Special thanks to my cousin Richie for suggesting that I play with Chetan Bhagat's Book's name and use it as the title of my article. You may see this article, in the magazine Yuva, under an annonymous writer's name, but the verbal flamboyance would be proof enough that only a mind like mine would be able to spew something like that. Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it...
This happened in September last year. I had gone to a concert at the NCPA, Nariman Point. I knew that one of my juniors from college was performing that evening and decided that I would catch up with her after the show. It was a brilliant show, nothing unexpected from a household name like the Stop-Gaps Choral Ensemble, after which I waited outside to catch up with my colleague. Once she came out and we exchanged the usual pleasantries and the conversation went on to the topic of where we were working. She said, “Max, when I came to know that you were working in a call centre, I began crying… Why a call centre of all places?”
What comes to one’s mind when one hear the phrase – “I work in a call centre.” Well, besides the fact that the guy who uttered those words may probably be someone who is good at nothing, you tend to think stuff like ‘party every night’, ‘going home drunk’, ‘easy money’, ‘unscrupulous behaviour’, ‘no value for real hard earned money’ and the list just goes on. My colleague Imran narrates – “My building’s watchman used to stare at me suspiciously when I came home from my gruelling shift at 4:00 am. One day he picked up the courage and asked me – ‘aap har raat party ko jaata hai?’(Do you party every night?). I smiled and replied – yes.”
But behind all the glamour and glitter of this almost always nocturnal employment, lie those sleepless souls who don a headset and speak to people seven seas across. Piece of cake, don’t you think? But as you struggle with your nightmares in your sleep, around the country, thousands of call centre employees gear up to face their nightmares each night.
What could be so cumbersome about just sitting and talking to people? Well that’s the first nightmare; the ever eternal fear that even if it’s close to 23:00 hrs GMT (04:30 hrs IST) you are still bombarded with calls that are either requests or complaints. We can’t bear our own friends and family members ranting on for less than 20 minutes whereas here, no matter how unreasonable or irate your customer is, you cannot get back at them. You fear that the calls will never stop coming. You are continuously staring at the dialler, that has turned red, and you dread the number of calls that are waiting in line for you. It drives you insane.
The next nightmare that you’d possible encounter would be that of the agonizing Team Leader (TL) or reporting manager or the immediate supervisor. You’d say that the grass is always greener on the other side but it’s the same story everywhere. “I was burning with fever one day,” recalls Sharon, “and I called up my TL to tell him that I wouldn’t be able to come to work because I wasn’t well. He listened to what I had to say… Then said – OK you do one thing… You get ready… Come out of your house… Outside your house there’s a bus stop… You catch a bus… Tell the conductor ‘Mindspace’… Get off at Mindspace… Come to office!”
Then there are others that make you lose faith in them by their very actions and examples. I know of a reporting manager who thinks that the call centre runs on his mood swings and then at the end of the shift he would be the one to say, “Guys, we shouldn’t let our mood swings affect our work environment”. Still others think that they are so well versed in management ‘gyaan’ that they use senseless analogies and irrelevant theories to get the team to perform better. “If you go into a restaurant,” explained a TL, “and you order a dish, but that dish is not available… You’d still eat at that restaurant if the service provided to you is good.” But this intelligent TL was never able to explain what that had to do with the products and processes of the company. This certainly counts as one of the greatest nightmares – that of working with a TL whose ignorance is only exceeded by his bloated ego and attitude.
The management makes a large contribution in every call centre employee’s nightmare. There’s this joke told of competition that was held at a bar – The barman squeezed a lemon dry and offered a 1000 bucks to anyone who could squeeze out another drop from that lemon. Many people tired but none succeeded. In the end this frail man comes forward and says that he can win the challenge. He takes the lemon and squeezes it; out come 3 drops more. Everyone is astounded. They asked him whether he was a yogi or a weight lifter. He says, “No… I’m a manager at a call centre!”
Jokes apart; this really is how the agents at the call centre are sucked dry to the very fibre of their being. Can a car mechanic be asked to program software? The answer is an obvious No. In the same way how can someone trained to take a particular type of call, say technical support for mobile phones, be put in a cue for technical support of broadband internet, something that he has no knowledge of at all. It is not only frustrating for the guy taking the call because he doesn’t know what he’s doing but also for the customer who spends 45 minutes talking to someone and still doesn’t get his issue resolved. When this is highlighted to the management, the automated response is – We are aware of the situation and deeply regret any inconvenience caused. The management wishes to thank all its employees for their support and hope to continue receiving your full fledged cooperation.
Or perhaps they feel that for what the employees are being paid, they do not get enough done out of them. Nightmare No. 4 then becomes – Coming in before and staying back after shift at no extra pay. The way call centres work is that they are always trying to perfect their processes and skills. So they come up with innovative (not necessarily effective) ways to get those things done. So now that they have come up with something supposedly useful, the employees have to be trained or informed about it. But who will take the brunt of the calls coming in if the agents are being trained at the same time? Solution: Call them before shift or make them wait after shift. If they complain about anything threaten to mess up their annual appraisal and thus stop their growth in the company (Oh yes! This does happen.).
This article is my attempt at educating all those who think that a job at a call centre is a walk in the park. It’s an excruciating nightmare that one has to practically live each day. It is not just picking up the receiver and chatting. You are doing a million different things on the call and you cannot afford to go wrong anywhere. I’d ideally ended this piece with – Welcome to my worst nightmare. But I thought it’d be too clichéd…
Oh! What the heck… Welcome to my worst nightmare!
