Verbal Abuse as Stress Factor

[newhorizon]

I am a CSR. I'm 22 yrs old and I have 3 years of call center experience. I won't lie. I absolutely hate this type of work. The worst part of the job is the verbal abuse from customers. They use many obscene words or have a very abrasive tone when speaking to you. Sometimes, they won't allow you to help and demand a supervisor. I am staffed a CSR for a newspaper company. And I don't intend on staying for very long.

I think the best alternative to combat call center stress is to allow agents to utilize work hours for other company duties such as filing, typing, or general office tasks. I realize it is our job to answer calls. But at a certain point in the day, anyone taking call after call while become less effective. The montony is agonizing. The scheduling and polictics of the office are a nightmare. And on top of lousy pay, we are expected to smile and not take the insults, jeering, and out of control customer's behavior personal.

I believe all call centers are exactly the same. It's easy to get into and I am not complaining just to rant. I really feel no joy going to work. I really do not like my job. And one day I will not every wear a headpiece and take call again. This is concept is the only thing getting me through the week.

[JobGone2India]

I totally agree. Although, in my call centre, customers were seldom abusive but there were still numerous complaints to be dealt with.

Doing this constantly does dull your motivation to treat the first customer in the same manner as the last customer despite anything you might have said in the interview for the job...

Originally we scheduled people time off to look into admin type work created by the team. This eventually gave way to a dedicated admin team made up of people off the phones. We changed the team round every couple of months so eventually everyone got a break off the phones. A happy side effect of this was that new recruits were able to see how certain admin queries were fulfilled, which gave them a better understanding of the whole enquiry. Therefore, they were better equipped to answer similar queries in the future.

We've also recently incorporated paid breaks (2 x 10 mins for a full time person) either side of people's lunch hour. This was instead of people taking ad-hoc breaks throughout the day. Being a resource planner, I was concerned that our availability to take customer calls would be adversely affected. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it made no impact on our performance, in fact it made it better because we had more control over when people were taking their breaks and could therefore avoid times when we were busy. Some monitoring had to be done to ensure that people weren't taking the p*** but overall, everybody benefited.

Any kind of break off the phones can be a real tonic for an advisor who, at the end of the day, can feel like a punch bag for customers to air their grievances on. This is not only bad for advisors but also bad for customer AND employers. As Newhorizon mentions, he doesn't "intend on staying very long" taking with him his experience and wasting any training or personal development that's been given him by his current employers. A sad statement when something could be done about it... if employers care enough about it.

[j8jweb]

Doctor Ed over at HeadsetHell.com (forum moderator) who has worked in call centres for some 7 years, really has a way with words and is very good to talk to if you are feeling low.

Cheers,
James

[blahblahblah]

I have worked in several call centres and of course have had to 'put up' with callers who are abusive or use bad language. The way I found is best to handle these callers is to ask how they spell those words so I could make an accurate recording on their file!!!

I have found that everytime I have said this to someone, they have immediately stopped threatening and abusive behaviour and became totally normal!!! It stops them in their tracks literally and makes them think what they are doing especially if they think that you are going to record on their record what they have said to you.

I have also passed this hint onto numerous colleagues and they find it works really well - in fact, my employer is adopting it as a policy!

Try it - you will find it works wonders!!!

[remy]

Thanks for bringing up this idea
I'm gonna see if our call center can benefit from this


http://www.glasbergen.com/cat.html

By the way see this link under this section for some humour on this
Customer Service / Call Center