#it's really annoying bc she thinks that it's her job to enlighten me and whatever

[mainfaggot]

I'm always tiptoeing nonsense rules set by my mother and walking on eggshells around her as to not set her off and it's so exhausting god

[livinginfictions]

Pro-Tips From Your Local Call Center Worker

So, I work in a call center, and I’m realizing day by day that people seriously have no idea how these things work and ya’ll are just screwing yourselves (and me) over. I am here to help!

First off, I’m gonna start with asking you all to stop being jerks to outbound (that means we call you) call center workers. I don’t give a flying fuck how annoyed you are that you keep getting called. There are real people on the other end of that line and you are being a real dickhead every time you fuck with us.

I have had people answer the call by screaming at me. I’ve had people answer with fart noises and fake baby cries. I’ve had countless calls where people either hang up the minute I introduce myself or answer the call and hang up right away. I’ve had people respond to me introducing myself by spitting out as many disgusting words they can think of and then hang up on me. I”ve had people answer the call and then just fucking leave the phone on the table so I can HEAR THEM hanging out in the room and fucking ignoring me.

THIS IS NOT FUNNY. It’s a DICK MOVE. I’m a real fucking human being and my job depends on calling you. It’s not MY FAULT that you’re getting called three times a week. It’s not my FAULT that you don’t want to be called at this specific hour. I don’t get to fucking control that, and a lot of times, it’s actually YOUR fault that this is happening.

Now, admittedly, part of that is out of your control, we’re not Allowed to actually tell you that what you’re doing is wrong (not that many people give us a chance). SO, on my own time, without mentioning who I work for, I’m gonna enlighten you.

Reminder that this isn’t the same for all call centers, but the one I work at is affiliated with a ton of companies, and it’s pretty much the same for all of us in the building.

Mistake 1: You just avoid answering the phone at all when you see us calling. This is not going to stop the calls. Every time you do that we have to mark the call as ‘answering machine’ and you get called back. This will go on for weeks or months, depending on the situation. We don’t know whether or not you’re ignoring us on purpose, so we are required to keep calling you. Moreover, we don’t know how many times other people have called you and gotten voicemail. We just see a name on the screen and a number gets auto-called. We aren’t pissing you off on purpose.

Mistake 2: You answer the call and then either instantly, or as soon as you hear the name of the company I’m calling from, hang up without saying anything. Again, this isn’t going to stop the calls. We have no way of knowing (except common sense, which our computers and bosses don’t give a fuck about) whether the call dropped or you just bumped the hang-up button or you hung up on purpose. We’re required to put you in for a callback. Even if you wait until we’ve given the whole spiel before hanging up, we still have to put you down for a callback.

Mistake 3: You play stupid games with us by using dumb voices or making us wait while you ‘grab a pencil.’ This shouldn’t need explained. You should know this is fucking mean. Plus, nothing you’re doing is going to stop us from calling you back. All you’re doing is getting someone in huge trouble because their numbers suck but they didn’t have a appropriate reason for hanging up on you and getting back to doing their job.

I get that there’s like a joke post on here about someone who made the call center person they were on the phone with sit there for like 2 hours or whatever, but that’s not how most centers work. I am paid by the hour, but I only make commission if I make sales. And if I don’t make any sales, I can’t just skate by on making my hourly rate because they will fire me for not selling enough. You are not giving me a ‘break’ by wasting my time, you are ruining my efficiency scores and possibly costing me my job.

And before anyone goes on about how call center workers are all scammers anyway, can you just stop? I work for a big name company and guess what? I make a lot of sales from people WHO WANTED me to call. I got a guy the other day who sang my praises because he was so excited that I called him at just the right time and got him what he wanted. Tonight I had a woman who looked forward and relied on us calling because she always forgot to renew her service and us calling was the only way she remembered to do it.

You’re the one who gave us your damn number (unless it was bought from a data miner thingy, which is a whole different thing, but don’t be a dick to those people either.) when you used the service/bought the thing in the first place, so stop getting mad at us for doing what we’re supposed to.

My job performance is judged according to how many sales I make and how many calls I made an hour. (The ‘right’ amount of dials an hour is like 60. that’s one a minute). I’m not interested in wasting your time or my time. I’m not out to get you.

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s how you get the calls to stop.

Solution 1: TELL US. I’m serious. It’s literally that fucking easy. If you aren’t interested in the service we’re calling about, SAY YOU AREN’T INTERESTED. And as a bonus, give us a reason? My managers are a lot more annoyed by 50 ‘general not interested’ calls than they are when I can show some variance and make clear that people are turning me down for specific reasons. It’s too expensive. You prefer doing this thing instead. Whatever it is dude. This will generally remove you from the call listing for that specific promotion or reasoning for them calling. (Which, if you have an account with whoever it is, you will STILL receive calls/emails about ‘account updates’ like you having an outstanding balance. Those will not go away, period, until you do something about it.) If you want to never receive calls from us again then ask us (NICELY DAMN IT) to put you on the Do Not Call list. We are LEGALLY REQUIRED (it’s a federal law) to mark you as DNC and not call you again (except for what I said before about your ‘account updates’)

Solution 2: Update your contact preferences! GO TO THE SITE. Most call centers are calling about a specific service that you probably have an account on, and a website where you can access that account. GO TO IT.  If you can’t find it, google it! 90% of these will have account settings you can adjust to not receive calls. Hell, you can remove your phone number from it entirely AND your email address if you want. Take control of your own life.

That’s it. That’s how you do it. Literally those two things. Neither of which include calling me names or screaming at me about ‘you people keep calling me.’ Neither of which would take you more than like five fucking minutes and would save you from getting dozens of calls.

And sometimes there’s gonna be mistakes. I accidentally called a woman tonight who was on our dnc list already and she was pissed. But I don’t pick my calls. I have no idea why I got her name. It was entirely out of my control. Also, sometimes you keep getting calls after you asked to be put on the dnc list because you have multiple accounts. If you’re still getting promotional calls or emails after you changed your preferences, let us know (nicely) when we call and we can help you check to see if there’s multiple accounts under your name (from previous subscriptions or years or whatever) and we can add those to the list too. If you’re really desperate to get us to stop calling, legit just lie. Tell us it’s a wrong number. Tell us you don’t own the vehicle/tv/radio/whatever the hell we’re calling about anymore. That pretty much instantly makes us not call you again. We don’t want to bug people who aren’t our actual clients.

More pro-tips:

1. When someone is calling you with promotional offers, we’re supposed to offer you a specific package/deal. If you tell us it’s too expensive or ask if we have something cheaper, oftentimes we do and it’s a hundred times less than you would get if you just called in and asked how much the service/thing would be. We are promotional and everything is supposed to be Ridiculously cheap. But we can’t tell you outright most of the time. You have to ask. My center doesn’t even give bonuses for upsells, so I legit give no fucks about giving you my cheapest package, whether the bosses like it or not.

2. Don’t be so afraid of the ‘automatic renewal’ thing. It’s just like Netflix, guys, your subscription is automatically renewed so you don’t lose the service and have to call in every month. Take the promo offer, and mark in your calendar (or ask if we have ‘billing reminders’ that you can opt into) to call in and cancel your subscription. They’ll most likely offer you more deals and you can keep things really insanely cheap. Just don’t be a jerk about it. We want to help you.

3. If you do make a purchase and the person on the phone starts talking in monologues about what you ordered and how the billing works, please don’t interrupt, or if you do, understand that we might have to repeat a phrase or something. Those are usually disclosures we’re required to read to you, and if we get interrupted there are certain trigger words that a robot scans for to make sure we’re complying with our company’s policy. We have to say them or we get fired. I know it’s long-winded and kinda awkward, and sometimes we have to repeat them over and over if the account or payment method or whatever gets changed before we can get through the whole sale. We don’t like it either.

4. If you’re worried about a business that’s calling you being a scam (I once turned down a super cheap promotion on renewing my laptop warranty bc I didn’t think the person calling was really from Dell....they were....*sigh*) then just know that most (if not all) legit businesses will verify information with you where they tell you what they already know. Usually it’s your address. This info is what was given to us, either by you or by a third party that you gave the info to, who signed you up (Like when you buy a car from a dealership and they set up your radio for you, not like people who sell your data). We usually also have your e-mail address on file and we’ll read it out to you. You can often ask us to send you an e-mail (a customer agreement or something) to prove that we’re legit too and you can check right then during the call.

5. When you ask us to ‘call you back later,’ it’s worth checking if we can actually be specific about that. My system only lets me put down callbacks in general, I don’t get to pick when you get called. It’s a 24-48 hour window and that’s all I know. I can’t call you tomorrow after 5pm or in an hour when your husband gets home from work, or two weeks from now when you get paid. It’s also not going to be the same person who called you the first time, unless it’s a crazy coincidence. Now, other call centers might be different, so just ask if we can chose when to call you back or if it’s a random thing.

6. I really am sorry when my call is horrible timing. I’ve accidentally called people while they’re sitting in the ER waiting for a family member, or even a few months after the owner of the account has died or something. I wasn’t trying to make your life more difficult, I’m just trying to feed myself and maybe sell you something you’ll enjoy.

Please just remember that call center workers are people, we’re tired too, we’ve probably been yelled at at least once that day, and we’re not trying to make your life harder. Work with us, and hopefully it’ll make both our lives easier.