10 Things only real call centre employees would understand

It’s a special and unique experience working in a call centre where life-long friendships are formed, you learn skills that can be transferred to any future job, and you can have the ‘joy’ of working with customers all day!

Regardless of the call centre you worked in, from insurance, banking, retail, public sector and so on, there are some things that happen across all contact centres, whether your contact centre is in Australia or on the other side of the world.

We’ve pulled together our top ten things that only real call centre employees would understand although I’m sure there will be plenty of other things we can add to the list!

10 things only real call centre employees would understand

10. The need to arrive early

It’s not uncommon in most call centres that you have to be ready to take calls immediately at the commencement of your shift. The problem is these days you’ve probably got a stupidly slow computer that has been upgraded since Windows XP, and there will be about 10 different systems you need to log into which, of course, also take ages to load.

All of that consumes valuable time – YOUR time!

9. The Trauma of Side by Side Coaching

Great  Team Leaders know the importance of coaching their employees consistently, but no matter how often I receive coaching, my mouth seems to get instantly paralysed as soon as the Team Leader sits down and starts to listen in.

8. Customers demanding to speak to your manager

Even when you are nothing but nice, there are some customers who just won’t accept no for an answer and demand to speak to your manager. Who, of course, is going to tell them exactly the same thing but it just sounds better coming from someone senior right? ? 

7. The noisy colleauge 

There is always that one person in the contact centre who talks so loud, even your customers think they are talking to them! So when you have to sit near them all day, there will be no rest for you. 

P.S if you don’t know who the loudest person is, it’s probably you… 

6. The joy of being unchained from your desk

After being tethered to a desk for years with a corded headset, only a real call centre agent will understand that immense thrill of being handed a wireless headset.

5. The satisfaction you get from saying no to a rude customer

Sure, we are mostly nice all the time but real call centre agents would know that sometimes there are some customers who just like to keep pushing things, want you to bend the rules etc.

So it’s a real shame when you are legitimately able to tell a customer they were actually in the wrong and there is nothing further you can do to help.

4. The battle of the thermostat 

We take a lot of things for granted in this world, including being able to adjust the temperature of our work environment to make it as comfortable as possible.

But you can be assured that whenever a group of people is stuck in a room all day, some will complain it’s too hot, and others will complain it’s freezing!

3. The frustration when your system takes forever to load

If I had $1 for every time I had to apologise for our system being slow, I could have retired years ago!  Now I’m expected to click through about 20 screens which invariable freeze right at the most critical point.

It’s always amazed me that we can split atoms, and send spacecraft billions of km away and yet we still can’t seem to get a computer system to work reliably ?‍♂️

2. You are cynical about any time you are asked to provide feedback

When you first started, you thought were making a difference. Notice a few similar complaints starting to come through?  You’d escalate it up the line so your business could get to the root cause of the issue so no other customers had to go through the same thing.

But over time, you realise that nothing ever seems to change. Customers are still calling about the same issues that were raised years ago.

And when you are asked about what could make the workplace better, it doesn’t;t matter what you say or suggest – the solution is always another pizza day!

1. The need to multitask on steroids

The modern call centre has dual monitors and many different systems and tools you need to access while focusing on the customer, ensuring your AHT is low, taking good notes, etc. You’ve got this ?

Summary

We hope you got a few laughs out of the 10 things only real call centre employees would understand – if you’ve got any more you think we should add, be sure to leave them in the comments!

And if you did have a laugh, click on the heart below!

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