Monday, December 13, 2004

You're call is very important to us - please hold

I always said call centres were a passing trend even though I work in one. The one thing I can say with clarity and experience is that call centres don’t really work; the simple truth is that nobody likes them.

Why?

Nobody likes them because they are faceless, vague, tedious and basically when you eventually get through you’re greeted with ‘You’re call is very important to us, please hold’. When you speak to call centres you are calling the middleman, whether that be banking or repairs and that never breeds confidence in people does it? There’s no wonder when people get through they are deflated, frustrated and more often than not just plain angry. Having reached someone to speak to they usually get a pre-scripted robotic person, a clueless trainee or just put on hold. Recently I changed my phone and needed to call service provider to enable a feature on my phone, it took 6 calls to get it right and on receiving my last phone bill I wasn’t best pleased. The only time I’ve felt satisfaction is when ringing one up for pc technical support and they talk you through something but that’s still not as good as being shown in person and also costly.

When I started doing this job I was enthusiastic, I’d been indoctrinated with all the rhetoric, all the jargon to make it sound good to the clients but soon the allure wears thin and you realise non of it is congruent, it’s all bullshit.

Call centres originate from America and maybe over there they actually work as the Americans are more service centred than we Brits, in fact most countries are more serviced centred than us! (scribbles a note to do a blog on customer service in shops!)

So, what does the future hold for call centres? I think they are beginning to die a death, the firm where I work as seen contract after contract disappear, proof that the trend is indeed starting to flail in its death throws. I still think we’ll always have them but they are on a notable decline. Like most British industries like knitwear, mining and cars – it all goes abroad. India has embraced call centres to their bosom and of course the powers that be have put them over there because of the cheap labour. Our firm deals a lot with high street chain stores and they have cut us out to go to the contractors direct, who can blame then?

Ironically a female work colleague of mine who has just been bereaved had to call her insurance company whose call centre is based in India, she had to explain that her husband had recently died and her policy needed changing. On amending the policy the Indian call centre operator said to my bereaved colleague ‘Have a nice day!’

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