Call Center jobs

[MattGSX]

Does anyone else have a call center job? I'm thinking especially tech support/order entry/customer service reps for medium/large sized companies.

If you don't, or if you haven't, then you probably should at least once. It seems foolish, but until you have to spend 45 minutes on the phone with some kid that has a sheet full of stolen card numbers, you don't realize how foolish it is.

You also start to hate your co-workers. You hate them with a passion. I thought retail was bad, and I thought food service was bad, but this takes the cake. I'm stuck with confused old people all day now between the non-traditional students and the middle aged people in "tech" jobs that ask pointless questions and take forever to complete the simplest of processes.

That having been said, I find myself drawing comics all the time while I'm at work. Between a co-worker I don't hate, my brother, and mysef, we have accumulated a good 9 strips and several comic-style comic book covers. I was wondering if anyone else does stuff like this, and, if they do, if they've posted any of it?

[rbcp]

I did internet tech support from my home for a few weeks.  I figured it'd be easy and it was.  But yeah, trying to get these old people who don't understand how to do the simplest keystrokes was maddening.  A simple 5 minute process could take an hour for them to complete.  I only worked in the evenings.  I can't imagine doing that for 40 hours a week.  I wouldn't have lasted very long at it.

[.]

I'm in the Call centre business from many years now and I must say that I love it; you just need to pick the right company.
It is also true that (no racism intended) the Americans customers aren't very helpful, that's why I always work within the UK and Europe. It's the easiest thing, you always for work 8 hours, have your own breaks, learn loads of languages interact with people, damn! The only more cool thing I tried was to be a Bartender and that ended when I've got married :s

full stop.

[mofo]

I worked in Tech Support for Comcast for a year and some change. One of the worst jobs ever. Was so stressful, management made us support more stuff and raised our phone stats (average call length, hold times, ect), took away incentive programs, not to mention everyone that worked there was odd in some way except a few friends. Like RBCP said, getting some idiot to type in a few keystrokes can be like trying to diagnose brain cancer with a pointy stick. If you are looking for a temp job, it might be right for you. But its very stressful. Just my thought 

[MattGSX]

Well, I'm glad to see I'm not crazy, then. I was afraid that everyone here would have some sort of hard-on for phone jobs because of the opportunity to exploit your business, but it's wonderful to know I'm not the only person who seperates work and play. Arbie, I'm sure you probably didn't, but whatever.

PS: Anyone who has kids should make sure they don't become music majors. It's more work than anyone could ever imagine. I know that's a random thought, but I'm taking a break from practicing by working on some obscure music theory based on the Fibonacci sequence. What the shit???

[linear]

anyone who thinks a call center job is worse than retail, or esp. food services, must be joking.

been working in a call center for over three years now.

(no longer really on the phones much now however, after the first 2 years)

[linear]

... not to say that being on the phones isn't stressful and frustrating!

it sucks, as any job will, but no way in hell i'd go back to retail. jesus christ, no.

[MattGSX]

I didn't mind retail, but that was just because I actually had some decent co-workers, I wasn't stuck up front that much, I could take 45 minutes to assemble a chair and nobody would notice, I could sometimes nap on the office furniture, and I could come in to work as hung over as I wanted. Now I can't even close my eyes and call forcasting is terrible. Last night, on a Tuesday evening (which is typically slow) we had at least 15-20 people queing at all times, which put the minimal hold time at like 4-5 minutes for cust service (which I am), so already frustrated people were getting on the phone fucking berzerk. Oh, yeah, we were also having server issues so the only thing we could run were the main station terminals (emulated with Powerterm) and the local intranet (which has about dick as far as useful info goes.)

Maybe I dislike it more because at night, when there are fewer unresolved issues, I'm stuck taking incoming orders, and most people that call our company seem to assume all operators are there becuase they simply can't get a better job and will never do anything else.

[linear]

i used to work at an office supply store to, before going to this call center!@@#

OMG TWINSIES My own mediocre attempt at humor has been highly amusing to myself. ROFLW#@#%&^@$^

uh, excuse me.

anyway, the people I worked with were great at the office place and all, but the customers were 300 times worse. taking forever assembling a chair is great, but telling the 60th customer that day that the envelopes are under the big sign that says Envelopes makes me want to kill. Similar stupid questions are asked on the phone, sure, but i dunno. I'm more in control of the situation.

And now, instead of coming in hungover to the office supply place, i come in drunk to the call center.

[MattGSX]

That's where we differ. I live in an area where supply of unskilled employees far exceeds the demand, so they churn and burn people like you wouldn't believe.
Also, as one of the largest catalog/web based footwear and apparel companies, we get all sorts of crazies. I used to think Nigerian relay scams were amusing until I had to take the same call 3 times and eventually got in trouble for disconnecting the call because quality assurance didn't have record of the previous times the person had called.

[.]

wanna hear about frustration? I worked troubleshooting proxies with "wannabe IT" guys and it was a pain in the ass, now on I'm doing basically the same but with routers and laptops and believe me neither the product's quality nor the customer’s skills helps me for anything.
I still love my job though, it gives me the chance to travel a lot and I'm getting money just to talk about computers, isn't that great?

.

[badakku]

Try explaining to a clueless service rep how to troubleshoot a problem for a clueless customer. Lots of fun there. /sarcasm

[.]

Try explaining to a clueless service rep how to troubleshoot a problem for a clueless customer. Lots of fun there. /sarcasm

I think I need some extra explanation, where is the sarcasm there?

[rbcp]

Try explaining to a clueless service rep how to troubleshoot a problem for a clueless customer. Lots of fun there. /sarcasm

I think I need some extra explanation, where is the sarcasm there?

Here let me help you:  "LOTS of fun THERE."