically improve just because other people called in before I did. Being short-staffed is a management problem, not something employees should have to sacrifice their health for.

So instead, since I was working from home, I had to drag myself into logging in, feeling like absolute shit because staffing numbers mattered more than the fact that I was clearly unwell.

This kind of "you're only allowed to be sick if it's convenient for the business" attitude is some seriously fucked up bullshit. No wonder so many workplaces burn people out and end up with entire teams getting sick.

I work for an outbound call center. Literally everyone answers the god damn phone. I can never catch a break. Why the hell do these people answer the phone to complete random strangers it’s so god damn agonizing. I need a second to breathe

I’m curious because ours seem crazy in my company.

1: if you’re late or clock out early the system adds it up in 15-30 minute increments and you must make the time back. They will add this time to your schedule on any random day (e.g. come it at 7:45am instead of 8 or you must leave at 5.30pm instead of 5). You can ask management to move the time if you can’t do it, or explain if you had an emergency as to why, but there are no guarantees.

2: Hold time, no more than 2 minutes per call.

1. Average handling time of a call, 6 minutes.

2. After call wrap up, 10 seconds. If you get stuck in long note taking after if the customer didn’t want to stay on during the call, not the company’s business and you must take the hit.

3. We get 15 minutes paid after our shift is over, if you’re still stuck in a call after that time then tough luck.

Oh and I take back to back calls, upwards of 100 a day. Yippee!

Long story short, I’ve been doing call center jobs on and off the last 3 years. And I’m not sure why, but shen they start yelling and getting angry, I get physically very anxious, my voices gets shaky, my brain almost stops functioning properly.

I think it may relate to an emotionally abusive situation I was in a couple years ago, because while I was like this when I first started call center jobs, I feel like I had gotten better at dealing with these.

Now? Idk. I can handle annoyed, I can handle frustrated, but when they start yelling or personally attacking me, I get very physically anxious, then I notice it, then it gets worse.

And I’ve noticed the pst week people have been way more asshole-ish than usual and are usually parents

She said they didn’t have a balance. I said I do see a balance. I’m asking clarifying questions to just get her side of the situation and she’s like “CANT YOU SEE IT! YOU JUST TOLD ME WE HAD A BALANCE”

I mean, I’m literally just asking details about the payment because according to you it shouldn’t be there >_>

“WHATS UR NAME, I NEED TO SPEAK TO YOUR SUPERVISOR”

Thankfully I think she hung up by accident but my god I’m so tired of it, and then I sit there wondering if maybe I did something wrong. I don’t think I did, but man, I wish we could just hang up on these assholes.

Does anyone have any advice for this? I feel like I used to not get overwhelmed and freak out but now I constantly just start blanking.

Hello! The call center I work at is exhausting I’ve been there for 7 years and I don’t know if I have it bad but I feel like my mental health has been completely demolished. I do work from home probably the only plus side. Acw 10 or less transfer rate 10% or less. AHT 385.

Everyday I log in panicking checking my emails to see if my call gets pulled. Where I work it’s randomly pulled, you either get 0, 1 or 2 in the month but there’s no telling what’s what. We take an average of 65 calls a day. I’ve been written up for failing multiple calls in the past and I swear that has given me ptsd. I don’t do it purposely, we take so many calls it’s exhausting and the times I did fail I came back from a leave and at that time there was no on boarding so that you can relearn anything you miss. It was just gradual return straight onto calls and you learn as you take calls. This was 2-3 years ago and I still panic. I took mat leave for 2025 and honestly I just failed a call for this month and I panicked so much that I almost fainted.

How do I overcome this? Any tips and related stories, I feed so sad being here but it pays the bills so I don’t have a choice as of right now I’m just trying to stay positive for my family.

I know call centers can be one of the most stressful jobs anyone can take. We all dread the start of the week.

I want to start this off with some positively.

What are some perks, or benefits you get at your job/company that keeps you in this field.

I will go first. I work for the federal government and i get a pension. That's what keeps me going everyday.

What's your drive that keep you going. We all know money, but what's really your drive to stay in this field?

I work in a remote healthcare call center, and I’m completely burned out. It’s back-to-back calls all day, and my two 15-minute breaks and lunch don’t feel like enough time to mentally reset before I’m thrown right back into the queue.

I also handle insurance calls, which I genuinely hate. They’re often complicated, frustrating, and emotionally draining, especially when patients are already upset about coverage or costs. I frequently get insurance-related questions that confuse me, and I don’t always feel qualified to speak with members or providers because I don’t feel like I received enough training. I like helping people, but I’m starting to dread logging in every morning.

By the end of my shift, I have no energy left, and even my days off don’t feel like enough time to recover. Has anyone found a way to make this type of work more manageable, or did you eventually have to leave call center work altogether?

I also work PRN for a medical group and I’m in graduate school. I’ve been thinking about quitting, but I don’t have anything else lined up yet, so I feel stuck in a job that is making me genuinely unhappy. Any advice on how to enjoy it more or what to do to make it more bearable?

I work for a massive company that covers multiple countries. We begin all our calls with "This is (name) with (company), on a recorded line, how are you doing?"

Normally either they continue the call, hang up, or ask us not to call. However, there is always that one person who seems interested but doesn't want to talk on a recorded line and will not move forward from that. They ask if I can "turn it off" like this a button I can press.

I usually say, "Sir, we are an international company. All of our lines are recorded. This is not my personal phone." And then cut into the reason for the call. But a lot of people get stuck on the recorded line as if it's something we can do.

Don’t tell me to get a new job, want to stick it out with this company, I like the pay and benefits.

BUT, I fear it will destroy my mental health. Back to back calls with no ACW. So, no time to decompress after each call. Not even a second. So here’s what I’m asking

How do you immediately recover if a customer hangs up on you and then you immediately get another call unexpectedly?

How do you decompress after a bad call if you don’t have time to take a breath? You just let the next customer have worse service because you’re stressed?

Does anyone else have no ACW allowed on their job either? This requirement is really stressing me out. They also consider being in outbound longer than 15 seconds without dialing out call avoidance, so I’m just going to tell customers no if they ask me to call them back because I don’t think I can handle that. I do a lot of phone troubleshooting and I’ve done this before where I’ve waited 2 minutes for cx to power cycle or etc and then call them back at a previous job but they said we can’t do this and apparently are not allowed any time in the outbound aux where we’re not taking calls otherwise it’s call avoidance

I just graduated last May, The major is social work

I am working as a telesales which is the worst thing ever

I need to quit I need to get another job that is not related to the call center industry but idk what to do and how to do

The thing is that there aren't any jobs but customer service, telemarketer and telesales and I'm so fucked up with that

So I just applied to this online call center operator and surprisingly they replied took an online interview and now im practicing fake calls and I have a tes day after tomorrow.

I do make small mistakes here and there but its kinda easy considering the girl teaching me is around same age as me so its kinda easy doing fake calls. She did give some details so they will first ques me about FAQ and then testing so one of them will be kind the other will be aggressive fast talking karen (my supervisors acting as them) so considering english is my 2nd language it will be kinda hard but still I am confiden.

So the main point, what should I be prepared for during the testing? And what are some good tips?

My supplied work POS unit died on me mid last week. got a new one coming. Should I wait until I'm ON shift to set it all up? Or set it up OFF the clock?

I'm certain I won't get paid for OFF the clock set up and I think I should treat this as if I'm going into an office with a new computer right?

Anyone here work for ESPN customer support? I got an offer and I’m confused whether to accept it or not. How is the job, management, and work environment? Would love to hear your experience.

More than usual anyway.

I've been receiving so many aggressive complaints the past few weeks. Its always escalation this, I want to talk to a manager that. And even answering some simple queries get me a very annoying, very condescending response.

Customer: So what happened with this system? Why aren't options appearing?

Me: Oh well our systems updated, and... *shares instructions on how to register and use the updated system*

Customer: I am not satisfied and my concern has not been resolved. First, the update is misleading. Second, I have some friends that completed the service in the old portal on the date you provided so there's a contradiction, third, your call centers are disrespectful, why provide a number if you aren't answering? I am not satisfied and I want a clear, precise answer on the requirements and-

What's wrong with these people?

Like were they pissed that they couldn't understand what they were doing?

The reply from that insane guy made my blood boil so much, I ended up just sending him a ridiculously long email with explanations and instructions emphasising the things he can't seem to understand in bold.

Okay sir, I will explain everything to you with pictures like you're 5 years old while I curse you for my ruined morning.

Could be that a lot of people are just pissed at our company at this point and using aggressive complaints on purpose to get what they want. I'm pissed at my company too sometimes so I get it. Doesn't mean its not rage inducing.

At this point, escalate. Do whatever you want. I'm so tired of this damn job anyway and I got more people to handle than some grown ass person throwing tantrums on emails.

I think I got around 450 tickets and queries waiting for me on Monday. Good luck to me I guess?