Mickey's Sanctorum by the Sea: June 2008

A while back, I started this blog to have a place to express myself. Since starting the blog, I have been posting cute fun things most of the time and I have avoided anything that might spark controversy. Starting today, I will be speaking my mind on several issues, everything and anything that strikes me.

Yesterday, a young man that I work with was fired. I do not know all of the particulars and I do not pretend to. However I am increasingly angered and upset at the way call centers operate. And what happened to this young man is no exception.

You see, call centers tend to hire in people at a better wage than most places. So people flock to their job fairs and they are able to hire only the best. This particular call center deals with technical issues for cellular phones so employees are highly trained, and constantly trained. The work is very stressful as you are constantly dealing with angry customers and with non supportive management.

A typical day is filled with dozens of customers who are having issues with their service, people who are reasonable and people who simply want to have a working solution to their problems. But every day there are also the unreasonable assholes who enjoy abusing hard working people, they swear, scream, cuss and threaten the employees. Employees are only allowed to terminate calls if and only if the customer uses profanity and is warned twice before they are disconnected. So if a caller is yelling and screaming and being unreasonable, you must take the abuse until and unless they have finally started to use profanity. Management is entirely without empathy and will subsequently blame the employee for 'not handling the customer properly' even though they are no better equipped to handle a raging lunatic than the employee is.

On top of the people stress, there is the system of measurements that the call center uses to measure the employees. Many of these would be reasonable if they were appropriately implemented as they are intended to be, however they are weighted against the employee, severely weighted. So, while the employee struggles to maintain good statistics, the company takes away from the employees statistics to make the struggle more difficult. It is much like the old concept of company stores. The company pays the employee, then charges beyond what the employee can pay for items ultimately forcing the employee into a slavery situation.

One statistic is called adherence, it is a measure of how well the employee sticks to his/her work schedule. However, several things are added into the statistic that remove from the employee's ability to stick to their schedule before they start. There are three brief management meetings throughout the work shift, these meetings total anywhere from 15-20 minutes of the employee's time. Minutes used for these meetings are counted against the employee and bring down their adherence level. So before the employee even starts his/her day, their adherence is significantly effected by meetings that the management require, but count against the employee.

Another statistic measures the 'quality' of the employee by a survey that the customer is able to take. Two of the statistics measured by this survey measure what the customer thinks of the employee and how likely the customer is to reference someone to the company. The statistics are measured somewhat like the following. If the employee is rated a certain way, his score is:

Rated Excellent 100%
Rated Good 0%
Rated Fair -100%
Rated Poor -200%

So, if in a month the employee gets say 3 excellent ratings and one good rating, their average for the month will be 75% putting them on the border of failure, if they get 2 excellent ratings and 2 good ratings, they will fail for the month as their score will be 50%.

Then when the customer measures the company the same scoring applies, but the scores do not apply to the company, they apply to the employee. I have seen several employees who cleaned up several difficult messes that the company and other employees have made only to be rewarded by getting failing scores in regard to the customer's thoughts about the company.

So when it comes to the employee rating, they can receive all Excellent ratings in a month and have a total excellent score. But the same employee can fail because the customer has rated the company poorly, and of course, if the employee really had been that good, they would have erased all of the previous bad experiences that the customer had with the company in their one 5 minute exchange, so it must be the employee's fault.

Therefore, Customer's rating of employee is Excellent, employee will get an excellent score on how the customer perceives him/her, but if the customer did not like the telecommunications company and was unhappy with their previous interactions, the employee who fixed the mess will be held responsible and fail that category. So, the employee doing an excellent job in handling customers well, will be punished for how the company is perceived, because after all, the company is it's people isn't it?

Then there are those good wages. Of course they can pay good wages, only 1 in 200 survives over 2 years. The company rarely has to give pay increases and pay benefits for any length of time. They tempt good people into the company with higher wages, then use them and dispose of them to start the cycle over again with some other unsuspecting person who is just looking to make an honest living.

I think it is sad that they tempt good people into extremely high stress jobs then use them up and throw them out like they did to my young friend. JJ (not his real name) you have given me the courage to at least say something here. Everyone who reads this, I hope you will have the decency to write to your local newspapers and to your local agencies to report places that function like this and use employees this way! I personally hope and pray that every member of management staff the took part in misusing people in this way falls on the same kind of hard times and misuse that they have perpetrated on others!