Middle Managers in a call center. . . or the untold story
Sheeple, as people who do not think for themselves are often called, typically work everywhere. Unfortunately, many sheeple are involved in the day to day operation of many businesses. The folks that can cause the most damage to an organization are the ones in middle management. This is because they typically do not have the best interests of the customer or the business at heart. Understand that this is a generality and may not be accurate for each individual. That said, consider the call center environment. Upper management demands more productivity, middle management, waning to keep their jobs try to deliver by pushing more work through the call center. This in turn lower morale, people quit, new people need hired, the newly hired then needs trained and will take weeks and sometimes months to get up to the same speed as the people who quit because they were expected to push even harder. The question that never seems to be asked is at what cost is management willing to pay for the added efficiency?
Faster work usually equals a worse customer experience. Is management willing to have customer satisfaction impacted?
Faster work means more unhappy employees? Is this ok?
The issue is why doesn’t middle management push back and let management know the consequences of their decision? The answer is fear of losing their jobs. So the fallacy that things can continue to get better, faster or cheaper without a trade off continues. Pity really.
Call center jobs, the untold story
Call centers typically have a bad reputation among employees. The reason for this reputation is based on claims of unfair or unreasonable demands placed on the people working. Consider the simple bathroom break. If an employee is on the telephone, it’s very difficult to find the time to take a bathroom break. Calls continue to come into the phone with a very short between calls. Studies have shown that this break between calls is critical to keeping up employee morale and lowering the rate of burn out. Many call centers however, in the quest for ever more efficient operations, desire the lowest possible breathing time between calls. The result is that employees often feel overworked and pressured by the telephone technology.
It’s not that the telephone can’t be set to a pause between calls but management is to shortsighted to realize the problem. Of course, this same management also suffers from a 30% plus attrition rate where they literally lose over 30 percent of their employees per year.
So the question is how does speeding up the calls and pressuring people to handle an ever increasing number of customers balance the cost of constant training of new employees? If the cost to train new employees and get them competent to do the job is considered, management would re evaluate the need for constant pushing and work harder to lower attrition rates in the call center.
Call Centers: Jobs
It’s not secret that call center jobs have been moving overseas for the last few years. Still, if you’re interested in honing customer support of technical support skills, take a job at a call center for a few years. The rationale for this is the fact that handling problems through effective communication on the telephone is much more a challenge than having the system or customer in front of them.
Focusing on clear communication is key to successful call center support. The listening and communication skills however, can transfer to any other job throughout your career.