Team meetings every week? No.
Reps getting coachings every week? No.
Reps getting up-to-date training? No.
Escalating as far as needed if the other commitments aren't being met? Ah, hell no.
I can't remember them all; it doesn't matter. What matters is that all anyone there cares about is getting calls handled. It turns the environment into a sweatshop; it ends up chaining reps to the phones. Human beings need some variety, some chance to relax a bit. Team meetings and other activities which do not involve answering phone calls from customers are vital to maintaining your people in top form. That's why call centers--good ones--do all that stuff.
Today a customer called me, upset that she no longer had visual voice mail on her phone. That was how I learned that VVM has been sunsetted for some models. There was no training; there was no announcement.
$Major_Telecom pays my employer specifically to train reps. It's part of the contract. My employer frequently finds ways to take the training money but shortchange the training time. "Oh, we're All Hands On Deck! (AHOD) We've got to eliminate all shrink! No team meetings! No coachings! No training! Everyone has to be on the phones!" Yesterday we had another day where the dickhead operations manager decided that too many people called off and all floor support had to be pulled.
...and we proceeded to work a queue which was 10 deep for an hour or so. They didn't pull floor support on Thursday or Friday when the queue had seventy people in it, though. Nope! Too many people called off on a Saturday, so the people who showed up for work must be punished.
Now I am assigned to a team which has an absentee supervisor. Again. The second time in six months. I got to work this morning on time and proceeded to spend fifteen minutes trying to get my new workstation into shape, only to be taken to task by some asshat who then proceeded to stand over me and nano-manage my login process.
Part of getting my workstation in shape was fixing the goddamned headset, which was broken. Luckily I have a tube of super glue in my desk in case my eyeglasses come apart (no, I haven't gotten new glasses yet!) so I was able to glue it back together, but does anyone make an allowance for that? Why would they? Hey, that guy's not on the phone! GET him!
...and once I was logged in I proceeded to wait several minutes for my first call. Of course.
Went to Glassdoor.com and found this:
Pros...and I thought that was about the center I work at; no, it's for one in Indiana. So apparently it's endemic to the company.
Started working here and from the beginning there were constant threats and stories on how they "let half of the last class go" the training sucked, and my class had no idea how to work the system when we went on the floor, the hours are inconsistent until you get out on the floor, and then it's almost impossible to switch shifts even if you have a valid reason. Supervisors play favorites big time. To make matters worse, first we had roaches, and then bed bugs from people bringing blankets in which I ended up bringing home! It got to the point that I would cry every day before work because I was so stressed out. It may be great for some people or other locations, but this is by far the worst call center I've ever worked in,
Cons
bugs and unsanitary people, false promises of pay and schedules, favoritism, terrible training
Advice to Management
open your eyes and find out why you have such a high turnover rate.
The training I did, it was thorough. You had to pay attention and learn, of course. The rest, however, is 100% dead on. This place treats people like replacable cogs, and when I find a new job they will lose a great deal of intelligence and expertise. It won't mean beans to their success or failure, of course, but I'm the guy that everyone on my team comes to if they can't figure out how to do something and the supervisor is busy.
Promotions might be in the offing. Might, if they can actually trick at least fifty people out of the next several training classes into staying there long enough to need team leads and supervisors. It's not the way to bet, though; the turnover is bad because the place is a sweatshop with wages below the industry average. Out of the thirty people who I started training with in August of last year, one is still employed with the company. (Besides me, I mean.)
I don't like what that says about my intelligence. Well, as Mom always said, "No brain, no pain!" But eventually things get bad enough to get through even my thick skull, and I've just about had my fill of that place.
* * *
Obamacare continues to function as designed. Illinois' co-op went bust, because it's impossible to provide cheap health insurance to everyone by adding 13,000 pages to the insurance laws while restricting competition further than it's ever been before.
It would have been cheaper and more effective just to have the federal government buy health insurance for people who didn't already have it at market rates as they existed when Obamacare was passed.
* * *
Black lives don't matter to blacks or Democrats.
Chicago is 32% white, but they commit only 3.5% of the murders. Over 96% of the murders are committed by non-whites. Essentially, it is young black men murdering other black men. White people are not in the equation and are not part of the problem. It’s a black problem framed as a gun problem by Obama and his lying apparatchiks.* * *
WW2 ace got a medal for shooting down an American plane. I think that's a pretty cool story, and it just goes to show how weird things can get during a war.
Incidentally, in the image of the starboard gun, those instructions are prety nifty--and it mentions "gun heat" needing to be turned on shortly after engines have been started if the pilot expects it to be necessary. Considering that piston aircraft have carb heat (to keep the carb from icing) it's not at all surprising that fighters would have heaters for their guns, but it is interesting.
* * *
So I'm here writing a blog post. Critter is laying on my desk next to me. All of a sudden the weather radio begins its savage bleating, scaring the hell out of the cat.
Severe thunderstorm warning. Whee!
* * *
There was something I wanted to look up on-line when I had time. Naturally I now cannot remember what it was. *sigh*