The pros and cons of working in a call center

There are two basic types of call centers: outgoing and incoming. Outgoing centers are telemarketers, bill collectors, and those that contact existing customers for various purposes. Incoming call center employees take calls but as a general rule do not make them. These centers can be to handle inquiries about advertised products and take orders. The type of call center with which I have personal experience is one that is funded by a specific company to take questions from and place orders for new or existing customers of that company. My specific experience is with technical support centers.


Providing technical support can be personally satisfying. As an agent learns more about the products and systems and the ways things can go wrong, he or she will become more adept at identifying the cause of a particular problem and the paths to explore to solve it. So the core of the job requirements, fixing problems, can be a reason to enjoy the work and feel like you are doing something valuable and productive.


Many call centers are able to offer a variety of shifts and days off, so it is often possible to schedule work times in a way that fits with other obligations (child care, school, transportation logistics, and so forth). Most of the people where I work want a daytime shift Monday through Friday so those schedules are hard to come by until you have some seniority. Why they prefer that particular schedule I do not know. I work from 430 PM to 130 AM and I like it. If the schedule you prefer is not available when you ask for it, you can always request it again at a later date.


The pay rate is not great but it is decent and increases a bit over time. I am now a coach so I make a living wage but a lot of the agents struggle to make ends meet. Strangely enough, many of those who complain the most about insufficient income decline over-time work when it is offered.


The work is indoors, in a climate-controlled environment, and never involves any heavy lifting nor does it ever involve getting dirty. It is a clean, safe place to work with nothing physically strenuous involved.






The Negative Aspects of Call Centers


The possibility of arranging a work schedule that suits you (many call centers are open 24-7) does not mean that you can miss any scheduled work times with impunity. There may be 300 other people working the same hours you do but that does not mean you can "play hooky" and get away with it. Call centers are extremely strict about enforcing scheduled work hours. Thesecenters traditionally have a high turnover rate, for a variety of reasons, but by far the number one reason for agents to get fired is schedule adherence. The rules vary from one center to another but a common practice is to give a written warning, in effect for 30 days, after just one unexcused absence. Another infraction within that 30-day period results in a second notice, this one for 60 days. Miss work within that 60 days, and you will receive a third and final warning, this one for 90 days. Miss a single day in that 90 days and you will be terminated. If you learned by skipping school that there is no penalty when you do not show up when you are supposed to, you must learn a new standard or your call center career will be short. I have heard agents bitterly condemn the way they have been treated when all they had done was to call in sick now and then. It does not matter whether you think it is fair or reasonable. If you do not have a work ethic that includes showing up on time every day you will be fired.


A corollary to what is called "schedule adherence", meaning being there on time every day you are scheduled to work, is the close monitoring of break and lunch times. If your allotted time for a break is 10 minutes and you normally take 15 minutes, the process of written reprimands will begin. If you continue to take breaks that are longer than the scheduled time, you will eventually get fired. There are solid reasons for the call center policies concerning schedule adherence and the length of breaks. The math is complex and too involved to go into here but I would be happy to explain the specifics if anybody wants to see the mathematical breakdown of the costs incurred when people do not work the full amount of time on their schedule.


Something that irks a lot of agents in call centers (it irks me, too) is the way calls are graded to monitor performance. The people who establish quality assurance parameters apparently have no concept what the customers (the people making the call for help) really want. The focus is generally highly skewed toward empathy, concern, and reassurance, with actually resolving the customer's problem taking a secondary role. I think this is because the people who grade calls do not have anywhere near the technical knowledge of the people who take calls. This means they are poorly qualified to judge how effectively and efficiently a technical problem was resolved. So they grade how well a call was handled according to rigidly prescribed standards that attach little importance (usually less than 25%) to how the technical aspects were handled. Many agents regularly make high scores because they use the scripted phrasing and constantly express concern for the problems the customer is having without actually understanding much of the technical issues involved and how to solve the problem. Conversely, some agents who have incredible knowledge and skill at diagnosing and solving technical problems make poor scores because they do not use the prescribed sugary phrases.


I think if companies were to accurately examine customers' reactions to how they were treated when they called with a technical problem, solving the problem would rank much higher than receiving a great deal of sympathy from the agent. I know that is certainly true for me. All that "how are you doing today" stuff is irrelevant. Whether I am having a bad day or a good day is none of their business. When my program is crashing and giving me a cryptic error message I just want it fixed. When my cell phone is constantly searching for a signal but not finding it I want to know how to get it working so I can use it (most likely solution for that problem, by the way, is to just turn the phone off for about 30 seconds).


If you are willing and able to show up for work on time every day you are scheduled; if you can keep your breaks and lunches within prescribed limits; if you can tolerate occasionally receiving a poor score on a call because the person who graded it did not have sufficient technical knowledge to understand the issue and how it was handled; if you can stand a fast-paced environment where the next customer is on the line immediately after the current one disconnects; if you can do all these things while engaged in a constant process of becoming more knowledgeable and proficient in your area of expertise, you may have a rewarding career at a call center. It is not strenuous, it is done indoors, and when you go home you and your clothes are just as clean as when you arrived.