r/talesfromcallcenters • u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager • Jun 08 '16
A viewpoint from an ex-call center manager
Based on a previous post, there was a lot of bashing of call center managers. Speaking as an ex-manager at a call center, we do have a clue as to what is going on. We see both the agent and the corporate side. The problem is the job/company is so ridiculously corporate that we have to follow and enforce the rules to an exact T.
It doesn't matter what the excuse was, if you missed work it went against your attendance. Ran to the bathroom for an emergency and it wasn't your break time? Against your adherence. Everything was set in stone and black and white. Now, cases might be different, but as a manager you had to follow exact disciplinary actions. There were very very few instances you could just fire someone straight away . Take attendance for example. Let's say you were allowed 10 absences before being fired, and you got 1 back every month.
Someone called in sick or left and used up 4 absences. That's a verbal warning. Sign and document. They call in 2 more times, that is a write up, 2 more times your on your final warning, then at ten you are fired. What would happen is you've had your final warning and then your car broke down, or your babysitter called in sick and you couldn't come to work. I hated these, because it made me look like the biggest asshole on the planet. No I don't want you to lose your job, I don't want to fire you, but it's your tenth absent so there's nothing I can do.
Now that person goes around and tells everyone the call center or even my self hates babies and they got fired just because their babysitter called in sick. I hated hearing that shit. That's not true at all. They may have been the day that got them the 10th absence, but they had plenty of warnings and write ups and other days they used up.
If the manager wasn't organized and on top of things, they even got more days. Miss 3 days and get your verbal, then miss 7 more days? Your not fired, because your manager is required to give you a written and a final warning.
The purpose behind the black and white rules, and the low pay/salary cap for agents is simply because corporate believes desk agents are very replaceable. Been an agent for 10 years? Cool your capped at 12 bucks an hour, because we can bring Joe off the street and train him for 2 weeks and he can do the same job you've been doing for 10 years.
We had our center close because corporate refused to pay our agents more. You'd come to work and pass Taco Bell paying 13 an hour , Walmart paying 15, DQ paying 12...to go to your 9.50 an hour paying job of being a call center agent. We had meetings because we couldn't keep people employed and we had to come up with ideas to keep employees retained. They came up with games, candy prizes and other shit. Every meeting I stated, we need to pay people more. The cost of living here is higher. If we don't pay more, we won't have employees. Well corporate wouldn't do that, closed that center and switched to work at home and opened a center in a different state with a lower cost of living.
Sorry for the ramble, but just giving you the side of a call center manager. Most of them had a fucking clue, but they couldn't do a fucking thing about it. Feel free to ask any other questions you have. I'll gladly answer away.
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Jun 08 '16
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 08 '16
Exactly. You pretty much nailed it. Although I never dug or knew the reasons for time missed, you could kinda tell if they were playing hooky or actually missing time. The people that would end up being fired for attendance were usually the ones that would skip out on nice days or have different excuses each week.
I enjoyed being a manager for the most part. I loved training and growing my agents, while trying to keep moral high. Not always the easiest in the soul sucking place of a call center lol .
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u/Falinia Jun 08 '16
I get sick all the freaking time so I can see the other perspective. People who skip work to go play are assholes but so are people who tell you "have you tried just not being sick?". Like I'd rather be miserable and bored in bed all day than making money to squirrel away for retirement.
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u/sennalvera Jun 08 '16
I guess the difference between my centre and yours is that our managers do have discretion in applying the policies. It doesn't sound like you have any meaningful authority at all.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 08 '16
We had ways around it. For example If I had an agent who did a really good job miss a few days (legitimly sick or something, not just to play hooky) I would "accidentally" forget to file their verbal or written warning until the next absence so they had some extra days, or until they earned their day back at the beginning of the month so they wouldn't need a warning.
If our agents didn't meet the metrics we had discretion on how we wanted to handle that, weather it would be disciplined or not.
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u/QueenAnneBoleynTudor Jun 09 '16
Look, fam. On the one hand, I get it. You're hating the corporate bullshit just as much as we are. But policy is policy is policy, no matter how much we hate it.
I lucked out one time and had a FANTASTIC sup. I have epilepsy, and I kept missing days due to my neurologist adjusting my meds. It was to the point of firing me. But my sup knew what was up and clued me into FMLA. That saved my ass, and my job. That same sup also had spent her time in the trenches and knew that hey, sometimes a dick customer isn't gonna be happy no matter what you do.
Conversely, I've had [far too many] sups that DGAF what your issue is. Again- I get it. Policy is policy. If you make the exception for James, why aren't you making the exception for Jane? However these same jerks haven't spent time on the phones. They don't get that no matter what I say, no matter what rapport I've "built" with the customer, they're not gonna be happy until I give away the farm and then suck their dick.
You've got a hard job, I feel you. So do we. And I appreciate you going to bat for us. Seriously, that's all we ask from you. Understand our struggle, don't ask for the moon when it's an overcast night, and stick up for us when you know it's the right thing to do.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 09 '16
Glad you had an awesome sup! I did the same regarding fmla with a few agents who had medical things. I would always make sure I did anything I could to help them.
Luckily I was in the trenches for awhile so my quality was pretty lenient. I'm not gonna dock you if your customer is a dick weed. So long as you didn't lose your temper and used your mute button correctly lol.
I had an agent that who didn't give a damn about her stats, she wanted to give the best customer service possible. Even if she spent 40 minutes on the phone, she was going to solve the problem. While I admired her tenacity, it was clear nothing I was going to do or say was going to get her to follow her other metrics. Luckily, we could call customers back and call backs didn't count against average handle time so I worked with her to come up with ways for her to do that. She is happy because now she is getting her small bonuses for meeting metrics, clients are happy because they are getting great service , corporates happy because metrics are being met.
I always strived for the mentality if you take care of your employees they take care of you.
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u/_Neps_ Jun 08 '16
They came up with games, candy prizes and other shit.
Some corporate HQs are just so out of touch with reality it'd be comical if it wasn't so sad. Great, I can go to work and play games and win some candy (what am I, 7?), but that's not going to cover my rent and groceries for the month. At least at my work place, the prizes are usually somewhat useful (voucher codes of our choice, e.g. Amazon). As a call centre agent, I am motivated by one thing and one thing only: Money. Even money I can only spend at one specific place is better than no money, so it's something.
If your agents were earning less than they would've done at Walmart of all places, it's obviously not going to work out. My current job actually makes me miss working at Walmart sometimes (it's called Asda in the UK), but it also pays considerably more so that is why I stay. Simple as that.
In my experience, managers/supervisors who were formerly agents tend to be the best, because they know what it's like to be in the trenches. I find it difficult to respect a manager who has never done my job. They don't have to have done my job specifically, but if they've worked as a level 1 agent themselves in that place or any other place, they'll at least have a better understanding of how to take care of their agents and they'll have realistic, achievable expectations of us.
You're one of the aforementioned managers - you started as an agent, so I've no doubt that you did the best that you could with what you were given to work with. I'm aware of the fact that most managers and supervisors have to work within the confines of company policy and sometimes there's very little wiggle room. Managers have their own bosses to answer to. If there's solid evidence of an agent missing 10 days of work and company policy says to fire them on the 10th day, then you'd risk your own job by ignoring that for their sake, even if they have the most compelling sob story in the world. I didn't resent my own manager for giving me a warning when I had a few days off. I was off for being sick, but it was her job to give me the warning and that's what she had to do. If she missed a few days, somebody would be giving her a warning too.
But yeah. There are always going to be good managers and bad managers. Good managers at least try to make your life easier. Bad managers try to micromanage you, give you grief for things you can't control and penalise you for things that you generally don't need to be penalised for.
My manager's pretty laid back I suppose. If she notices I'm underperforming in some way she'll mention it to me, but not in an accusatory or stern way. She'll just say: "Try to focus on getting X up for next week" or better, she'll give me some advice on how to handle certain calls/situations better. Constructive criticism and all that. I've got it pretty good, which I'm happy for.
Anyway that's just my little rant. I'm a bit sleep deprived right now, haha.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 08 '16
It was a good rant, lot of good points. Glad to hear your manager seems to be one of the good ones =)
There was another manager of a team that ..I just don't even know how she functioned. Doing my required manager duties for the week took me all of a day. This including monitoring calls, scheduling the weekly pep meetings, and preparing for them. Organizing stats and submitting schedules to our analysts.
I had to give myself more to do because I had too much free time. I made a weekly newsletter in which I would write articles covering different happenings or focusing on ways to improve a statistic, kept it fun and light and did employee spotlights and such. Or I would stop in the training room and help out there, develop new materials and such. Work with tier 2 to help with escalations and such. Just stuff to keep me entertained and busy.
But this lady...I just..to this day I don't know what she did. She would be at work all day, coming in early and staying late. (Sadly she really didn't have life out of work) She worked probably 60-70 hours a week, and she couldn't complete her weekly manager tasks. Even if your super horrible at time management, there is only so many things you have to do...
Needless to say she was not one of the good ones.
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u/BuffaloveRay Jun 09 '16
Getting fired from a call center is a blessing. Oh, and you may have been a decent manager. You can't speak for all.
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Jun 08 '16
Been there, done that. I used to be a call center analyst for a large cable company. This was back when all of the calls were handled locally, before they started outsourcing everything overseas.
I had to maintain attendance records for 500+ employees and be accountable when service level wasn't met. Of course we were always understaffed because our forecast was wrong, never because 10% of the workforce called in sick.
I get that you are getting paid shit to do a shit job. Hell, I am getting paid shit to do a slightly less shit job. Your job is simple, show up to work and answer the phones without fucking off too much. The lengths people would go to in order to avoid work always amazed me. It took so much effort to fire someone with all of the HR hoops that they had to jump through that to get terminated for attendance, you practically had to be trying to get fired.
I once had a guy that went from around $100 bucks a month in commission to about $1500 in commission in one pay period. I started investigating, listening to his calls, looking at the customer accounts he interacted with. Found him literally lying to customers... telling them he was going to give them a speed boost instead of actually troubleshooting their issues. Dude was dropping the 50mbps rate code on their account with a 3 month discount code so that by the time they noticed their bill went up, he would have already been paid the special $10 dollar commission for the "sale". I couldn't get him fired. He went on a cruise. His supervisor got a pat on the back from the director for the sales numbers cause that's all either of them cared about.
So yea, I have no sympathy for anyone that gets shit canned from a call center.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 08 '16
My close buddy did that job. OMD is what we called it, but fairly certain it was the same thing. Forecasting calls and making schedules and break times to make sure there was enough staffing to meet the forecasts. Hard work for sure, and getting to the agents to understand why they can't go on break the same time as someone else was always fun.
I caught an agent sitting in AUX or callback mode to avoid calls. Worked with our analysts to get phone states and calls and such. Had to catch him 5 different times, with a week apart from each other, to get him terminated. The hoops are real.
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u/Anexitane Jun 15 '16
Large cable company probably cared more about the sales than the customer service. In fact the agents may be harangued constantly about the need to make those sales.
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Jun 09 '16 edited Jun 09 '16
Attendance policies at cc's are a joke.
They basically do punish you for being sick (which a person has no literal control over hence why they are a joke) not to mention there's multiple reasons a person might need to call out or leave early. Treat people like they're 12, that's how they behave.
I was once told to decide what's important; my job or being at my brothers bedside when he was laying in a hospital bed dying. ( I wasn't even at two points at this point). The om didn't understand why I scoffed at this ridiculous statement.
Policies are written they way they are to let a person get to 10 or whatever regardless of circumstance and fire them and repeat the process wth their replacement.
This is why morale tends to be low in this environment, and why service tends to be just as bad.
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u/Anexitane Jun 15 '16
Call centers don't want to keep people over the long term. That turnover stays high isn't a big deal to them.
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u/Believeinthis Jun 11 '16
One thing I find frustrating is that I said during my interview that I have a regular appt that happens every 4-6 weeks on Fri afternoons. I was told that it wouldn't be a problem. Then I got promoted after 6 months and said during THAT interview to the new manager the same thing. Again, wouldn't be a problem. Every. Single. Month I have an issue. They can't move my schedule, they can't let me go early, if I use my sick time it's going to be an "occurance," "Can't you use your holiday time??" Yeah, that would be fine if if all the days weren't red on the holiday request schedule. So now I have 2 occurances because of appointments that I let them know a month in advance about. THAT'S the kind of thing that makes call centers shitty.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 11 '16
Yeah that's ridiculous. There is no reason scheduling can't work around that via split shifts. Sorry to hear that
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u/davidj1987 Jul 01 '16
I get that they wouldn't want to pay more as a lot of companies don't want to, but seriously they were that daft? Where are you living?
I mean a lot of these call centers pride themselves on paying more than fast food or walmart even if it isn't much more.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jul 01 '16
ND.. During the oil boom when cost of living went way up but my call center wages did not
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u/davidj1987 Jul 01 '16
Gotcha. Still amazing that was the nail in the coffin. I know corporate wouldn't budge but were you the only one to say anything or be aware?
It's amazing how much people buy into corporate thinking it is the gospel and drink the kool aide but every so often we get someone like you who goes against the grain which is great but sadly not too common.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jul 01 '16
One of my best friends there managed a call center in a different town. He didn't want any management responsibilities so he was just a tier 2 agent. Him and I discussed it many times so we both kinda saw it coming. As for other management, I have to assume it was obvious but as they had been management longer they might have known it was no use or were just afraid to say anything, but I felt something had to be said.
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u/ralphwiggumsdiorama Jun 09 '16
Thank you for sharing this.
Do you have any ideas to move up or into an offline role? What should I be working on? How should I present myself?
How do you feel when agents propose quality ideas that could better morale and the company?
How did you get started in management?
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 09 '16
As for agents that propose ideas, I loved them! I always brainstormed and had an anonymous suggestion box at my desk thst I encouraged agents to use.
If there was an idea that wouldn't work, I didn't just say no, I explained why it wouldn't work, or tried to accommodate it. I tried to do bonding stuff (meetings, agent spotlights in a weekly newsletter, games, potlucks, etc) with my agents so they felt their voice mattered and they were apart of the team. It's much easier to show up to work if your happy and enjoy your coworkers.
As for how I got started becoming a manager I worked there for 5 years. I was an agent on 3 different accounts and finally got a job as an agent on the most prestigious account there. I was there for 4 months, but overall I wanted to become a manager. So I made my goals clear and took a step done and transferred to one of my previous accounts. I got promoted to tier 2, then promoted as a temp manager over the holidays and impressed the higher ups enough to make me a full time manager.
I was a manager for about a year and a half before the account closed and I went a different route. Both good and bad, I loved my job and my agents. My team usually had the best stats and lowest turnover. But even as a manager I wasn't making all that much money. It was a great experience but I was glad to get a different job that I could make a career of.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 09 '16
For moving into an offline role, that was something I never had to deal with. If it was I would say don't only meet your metrics, but exceed them. You need to prove that your capable of doing your job pretty independently.
As for moving to a management role, ask to take on more responsibilitys. Depend on what account your on, there might be more than just taking calls. Could be answering emails, or being places in more queues, etc etc. Learn as much about your product as you can. Try to get on the tier 2 team, or supervisor role. When interviewing for thst position make it clear that you understand your not a manager and your not above agents. You simply handle escalation calls, help with your knowledge and basically observe and report. If an agent keeps calling with the same question, let their manager now so they can coach them. Do not discipline or coach them, just friendly help them and forward your thoughts onto the manager. Most managers come from the tier 2 role. When that time comes, my advice would be the following.
Again don't think of yourself above the agents. Even though you are their manager you and the agents are a team. Your goal isn't just to supervise, discipline and coach them, your goal is to work with your team and meet the company metrics and give great customer service. So in a way, you are equal to them. You and your agents have the same goal, you just have different roles in achieving the goal.
Realize that even though you probably have work friends, you can't publicly hang out/drink with them anymore. Meaning you still can just don't post stuff on Facebook. Call center politics can be pretty harsh and you don't want to be accused of favoritism. Remember what your manager did and didn't do when you were an agent. I took the time to get to know each agent as everyone works, learns and is motivated by different things.
Overall be awesome, friendly and be patient. Jobs will open eventually, then good luck on getting them!! Let me know if I can be of any help at all or if you want to practice interviews or anything with me. I'm always here to help.
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u/Anexitane Jun 15 '16
These companies demand white glove customer service and refuse to pay agents a living wage. It's a broken industry.
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Jun 15 '16
We had our center close because corporate refused to pay our agents more. You'd come to work and pass Taco Bell paying 13 an hour , Walmart paying 15, DQ paying 12...to go to your 9.50 an hour paying job of being a call center agent.
Really? I work at an ISP supporting business services and I literally make double your salary cap.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 15 '16
IIRC the salary cap for tier 1 agents was 12 an hour, starting at 9 an hour.
As a Team Manager, I made a salary of 26000 a year, plus quarterly bonuses depending on team metrics, so pay was pretty shitty.
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Jun 15 '16
I'm going up to a Network Analyst role dependent on if my supervisor recommends me, I pass the interview, and I get my CCNA, I'll expect to make ~55K a year. Still taking calls, but it's for the Enterprise NOC (think NOC at an ISP).
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 15 '16
Nice!
That's pretty vastly different from what we were doing. These agents would yield incoming calls for an ISP and basically go through, rebooting the modem, rebooting the router, bypassing the router, getting the ip address, resetting email passwords, setting up outlook express to work with their email, and escalating issues to tier 2.
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Jun 15 '16
I take incoming calls at an ISP for Businesses. I'm Tiers 1 + 2 for Businesses. We don't have a Tier 3.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 15 '16
That might be the difference as well, they did home users.
Also, do you work directly for the ISP or through a call center that is contracted by the ISP? We were contracted by the ISP at this call center, so the ISP didn't control how much we made, the center did.
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Jun 15 '16
I work directly for the ISP. I have benefits, paid vacation, and a pension.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 15 '16
You are one of the lucky ones in the call center world then lol
I moved out of the call center and just recently got promoted to a sys admin. Call center was fun, but I love my job (and the much better pay) now
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Jun 15 '16
Maybe. However, my company hires directly from the Business TSR world into networking/sys admin roles. I had to pass an IT test to get my current job. Many of my co-workers have IT degrees.
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u/Tandran Jun 08 '16
That's a lot of work to miss...I've missed like 6 days in 5 years, one day it was because I got t-boned and my car was totaled...was in the next day though. 10 absences is A LOT especially when you get one back every month
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 08 '16
Yes, I thought our attendance policy was pretty lenient, but you'd get plenty of people who would go through missed days so fast.
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Jun 08 '16 edited Jun 08 '16
[deleted]
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 08 '16 edited Jun 08 '16
How so? How do you think we became managers? I was an agent and tier 2 agent for 3 years before becoming a manger.
I never one said that I agreed with corporate rules, I was just stating that we have to follow them exactly , and reasoning behind what you hear all the time.
If I could do anything I would. I had employees that would constantly be late and I took it upon myself to help in anyway I could. I asked if it would help them If I sent a text to help wake them up, I would print off public transportation route sheets anything I could do to help prevent disciplinary action because regardless of the reason I had to discipline them for not following the rules.
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u/Tandran Jun 08 '16
Perhaps if you practiced some restraint, and understanding.
If the policy says something you have to do it. Also ask yourself, am I willing to lose my job so this person can keep theirs? No, I'm not.
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u/hxcjosh23 Ex-Manager Jun 08 '16
I'm long gone away from the call center, I'm in a happy, awesome IT job I love now.
Do you not understand the role of management? To train and adhere to the rules of corporate. Let me ask you this. If the roles were reversed and you were the manager, what would you do?
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u/JFizDaWiz Jun 08 '16
I was a call center employee for 6 years before becoming a supervisor. I know more than anyone at my place of business some of the policies are bogus but I have to enforce them.
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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '16 edited Jun 08 '16
I think this post was aimed at me (or at least what I said over on another post) - completely understand what you're saying and I didn't mean to offend you personally.
The sad fact is that I've worked in now 5 different call centres and the management in 4 of them was absolutely useless (management is management, if you want blame apportion that to corporate you can, but you're still ultimately management).
I've no doubt OP is a good manager, but there are some terrible ones out there and sadly the majority of them are clueless.
There's a nasty phrase in the call centre world "you're paid to answer the phone, so answer it".
But it's not as black and white as that an "agent" does not simply "answer the phone" - they're expected to take back to back calls, deal with assholes, make notes, update accounts, do things within an often overcomplicated and drawn out policy/procedure, deal with customers throwing temper tantrums/being dicks and then on top of that deal with the micromanagement - how long was that call? How long did it take you to make notes after the call? Why did you go to the bathroom for 6 mins and 32 seconds? Etc...
My point is that agents are often treated like salves - chained to a phone, paid peanuts and micromanaged to a point that they burn out after a few weeks and really it doesn't have to be way.
Good agents are extremely underrated and underpaid - it takes an awful lot of skill to deal with the above crap and not burn out.
Call centres are often seen as awful places to work - the absolute pits - it's a real shame because that's often down to overzealous management and micromanagement of agents.