>> ...except that she doesn't do that any more. She ended up in the call 
>> center because she was getting too old for lugging ladders and stuff 
>> around in all weather.
> 
> Oh. I imagine there's lots of call for call-center work

Except that call-center work turns out to be what she's not good at. ;-)

> or for 
> management and training of people to pull wires and such.

Possibly. But I'm guessing that requires written qualifications rather 
than just experience. I don't know though...

>> Well, this is it. The call handling target *was* 500 seconds per call.
>> It should be self-evident that this is completely impossible.
> 
> Not at all.

Do you have any idea how many things "must" happen during a call? You 
"must" read the standard greeting, you "must" ask a set of questions to 
determine that you're speaking to somebody authorised to discuss the 
account, you "must" formally appologise for loss of service, you "must" 
explain to the customer how to check their own equipment, you "must" 
warn the customer that if an engineer is sent, there may be charges 
applied (and explain the whole price structure), you "must" conclude the 
call be summarising the actions that will be carried out, you "must" get 
the customer to verbally agree to your summary, etc. There are huge long 
lists of stuff you "must" do - all in 500 seconds? I don't think so.

>> - If somebody calls you and spends 25 minutes screaming at you about 
>> how **** your company is before they will even tell you what they're 
>> calling about, you cannot complete the call in 500 seconds. [Yes, this 
>> is apparently a *daily* occurrance. Some people apparently think 
>> they're important or something.]
> 
> I really can't imagine why she cares, other than it takes too long. I 
> can't imagine how that could bother you emotionally, to have some loonie 
> ranting about the company you work for.

The first two or three calls? Yeah, you don't care. After the 50th call 
of the day, when you're already tired and stressed and you've got a 
manager breathing down your neck and yelling at you to work faster and 
you just want to go home and all anybody has done all day is yell at 
you... it starts to get to you. Especially when this is all your life 
consists of, almost every day.

>> - If some little old lady calls you, and you have to repeat yourself 
>> six times before she even hears what you said properly (never mind 
>> understands what you're asking), you cannot complete the call in 500 
>> seconds.
> 
> True.

Also, if some little old lady who lives in the middle of nowhere and is 
obviously very frail calls to say her phone is busted and she can't 
contact anybody, my mother is the sort of person who would be actually 
worried for this human being's safety, and would want to know that this 
*is* actually going to get fixed promptly. (Needless to say, such fault 
reports get prioritised much higher than normal, but even so...)

>> - If you have to transfer the call to another department, and they 
>> take 20 minutes to pick up the phone, you cannot end in the call in 
>> 500 seconds.
> 
> Sure you can. Watch:   "Here, let me transfer you to the billing 
> department."  Then you hang up on them.

Not with your manager sitting next to you monitoring your call handling, 
no. ;-)

> Why do you think call centers have such a bad reputation?

Because managers seem to think they can handle arbitrarily large call 
volumes without expending any actual resources. Don't bother hiring 
quality staff and paying them real wages, don't bother hiring enough 
people to handle the load. Just hire the cheapest people you can find, 
and whip them until they do the impossible. Much cheaper...

>> Oh, you're still expected to do the  same *work*, just faster.
> 
> No, you're expected to hang up after that many seconds. "Sorry, got 
> disconnected."

Interestingly, the company has just instigated a computerised call 
handling system. It is now physically impossible to hang up. The only 
way to end a call is if the customer hangs up, or you transfer them.

Three guesses why they just did this...

>> You're also not supposed to hang up. 
> 
> Not on purpose at least.

It's an instant disciplinary warning if you do.

>> Apparently the only people more unreasonably than the company is the 
>> customers. Like the people running a business from their house. Phone 
>> stops working, they want 4-hour turnaround fixing it, or else £1,000 
>> per hour for every hour they're out of service, because that's how 
>> much money they claim to be losing by not having a phone. But, 
>> obviously, these people are paying residential phone rates....... Um, 
>> yeah, nice try.
> 
> It's not unreasonable to *ask*. :-)

No. But to call up *demanding* compensation and threatening to sue if 
you don't get it... well, those calls are the easiest to deal with, 
actually. You just say "good luck with that". ;-)

Business rates are way higher For A Reason.

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