Being made to cover call centre at work.

[RedIvy18]

I'm employed in a senior client based role which has peaks and troughs (sometimes we are crazy busy but there may be the odd day where work is less.) Over the past number of months I have been asked to cover work on our call centre on ad hoc days. There is a reason why I didnt apply to work in a call centre role, and while I respect the work that our CC do it has nothing to do with my role at all. I have worked hard to get this role including gaining postgraduate qualifications, I perform well and enjoy it most of the time.

I have encountered abusive customers on the CC which has upset me and have asked not to be put on the CC but my employers attitude is 'don't take it so personally'. AIBU or are they?

Just say no - it isn’t in your remit/job description.

So if you don’t do this, what will you be actually doing?

What does your contract say about covering different roles/areas if needed?

What does your contract say?
My only concern would be that if you are being asked frequently is that there isn't enough work for you, so I'd be thinking more about how that might play out long term. Having worked in a peaks and troughs environment before, things can change very quickly.

What reason are they giving? Are they short staffed in the call centre, short of anything for you to do in your area, or is this about widening your exposure to the business and role development? I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing for senior people in client based roles to get exposure to what their juniors are doing and experiencing - it keeps you tuned in to the difficulties they face, the opportunity to develop a strategy to address that, and you get grass roots knowledge of that area of the business.

If they’re using you to cover vacancies, or haven’t enough work for you, that’s concerning, and a conversation to have with your manager as neither of those things are sustainable. I’d also use it as an opportunity to show initiative: as a senior, your response to experiencing call centre abuse shouldn’t just be “I don’t want to do that work, it’s beneath me” but “this is unacceptable, we need to find out why customers are being abusive, why the call centre is expected to tolerate abuse, and develop a strategy to remedy this serious problem from both sides.” If you’re being asked to cover because your own role is quiet and therefore at risk, it’s this kind of thing which will set you apart.

How central is the Call Centre to the operations of the business? And are other people of similar seniority, qualifications and experience to you also being asked to do this? There are some types of business where it would be deeply beneficial for all senior staff to do a shift in the call centre once a month in order to be deeply grounded in the daily operations of the business outside their normal remit. There are other scenarios where a person in a non-call-centre role is recognised as having great potential for promotion to a role which will include being in the hierarchy to which the Call Centre managers report and it would be beneficial for their career advancement to do occasional shifts there for their personal familiarity with that side of the operations, so it MAY be reasonable for you to be asked to do this.

On the other hand, if you are a young (or youngish) female employee with a level of competence, qualifications and personal gravitas which another senior person is finding threatening, they may be pushing you into low-status work in order to disarm your potential to outshine them. In which case that's unacceptable.

If you are doing bugger all as an alternative to this OP, I’d brace yourself for redundancy

@ComtesseDeSpair it's to cover vacancies on the CC - I dont think that there is any overarching strategic reason for it. Other colleagues of my level are being asked to do it too and are very disillusioned by it.

I'm confident that there is enough work for me both in the long and short term - the nature of my job means that I know what I have coming up this year and it's a lot!

I just think that it's a poor way to retain and motivate staff... some colleagues have gone off sick in the past as they have had an awful time on the CC.

There is usually a line in the contract saying and any other duties considered appropriate. I doubt you can stop this.

Can you bring that up? Because the people doing the call centre work will likely be paid a lot less than you and having to do it day in day out
If you can change stuff to make it better for everyone that would be a good use of time

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

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.

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.

@lostinthesunshineit's a bank. I had missed the civil service stuff, interesting to hear that this is happens in other sectors.

But I guess I'll need to suck it up as you say or look for another role!

@BurntBroccoliyes there are and yes they have!

This was what I was wondering.

@orangegatoI don't think that I'm 'above' it at all. It's a completely unrelated role to mine for which I didn't apply. I have a lot of respect for CC staff as I said.

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.

@nomasdefinitely a different skillset to mine! I find it very difficult.

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?

@Justupping there was work that I could have done, I saw it come in. It was of a less pressing/urgent nature than usual but would have kept me busy for the day. I just think that the CC stuff is being prioritised over that particular work because they are short of staff and have been for months.

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.

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 🙃