To think when people call a call centre theres no need to scream and shout!

YANBU I am never rude as it's never the person answering's fault. I always try to be polite, and can't understand why people should treat cc staff with such little respect. I only become a bit frustrated if they are explicitly rude to me first.

TheHorseDentist - I totally agree. The systems and rules in place in some companies are surely there to make as many people as possible give up and tolerate whatever the problem is rather than persevere.
Even within one company Lloyds it appears that there are departments which are set up with the specific objective of breaking you so you can't address the issue you have but if you know the secret route (which changes dependent on the day and the direction of the wind) the service can be excellent.

Usually by the time you DO get through you are in the mood to commit murder let alone scream, shout and swear. Man's worst invention are call centres - especially the ones where the accent is so thick I can't understand anything past "my name is Mike" - yeah, right!

I worked in a call centre while I was at Uni To be honest if people are constantly screaming and shouting at you, then you're probably not doing your job properly. If it's happening to you regularly then you probably need to think about how your attitude is coming across to customers. You don't seem to have an awful lot of respect for them.

People do ring up and are upset but it's generally borne out of frustration and all they really want is someone to solve their problem. If you're polite and do your best to help them then they almost always calm down.

We had people like that in the call centre I worked at, they were constantly complaining that they got loads of nasty customers, but what was actually happening was they were getting customers who were upset and they just made the situation worse with their attitude, they just thought customers were a pain in the arse and customers could tell. Other people would be getting the same customers but never having those kind of problems because they were capable of empathising with their customers and genuinely wanted to help them and provide a good service.

YANBU I work in a call centre and people are very rude and becuase I sound very young, customers patronise me a lot. Which I hate.

The thing that winds me up more than anything though is when a woman calls with a complaint, you explain the resolution and of she's not happy she puts her boyfriend/husband on to have a go. So you have to repeat the same conversation, the man goes crazy if you don't give in and all the while you know you aren't going to get your target that day!

I think people are like that in real life. Why do you think hospital and school receptions have bars?

Well I used to be that level one muppet niceguy2 and quite often was subject to the line "I'm an engineer/I.T specialist/rocket scientist etc" and I would get that sick feeling because without fail they would try and trip me up and didnt they just let me know that they were so much smarter than me.

I always wanted to put the call straight through to the next department but they would never accept it because we hadn't gone through the basics at level one. It was so stupid and the calls were listened to by managers so I couldn't even pretend to have gone through the steps to make the call quicker for guys like you. I lasted 3 months at sky. Terrible system and I no longer feel dread at going to work every day now,.

After 10 visits in a week to (not) repair a faulty gas fire that cut out the central heating as well when it didn't work, I was advised by the tenth gas man to scream and shout if it went wrong again. Sorry to say, it worked.
And I will lose my temper when the person answering the phone has a thick accent and I cannot understand what they say; the job is about communication and if they cannot speak clearly and comprehensibly, they should not be doing it.

I also work in a call center. Our customers don't scream or shout at my staff because they do an excellent job and offer great service that goes the extra mile.

Perhaps if the majority of call centre staff could offer the same level of service then there would be no need to shout.... I'm Looking at you eon/ sky/ bt/ british gas/ 3 mobile/ O2!

Never have but my 6 months of hell of bt and being passed from one department to another just to get my broadband to work... And that music in between each time...

Did call centre work once for about 3 weeks, every time someone started being abusive I would hang up. Then one day I had enough and walked out.
Also did this with the management's blessing while working at a GP surgery.
Most of the time the call centre handler is the middleman and can't actually deal directly with the problem. They're usually on minimum wage and are totally hamstrung by the company rules.
Screaming and shouting at them might make you feel better but there is a real person on the other end of the line who has to go home every night thinking that they have to put up with the same shit the following day.

I've found that if you shout at the bt call centre staff based i some far flung place they escalate your complaint to someone else and actually fix your broadband. This came from many hours of fustrating phone calls.

I will confess to having screamed/shouted at call centre staff on 3 occasions (over a period of around 10 years)

First one was after my breakdown company didn't come out to me. I phoned and asked where they were, they said they had been out, couldn't find me so phoned and had no answer, and cancelled the call out. On further investigation, they had phoned my landline number when I clearly wasn't at home and had given my mobile number to the call centre staff.

The other 2 occasions were similar tales of not being listened to. In each instance, once I had calmed down I apologised to the staff.

So to answer your question, I didn't expect to actually achieve anything by shouting, I was just incredibly frustrated and felt like I wasn't being listened to.

No, they don't but the service you receive sometimes, after having been on hold for ages, must make even the most reasonable people need to let off steam.

It's not fault of the poor person on the phone but service from a lot of "servicelines" is absolutely appalling. Add an element of stress like, a bank account being emptied in error, having no gas for 2 days or an insurance claim not going well and a staff member who appears unable/unwilling to help and won't try and find someone who can, it's not surprising people sometimes shout. They're at the end of their tether.

I agree, there are rude beggars everywhere though.
Today I had to queue for ages in the bank as ALL of the paying in/cash machines were out of order and they only had 2 cashiers on. Frustrating but you either choose to wait or leave and come another time. The number of people I heard being rude was unreal. the cashiers kept explaining it was lunchtime, it was a Monday, it was the end of the month, all contributing to it being a busy time - and the machines were on the blink and their colleagues had phoned in sick. They were going as fast as they could and bearing the brunt of everyones frustration.

To a certain extent I agree with you. I work a lot with call centres and have set many up in India & other far flung places. The general impression that a lot of these call centre workers get is that westerner's are rude. Not a surprise given what they hear day after day.

Often the problems aren't just language but the workers are hamstrung by stupid rules and poor IT systems.

That said.....as a customer they're fucking AWFUL. Too many companies have lost sight of the fact it is your customers calling you and instead look at only the stats.

So they micromanage things like average call handling time, time to answer, how many staff you have on available etc and about two dozen other stats.

But seldom does 'customer experience' come into it.

Honestly usually by the time I've got through to a human being after listening for an hour of music with voice over every thirty seconds of how important my call is to them, I'm ready to scream! Then add on top the fact that as an IT professional I know way more than the poor level 1 muppet trying to 'help' me with suggestions like turning off my router. As much as I'm ashamed to admit it, I have several times screamed "Do you know who I am and what I do!?!?!"