Being made to cover call centre at work.

I’ve had to do this before and ended up enjoying it! I made sure I was properly trained first though. It was nice to speak to customers and be thanked for helping them. It was an ‘easy’ break from my day-to-day job. I hardly got any difficult calls, maybe because I had the knowledge to help?

I work for a Building Society so shouldn’t be too different to bank customers. Why are they being abusive? I certainly wouldn’t let them upset you. Can’t you terminate calls - we’re allowed to terminate if they’re being abusive/sweary.

Ah okay fair enough!
In one of my old workplaces, it was always women who had to cover the reception/ phones despite men being available too.

If it’s anything like my work, most people sit on the side of being just abusive enough to be annoying but not enough to be cut off

Lots of sarcasm “thanks SO much for not helping, I need your name so I can make it clear on the Google review about how incompetent you are” (translation you asked me for an appointment and I don’t have one for 3 days therefore I am useless)
Stuff about how useless/incompetent you are/the company is/
Speaking to you as if you are thick
Sighing/huffing at everything you say
being pissed off if you ask them to repeat something despite them sounding like they’re on a Nokia stood under a railway bridge
Demanding management for a simple query
Refusing to speak to me because I’m female and they need a man to deal with their query
Ringing to ask something then when given the answer saying “are you sure?’

I could go on!

Can you remind people that all calls are recorded and if they continue to be abusive you will terminate the conversation and do it?

I imagine the CC has a high level of staff turnover and are struggling to cope with the volume of calls.At our place the management team never understand the impact of new systems and procedures upon the CC.The service is at breaking point.Its only temporary though and you’ll soon be back in your normal job role.Needs of the business covers a multitude of sins.

We have the same at our company now and again. The CC gets really busy and it’s all hands on deck. I hate it as I’m not trained to do it but you have to do what’s required I guess

Every time you return from a stint in the CC, come up with a written business proposal/your observations/useful feedback for discussion. They’ll soon get fed up with your overeagerness and stop sending you there.

I used to work in a company where everybody, from low level employee to high level Manager had to spend a week working the call center lines. There is no better way to learn about your business needs then talking directly with the customer. Also skills like resilience, conflict resolution, etc. are certainly important for every part of business. It also seems that your manager sees being available for customer requests as more urgent than other work that you do.
(and honestly it often is).

Have you ever worked in a customer facing role OP?

If you are smart you take every feedback you get from customers and transform it into business proposals. That way you show initiative and also show that you don't see other work as beneath you.

I would absolutely hate having to do CC work. It's not beneath me, it's just a job I have absolutely no interest in & don't like talking on phones much. However give me a project to get stuck into and I'll have it singing and whistling in no time. It's not "entitled" to know your own strengths and want to work with them. I left a job years ago as they wanted me to start to process shipping files to help out an area rather than hire someone to do the job as a proper backup solution. The job bored me silly & demotivated me. I could see what was happening was that they were waiting for me to be competent in the role and it would have been more regular work. I requested not to do the role, they kept making noise about sorting out the situation but did nothing. I got another job and left. You don't have to do a job just because it suits the company

I’m not sure why some of the previous posts have been deleted for “breaking talk guidelines”: they have quite literally just been asking what other work OP had seen come in, and who was going to be doing it instead of her whilst she was in the call centre 🙃

How large is the organisation, how senior are you, and how are these requests being pitched? Usually at senior level, you’ll be defining and managing your own workload and be generating your own path through it. My top manager will sometimes ask me if I have any spare capacity to cover e.g. minuting an ExCo or doing some due diligence admin because the business support team are all on leave or off sick, and sometimes I will say yes, but usually I will say that I don’t have that capacity, because I don’t. If you’d seen other work come in that was within your remit that you could make a start at, that would be your response.

If it’s the case that there is currently no other work for you to do, you aren’t generating your own projects, have spare capacity, and your contract includes a reference to “undertaking other reasonable tasks as required” or the like, then it doesn’t sound unreasonable for them to ask you to provide cover if the alternative is you are going to be sitting around doing nothing. But that sounds like an unusual position for somebody senior to be in in the first place, and also sounds like a poor structure. You need to raise this with your managers.

It’s hardly entitled not to want to do a job you didn’t apply for, aren’t employed to do and don’t want to do either. Presumably there are quite a few people who also don’t want to deal with horrible callers every day, hence the staff shortages in the first place. What if no one wants to do those jobs - should passers-by be press ganged in the street?

Doesn’t CC work come with a different set of skills? We have CCs at our company and I’ve shadowed them, I wouldn’t be able to step into their shoes.

This was what I was wondering.

I assume this is the current civil service call centre issue (without giving too much away)? In which case OP surely you know you are not exactly alone! I have even seen several threads about it on here over the last couple of weeks.

My understanding is that it is an “all hands to the pumps” situation and is only expected to last a month or so. You just need to suck it up if you can. It’s very much a “not about you” situation.

How entitled. What makes you above handling calls? The callers are horrible?

What about the people who deal with those horrible callers all day every day for less money?

Bet they don’t like someone paid more covering a fraction of their work and whining about it.

Are there any men in a similar role to you and have they also been asked to cover the phones?