Tech in the Trenches

Carl T. Holscher fights for the customers.

Tag: Call Center

Customer Support from https://unsplash.com/collections/153153?photo=gN_nIUnjYJI

Patience

By

On August 5, 2016

In Observations

People have been taught to get off the line as quickly as possible. This comes from a toxic help desk culture of tracking the seconds of each call and keeping agents to strict quotas.

I work in a place where we are not bombarded with hundreds of calls per hours even though we serve a user community of over 20,000 people. Everyday once I’ve unlocked an account or reset a password, the caller says please wait with me while I try that or please don’t go! And I reassure them I am here for as long as they need me.

I am not held to a time limit for calls. My metric is customer satisfaction. Did I solve the problem? Did I give the customer an avenue for support if I’m not able to offer it? I want my customers to be happy and I work in an environment where that is not only expected but encouraged.

When you work in a place that respects the customer’s time and success, you’re still fighting against those in the industry who do not.

India Calling

By

On May 27, 2016

In Observations

For the past three days, callers from India have called our help desk almost non-stop. When I arrived this morning, my co-worker’s telephone read 1324 missed calls since 6pm yesterday. For the first two hours of work this morning, we had racked up another 250 calls.

They finally slowed down around 3:30pm. After 1631 missed calls and another couple dozen calls we answered and hung up or had fun with them. My phone only logs the last 100 calls received and that only goes back 2 hours. It has been a long few days of constantly ringing phones.

Their goal is to get into our voicemail system. Though I’m not sure to what end. Most of the calls are silence, or the caller presses buttons, presumably to access the system. I keep telling them I’m a human and don’t understand Morse Code but they never respond. Rarely, we’ll get a person on the line who will speak to us. I got as far as being offered $1,015 for “the access code.”

So I decided to give him a long string of numbers. Since I’m not sure what access code he wanted, I tried my best to deliver an access code. So if this was your access code, I’m sorry. It’s now in the hands of the Indian Scammers™.

I recorded some snippets of our conversations and musical concertos recorded with my friends from across the sea. I hope you enjoy them and have a peaceful weekend.

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