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>> ...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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>> Wait - you mean if somebody is in a contract, it's not necessarily
>> enforcible?
>
> Generally, in civilized countries, there are things you can't put into a
> contract and have enforced. You can write them in, but you can't get the
> government to force you to obey them.
Does this mean that all that M$ stuff about "we technically own your PC
now and you can't stop us doing anything we want to it" is not actually
legally binding?
Suddenly EULAs take on a whole different hue...
(E.g., presumably you can't write an EULA that says in the small print
"by using this software you agree to surrender your first-born child to
us". Or rather, you *can*, it just won't mean squat.)
> For example, in California (since we're so big on start-ups), if I
> create something on my own time with my own money and equipment, it
> belongs to me even *if* it's *directly* in competition with the employer
> I was working for.
>
> In Pennsylvania (where I grew up), the company was allowed to keep you
> from working for any competitor that sold the same thing to the same
> customers for something like 6 months or a year or so.
Interesting.
I wonder how any of this applies to the UK. Hmm, Phil would know!
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>>> And no other company manages similar (albeit smaller) such networks?
>> No. That's why it's called a "government-granted monopoly".
>
> I don't know what kind of work your mum does, but maybe her skills could
> be reapplied at a mobile phone network of some sort? BT doesn't own
> those, as I recall.
No, BT made the "interesting" decision of deliberately selling off it's
mobile operations. (Probably because they were losing money hand over
fist, like the rest of BT always has...)
My mum's knowledge is basically
- How BT does business.
- How to install wired analogue telephone systems.
- How to perform diagnostics on wired analogue telephone systems.
I'm not sure how much of that would be relevant to mobile phone network
technology. I'm also not sure how many staff the mobile operators
actually employ in the first place, for that matter...
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Darren New wrote:
> Heck, I know people who rant about Microsoft doing things with Windows
> that will make them more money at the expense of their customers, as if
> that wasn't their entire job. ;-)
It isn't.
Microsoft's job is to make money. It doesn't necessarily have to be at
their customer's expense - they just prefer to do business that way
because it's easier. (And the law does not apply to them.)
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> - How BT does business.
Surely not that different to many other large companies?
> - How to install wired analogue telephone systems.
> - How to perform diagnostics on wired analogue telephone systems.
Those skills could probably be used by many companies with their own
internal telephone systems (ie every company with more than 10 employees).
I'm sure it wouldn't take her long to do some training (if she hasn't
already) to brush up on digital phone systems.
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> Microsoft's job is to make money. It doesn't necessarily have to be at
> their customer's expense - they just prefer to do business that way
> because it's easier.
Haha you are exactly the sort of person Darren was talking about. So what,
you suggest that a company does something a *harder* way and then make
*less* money? Yeh, all the shareholders are going to love that one...
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scott wrote:
>> My mum, on the other hand, is one of those rare people who actually
>> wants to help the customer. Every service quality measurement they
>> have a statistic for, my mum is above target by a mile. The *only*
>> stat below target is call duration. Need I explain further?
>
> Not to me, but I guess to her manager if he shouts at her. If I were
> your mum I would simply ask him what to do, simply say would you prefer
> me to cut off callers early in order to reach this target or carry on as
> I'm doing actually trying to solve the problem, or maybe he has another
> suggestion. Get it in writing what she should be aiming to do, as there
> doesn't seem an obvious way to meet the target *and* solve every problem
> properly.
From what I've heard, when the managers demonstrate how to handle
calls, their call handling times exceed the limits as well. Damn
hipocrits...
>> BT seems to have an institutional culture of everybody trying to dump
>> work on other people as fast as possible. People will transfer calls
>> to totally inappropriate departments just to keep their own stats
>> looking good. The faster you transfer the call, the faster it becomes
>> "not my problem any more".
>
> Hehe, I guess if your average call duration is 502 seconds and it's near
> the end of the month you need a few 5 second "hang on while i transfer
> you" calls to get under the magic 500!
I'm not just talking about the call center. I'm talking about the entire
BT organisation. If you ever call them and get transfered to 20
different people, it's because nobody actually wants to help you, they
want to dump you on somebody else ASAP. The engineers fight over who
gets the "easy" jobs out of the job queue. They make up excuses for why
they shouldn't be the one to do the awkward jobs - "I'm too far away",
"I need to refuel", "I haven't had the training course for that one", "I
need to go to stores", etc.
Basically it seems to be an entire organisation of loafers and
blame-shifters. Nice atmos...
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>> Microsoft's job is to make money. It doesn't necessarily have to be at
>> their customer's expense - they just prefer to do business that way
>> because it's easier.
>
> Haha you are exactly the sort of person Darren was talking about. So
> what, you suggest that a company does something a *harder* way and then
> make *less* money? Yeh, all the shareholders are going to love that one...
...and *this* is why there are laws against practices such as fraud,
extortion, and so forth. Because otherwise no sane company would bother
to actually produce products. They'd just promise the customer a
product, take their money, give the customer an empty shoe box with some
wires on the front, and be laughing all the way to the bank.
Fortunately, such behaviour is illegal. Unfortunately, laws do not apply
to Microsoft.
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> I'm not just talking about the call center. I'm talking about the entire
> BT organisation. If you ever call them and get transfered to 20 different
> people, it's because nobody actually wants to help you, they want to dump
> you on somebody else ASAP. The engineers fight over who gets the "easy"
> jobs out of the job queue. They make up excuses for why they shouldn't be
> the one to do the awkward jobs - "I'm too far away", "I need to refuel",
> "I haven't had the training course for that one", "I need to go to
> stores", etc.
>
> Basically it seems to be an entire organisation of loafers and
> blame-shifters. Nice atmos...
Makes it easier for the ones who actually want to get on in their career to
get recognised then :-)
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>> I'm not just talking about the call center. I'm talking about the
>> entire BT organisation. If you ever call them and get transfered to 20
>> different people, it's because nobody actually wants to help you, they
>> want to dump you on somebody else ASAP. The engineers fight over who
>> gets the "easy" jobs out of the job queue. They make up excuses for
>> why they shouldn't be the one to do the awkward jobs - "I'm too far
>> away", "I need to refuel", "I haven't had the training course for that
>> one", "I need to go to stores", etc.
>>
>> Basically it seems to be an entire organisation of loafers and
>> blame-shifters. Nice atmos...
>
> Makes it easier for the ones who actually want to get on in their career
> to get recognised then :-)
Well no, see, because the ones who are most successful at not doing any
actual work and dumping all the problems on somebody else are the ones
with the best stats, see? So they're the ones who get kept, and even
promoted. The people [like my mum] who actually do their job properly
have crap stats and eventually get fired.
The result?
...a systemic culture of work-avoiders and blame-shifters? QED.
Performance monitoring FTW!
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