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

[pennygirl26]

I work in a call centre and people are very abusive and scream and shout. Do they actually think this is going to get them anywhere?

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!?!?!"

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.

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 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.

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 fully understand when people need to let off steam and if something has gone wrong or a member of staff have lied to them or something, this doesnt bother me at all i get that.
I work for a tv phone and bb company and alot of the calls are so abusive for no reason and i think if they were speaking face to face most of these people would never be like this.
Today for example. someone called and screamed for 25 minutes on why there bill was wrong ( they hadnt viewed it just the amount) I was called a useless b and a cnt, i was told to go F myself when i answered the call. I mean c'mon there is no need for that.

Oh and just to point out the bill was correct.

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.

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...

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!

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.

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,.

i like my job. i love that i get to speak to people all day and get to find out some very interesting things.
in all honesty, if someones screaming at me or being abusive im less likely to help them, and know this is the case with 99% of people here.
I wish we had the option to hang up on people but we cant, and to be fair thats not going to resolve the situation either as they will call back.
i just dont understand why someone would call a stranger a c*nt because they made a call and couldnt remember.

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

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

I don't scream or shout on the phone to a call centre. I can however be very firm and have asked to be given to someone higher up before.

I've found that many employees do not understand enough english to work there, have such a strong accent that I can't understand them - let alone on a bad line, don't listen to what I am actually saying and blindly follow some script so the conversation makes no sense and we can't get to a point where they are offering helpful advice, they often have no idea about the product they are dealing with (eg. internet and how computers work)... I could go on.

I have been spoken to very rudely by BT and hung up on despite being calm (but frustrated) because they just would not sort out my blinking internet and I work from home for an online magazine and run social media weekly so it's vital that it works. They refused to send someone out or listen to the problem. I had to threaten to switch to another supplier before they would send someone out to have a look - when the person finally came out they asked why no one had been sent sooner as the problems were to do with the way it had been installed.

Unfortunately we are trained to shout. My colleague had a lovely lady yell at her the other day. Colleague, quite rightly, escalated it. Management response was to ensure she got what she wanted to avoid a complaint. My poor colleague had to call her back with the news, lovely lady said "see, I always get what I want when I have a tantrum"

Sadly this issue will not get better unless call handlers are allowed to go back to the old system of "I will terminate the call if you continue". The prospect of another hour listening to elevator music should, eventually, teach people to be reasonable as opposed to the current "he who shouts loudest" balls up.

Yanbu!

I've worked in lots of Call Centres and the debt collection and complaints depts for banks and energy companies were the absolute pits. Sometimes quite amusing and shocking in equal measures, to listen to fully grown adults rant, rave, scream, threaten and verbally abuse me (including a few death threats :) ) but often it's just tiring and bloody rude.

I've always said that those customers should have a recording of the call sent to them so they can listen to themselves behaving like idiots - I know I'd be thoroughly embarrassed if it was me.

Sometimes people can't comprehend that we physically don't make the rules, we are bound to them by the company we work for and we're not telling them that they will be taken to court/cut off/ account suspended for the fun of it or just because we feel like it.
The worst for me is when you open a call from someone quite clearly pissed off - rightly or wrongly - and they won't, absolutely 100% refuse to complete DPA to continue the call or discuss anything. There's just no reasoning with them.

I won't put up with people talking to me like a piece of shit, I'm simply there to do a job, I don't mind upset, annoyed, getting a bit pissed off - we're all human and I'll do my best to help you but when it turns abusive, nasty and personal - quite frankly I've switched off when it crosses that line and want the customer escalated or off the phone - some companies allow us to hang up after 1 warning, some after 3, some fuckers not at all.

I never get arsey with call handlers when I make a call as a customer because I know exactly what it's like. I'm not an angel and one company in particular tested my patience to the limits (I'm glaring at you Talktalk) but I wasn't once nasty to the handler I simply took my business elsewhere.

aermingers- so daily i speak to around 70/80 customers and because i have some idiot screaming and shouting im no good at my job - Yeah thanks!

tomuchcantbreath- i totally agree with you, the amount of people who esc calls to get what they want is crazy. Our agent in here have strict rules we have to stick to, We arent able to bend the rules like our managers.

carbediem- im the same as you when someones is going off on one for no real reason i stop listening. talk to me and i will help you. i work for a place where we cant hang up no matter how bad.

Don't get me started on sky!

I understand about the script, but I had ongoing problems and started each call with a spiel about the previous calls and the things we had tried- 'my modem is plugged directly into the main test socket and I have micro filters installed but I'm having x y z problems'
'Thank you MrsPissedOff, now can I just ask, do you have a 'test socket' in your house? This socket has a horizontal line across it...'
Why couldn't the call handler just tick the 'yes' box when faced with the 'is the modem plugged into the test socket' question instead of asking me again? Or even if they phrased it as 'so, as I understand it, you have plugged the modem into the test socket' instead of 'have you' so I knew they had listened to me.

Instead each successive call got longer and longer, as we had to retry all the previously tried but unsuccessful steps (they used to insist I tried the step even though I had done it 3x previously, they wouldn't even accept me saying 'yes I tried it' if I hadn't spent at least a minute clattering around making unpluggy sort of noises!)

Eventually they got to the end of the script and said they couldn't help because my computer wasn't supported, even though my computer had been working fine until I tried to fix the internet connection as per sky's instructions and the original call was actually about DH's computer.

I think that's the point I lost my rag
'my computer running Windows whateverthelatestnumberis was working fine until you asked me to change these settings'
'ah MrsPissedOff, we can't help you there as Windows whateverthelatestnumberis is not supported, we can only help you with Windows notquitethelatestmodel'

Is it any wonder I'm CrohnicallyPissedOff?

Try working as an NHS call handler.
I've been sworn at, perved on, accused of all sorts. Christmas Day - everyone drunk, rude, not one 'merry Christmas'

Lots of people are ill, lots are in pain and lots very upset/worried -and they manage to be courteous, they have info to hand, they know the address of the emergency, etc

But some are just awful - dismissive, telling you your job, blaming you because they have given wrong info,because they have to wait - and it's often the 'nicer' accents who are rudest because they think you are beneath them. Glad I'm out of it now.