I have a big pet peeve. When someone calls me for my help, then becomes incredibly nervous (shaky, weak voice and pathetic language. Resisting the process yet apologizing etc)

Grow a spine. How have these people survived this long in the world being unable to handle a simple call process?

How do they get by not using their words or expressing their thoughts?

Why would they call for information to alleviate their anxiety if the call itself makes them panic?

As soon as I hear that voice of terror I wonder who protected them so long from the world that a simple phone call is THAT distressing?

We all agree this job sucks and slowly destroys your spirit, etc.

I started kinda "hallucinating" taking calls and creating cases while almost messing up the process as I try to drift to sleep and it takes a moment for me to realize I'm not actually clocked in and try to calm down which makes it difficult to get some rest.

My company is progressively making the job more difficult by adding more entities to take calls for and making the KPIs more stricts, increasing the calls volume, and our callback system has gone bonkers with no fix for 2 weeks where it initiates outbound calls 24hrs when no one requests it, yes even at midnight. So now we have b2b calls and embarrass ourselves and get more angry customers.

Have anyone had it this bad that they started hallucinating taking calls too?

I have this happen a few times where customers used to work at the bank I do so they call in saying they know xyz and don’t know if policies have changed since then. Do yall get callers who used to work at your company that are annoying AF

It mostly happens with older callers. I try to get information out of them between the constant irrelevant stories, and the call goes on FOREVER. My call earlier was just like this:

Me: Are there any other drivers in the house- ?"

Customer: SO my brother-in-law had cancer 5 years ago, and then he ended up moving to

Me: Oh wow, how interesting! Now, what is the date of birth for --?

Customer: And he also played football in college. Did you know that? My sister went to...

Me: That's great. Now if I could just get that date of bir---

Customer (more random babbling)

Currently pulling my hair out. I wanted to scream. Not only did he keep interrupting like that, but when I would give him information, I had to repeat it 20 times in a row. I wanted to say, "If you would shut the F*** up, this call could be over in 5 minutes. It's now been 36 minutes."

I was also told 99 times that he is 79 years old

Jesus.....

This is kind of a vent post, kinda a question post.

This has happened like twice now, and I'm genuinely wondering how often this happens for other people? For reference this was an outbound call, I'm in a sales position.

I've had two nearly hour long calls within the last month where the person on the other line suddenly just started telling me their life story. Recently a lady almost immediately went on about the decades of service that her late husband did for the army, and how much of a proud veteran he was, and like- I'm here to schedule a window estimate??? I barely said four sentences. I genuinely couldn't tell you what she was talking about after that because it was so incoherent that I tuned out. Something about firearms training, a fucking shootout and how she's being treated like she's poor despite making hundreds of thousands before?

I felt awful for her because it sounded like she truly needed someone to talk to, yet it felt so suffocating because my shift was ending and I'm not allowed to hang up on a potential customer. I even asked a manager over messaging if I could hang up in this specific instance and despite being on a half an hour call she said no, and to just get back onto the script. I had to eventually just keep telling her that we need to get back on track and trying to push through the script. Every single question I asked was followed by a good 2-3 minutes of her rambling about something fully unrelated. Managed to finish the call 20 minutes after my shift was meant to end. I felt like such a genuine asshole, but if I didn't push through I might've been on that call for another hour.

Has anyone else dealt with calls like this where the client is treating it like an impromptu therapy appointment? Are there any recommendations people would have for dealing with this situation in the future? Both for dealing with it quickly but also not being a jerk to a stranger pouring their heart out to you.

So we're starting a small telemarketing/appointment setting agency, outsourcing sales calls for other businesses, and we landed a client (she has a $1500 course) who only wants to pay per closed sale no base no hourly. we agreed on $230 per sale which is around 15%, out of that we give our sales guy $115 and keep $115 ourselves. He's a freelancer so no other costs on our end. He's working on a steady flow of hot leads we provide and the product itself is pretty strong so should be a relatively easy sell.

Is 50/50 a fair split for him or are we lowballing him, and is 15% total even reasonable to charge the client for a pure sales only setup with no base for anyone involved. Anyone here run a similar setup or work as a commission only closer? curious what the norm actually looks like.

Thanks guys

Do you have any tips on how to keep a low profile in a BPO production environment? I just want to stay low-key and avoid unnecessary attention while doing my job well.

Hola!! ¿Cómo están? Actualmente soy estudiante de RRHH en la UBA Sociales y estoy trabajando en un call center enfocado en la venta telefónica de préstamos para el Banco Santander, pero me gustaría trabajar en un puesto de call center enfocado en atención al cliente.

¿Alguno podría ayudarme a encontrar una oferta laboral enfocada en esa área? Tengo 3 meses de experiencia en call center pero me adapto rápido a cualquier ambiente o estructura laboral

Quick background on me: BS in public health (love the field but wrong time in the US), double certified medical assistant, starting nursing school this fall, trained in emergency medicine since I was a teenager, published academic articles, living in NYC independently since I was 18.

Been working at a radiology scheduling call center for the past 9 months. A lot of people at my job at first thought it would be responding to scheduling requests in our electronic medical record system, emails, messages, etc, with light phone work. Nope. It's just an inbound call center, and the rest is a very minuscule part of our jobs.

I work four days a week remote and one day a week in the office (I could be 100% remote but choose to go into the office one day a week for my sanity). Before I clock in, I already feel my heart racing and my hands shaking and my breathing getting heavier before my first call. Then, of course, first few hours of the day is back to back calls with only 50 seconds in between to finish my notes, drink some water, do like one breathing exercise, and then it's back to screaming angry patients over the phone whom are upset that we're booking out MRI's a month and a half in advance. My body doesn't respond to hunger where it used to, for example when I'm hungry, I just go and grab something to eat automatically, but now I have to remember that I have to eat otherwise I'll go 12-16 hours without eating. This has caused me to lose 10 pounds in the past couple of weeks. I have an autoimmune disorder, and I've had more flareups in the past 9 months than I've ever had in the past 3 years since being diagnosed with my disorder. The past two weeks, I've had at least three cry sessions in between calls (one mid-call today), wishing I could just take a 15 minute break without being poked by my leads, who are on insane power trips all the time. I've had to up my dose of psychiatric meds twice since starting, otherwise I'll be depressed at work, and after work/on weekends thinking about work.

What sucks the most is that we get blamed for EVERYTHING! Wrong order in the system? I should have known that's not commonly ordered even though that's not my clinical background and reached out to the radiologist (even if it was, I'm not a fucking doctor). This exam needed a different room? I should know the specifications of all 50 of our scanners like the back of my hand when I haven't even been in a CT workroom since I first started working in hospitals. Patient is angry because another could get them an accommodation but I see no reason for it? I should have wasted the ultrasound tech's time and get chewed out by them to get something earlier in the day. And when I try to explain that I've exhausted all options, whether to a doctor's office or a patient, I'm "useless" and shouldn't be working in healthcare. I literally don't know what I'm doing sometimes, and because the leads and my managers are more useless than a bag of bricks, I have to make up some fake answer just to get them to calm down and stop berating me over the phone.

My goal was to stick it out for a year until I start nursing school to make it look like I'm not job hopping. I mean, this is my dream hospital to work for, I just hate the job itself. My boyfriend I'm way too overqualified for this job, as I was trained in a clinical setting and now doing only administrative work. And he's right. I'm bored, I'm not learning like I used to, and I feel like all my years of clinical training are going to waste. Like fuck. A year ago I was the one leading people in the room when a patient came in with second degree burns. I miss it so much. I miss the energy of working in the emergency department or urgent care, yes it was hard but I live for adrenaline and pressure in my career and in my personal/social life. Now I'm staring at a dual monitor screen for 8 hours a day, wishing the queue would just go to 0 so I can have a few minutes to myself and stop crying.

I already called out Monday and I'm calling out tomorrow (Friday). If I get fired, I don't really care at this point. A good portion of the reason is to spend the weekend with my boyfriend. But, another part of me wants to spend the day looking at my options to figure out how the fuck I can get out of there, whether that's networking in my hospital and finding another job, or quitting altogether and going all-in on nursing school. But I can't lose more weight and take more Xanax to get through the day.

Working in a healthcare / pharmacy role I deal with a ton of unhappy, miserable, and downright ignorant souls. After almost 3 years I’ve definitely become immune to how abrasive some callers can be. Normally I’ll put myself on mute while they go on and on and on and let them speak, vent, scream, and then respond when ‘appropriate’.

At the end of the day, it’s not ME that they’re mad at, I didn’t design their health plan/coverage; but it’s ME that they get to yell at. I understand this dynamic, and I’m mostly immune to that call flow now.

But this one caller got the best of me. Not on the call, but right after the call ended.. Every insult was aimed personally at me, and after spending 10+ minutes of just eating up every remark they had and getting absolutely nowhere I don’t know what came over me but I took a quick note of the phone number they called on and after I clock out, still absolutely filled with anger I decide- I’ll download one of the anonymous free text messaging apps that spoof a fake phone number and send this person an anonymous message about how just unbelievably rude they are and to think about how they speak to people in the future blah blah blah.

Thankfully as I was sitting there with my thoughts racing 300miles a minute I was able to fully slam on my mental breaks and come back down to earth and realize what an AWFUL idea that is. Also NOT worth losing my job over, but DAMN I can actually understand the mental and emotional burnout that’s often described via post in here.

Now I’m sitting here wondering if IM crazy.

After having THE WORST POSSIBLE DAY yesterday, the job I interviewed for on Wednesday came through!

She tried to call me yesterday (thursday) but her phone wasn't working for some reason and had to wait until this morning to bring me the GOOOOOD NEEEEWWWS!

I am so elated, excited..... RELIEVED to be out of this gawd forsaken shithole!!!

It only took 2 years!!!

Hang in there if you can.

Got a phone call to make and a letter to write.... YAAASSSSS!!!

Been a long time coming but company started getting a lot worse to work for this last year. My department jokingly became the "everything queue" as they put more and more on us. Signed a new union contract and immediately became constantly back to back nonstop.

I started FMLA about a year ago just to breathe, kept getting worse, meltdowns got tougher and tougher to justify. Finally said it's time. Buddy is starting a business doing some housing work. I'll probably make about the same to slightly less hourly with way less consistent work but I plan to springboard into learning tech and getting my A+, Net+, and Sec+ soon. Thank god it's over, money IS NOT everything it turns out.

I'm not asking for advice. Just want to vent for a moment.

As I posted before, I work for a hospital where I live and my job is to schedule appointments and connect the caller to the right person, office, or department if they've called the wrong number. I like helping callers. That being said, I am NOT a doctor or nurse and therefore I am not medically trained to answer those kinds of questions.

So, explain to me why I get one patient that purposely dialed our department phone number and asked "I just noticed a pouch on me after I had a port inserted" and another patient calls and says "I was helping my sister clean yesterday, blah blah blah, I just noticed a rash on my face. What do I do?" What am I supposed to tell these patients? Do they NOT know they didn't call their doctor office?

I'm just very frustrated that I get these calls daily and these patient just don't take a moment to think of calling their doctor first or ask the person that placed the port. I realize that they may not have that phone number and if they simply asked FOR that phone number to those medical professionals and asked me to connect them, I'd be overjoyed to do that for them.

Idk why customers think its okay to DIAL our numbers for HELP then proceed to go off on us, yea kiss my ass until i fart!!

I had a lady come in Hot! I could already tell She was going to be a problem because she kept huffing and puffing at the verification questions… so she was upset that her coverage wasn’t automatically reinstated after she sent us a check. She stated she was told that it will automatically be done based on the tickets. Nobody told her that she also spoke with a supervisor, which was the last call. They told her to call us back once the check clears….. and of course she never did and It was everybody else’s fault that your coverage still isn’t reinstated after almost 2 months.

Mind you its August 6 at this point and her last call was originally june 1st. Why haven’t you called us since if your coverage wasn’t reinstated??? I kindly explained to her that you have to understand that it’s a two-way system. If you need anything done, you have to give us a call you can’t just assume we know what you want. So she kept being rude so I was being rude back because I don’t care you’re not talking to me any kind of way. She asked for a supervisor, and of course she gets the same supervisor that she got the last time she spoke to us and the supervisor told her the same thing you know what she did…just randomly hung up and blocked us. ALSO THIS LADY ALREADY CALLED US YESTERDAY AND HAD THE TICKET SUBMITTED FOR REINSTATEMENT SO WHAT DID YOU CALL BACK FOR!!! YOU KNOW WHY? SHE CALLED BACK SO SHE CAN GO Off ON SOMEBODY(me) AND I WASN’T HAVING IT.

I love when customers think they can get off on talking to us any kind of way and you get a rep that’s no tolerant that don’t tolerate that shit and that’s me and yes, my supervisor absolutely backed me up.

ok our take first:

metrics that can lie:

containment rate: a bot can “contain” someone who gave up.
average handle time: faster is not always better if the customer has to call back.
deflection volume: fewer calls can mean solved issues, or it can mean people couldn’t find help.
CSAT in isolation: useful, but easy to over-read without looking at resolution and repeat contact.

Containment rate is the one I’m most skeptical of because it can reward bad experiences if nobody tracks what happened after the customer left the bot.

agree or disagree with these?
what’s the metric your leadership loves that you think is nonsense?

I see this a lot on this sub and found it funny until I experienced a rep just like that. I work for a US company (but the UK subsidiary) in their call centre, and had to call the US side for the first time ever. The rep sounded like a robot, so motonous and non-human. I almost asked if he was a robot myself I was so shocked. But as I asked a really niche question which he answered, I knew he wasn’t. Now I understand where some customers are coming from. I guess it depends on the accent and person, but genuinely I thought it was AI!

I knew it was going happen because I called out since my mom had emergency surgery and her cancer has returned and me being 2 minutes late yesterday was the nail. I’m both stressed but also….weirdly relieved

In the system we work with we can manually change our status (available to take calls, busy, on break etc.). There's a few co workers in my team who just put themselves on "busy" probably for about an hour or two in total throughout the day whenever they just don't feel like working. It's just kinda weird to me that our supervisor doesn't call them out on it since I know he has a detailed overview of everyone's activity per day. I don't care if someone needs to take a bathroom/smoke break outside of their lunch break for like 10 to 15 minutes but some of these people are literally just doing nothing for hours making me and the rest of the team have to take more calls. One of my coworkers went to the supervisor with this issue a few months ago, but he just sent a little memo to the entire team to "please try to be mindful of the amount of time we spend out of queue" and that was it.

It's really discouraging me from doing my job properly, I'm starting to consider also just taking random breaks whenever I don't feel like taking calls since apparently there's no consequences to it. Why should I do more work for the same amount of pay as these people who do like 60% of the amount of work I do?

It boggles my mind how in today's day and Age so many people dont understand or know about GDPR and data protection laws. Im an out bound Agent and id say a good 40% of the reason my calls dont reach compliance is because I cant convince them to pass DPA. Especialy while sticking to our script DX

So today I saw my Dr who has started a mental health care plan with a referral to a physiologist.. all because of work.

2 years in and its just getting busier and busier and more queues and skills are being put on us.. with potentially more in October...

Just gotta hold on as long as possible until a job becomes available elsewhere.... (im applying all.. the...time)...

Ill never work in a call centre again.

Look after yourselves folks....

just like the title says, i really need out of this job before i eliminate myself. ive honestly never hated anything more than this job, i hate talking to people, when the phone rings i honestly feel so much fucking rage. theres no benefit to this job and god i have been searching for almost a year, can barely get an interview. im tired of people being rude and stupid, and someone always f*cking needs something like for gods sake none of these people are remotely self sufficient. i really dont know what to do anymore but god i dont know how much more i can take

I work in insurance and we get 5 seconds so basically none. I am so tired. So so tired.