Pkchukiss - Reality Wine

And so it starts. My bosses are really slave drivers: they drive themselves like slaves. One does a punishing 18 hour work day, the other does the graveyard shift every night after the rest of Singapore has gone for their usual midnight slumber.

Of course we can’t help it: as a 24 hour call centre, somebody has to do the burning. As for me, I am the “permanent” temp over at the call centre, with the longest hours, even more than the average temp in that room. That is not to say I don’t like the job: everybody there is very nice, and the bosses like to pile upon us food, so we didn’t really have to go far for our lunch: it’s sitting there in the pantry. To sweeten the deal, it isn’t any old SAF cookhouse food: there’s Nasi Lemak, herbal soup, vegetarian Bee Hoon, and there was even fast food fried chicken, also known as KFC for the evening shift, which I sadly missed because I had just got off my shift.

But the stress is platable: as one of the bosses put it, the customer is no longer right. They are the king, and if you ever get to listen to the past calls, you can see ruly customers lord over the poor customer service officer.

I had my fair share of horrible customers, and they all demand the standard: my name, NRIC, department, and an e-mail address to send in their complaints about me to. I got pretty shook up during the first time I got treated like this, but thanks to a senior, I was able to get over it.

It seems that people have a strange obsession to be superior over somebody. I can’t be sure if this is a Singaporean phenomenon, but it seems that a call centre gets more complaints than a Singaporean government department ever does. Is this why we see people abusing their maids? I would really hate to see all the pent up stress vented upon poor service providers like maids and us.

Taking up this portfolio (another nice way of saying “job”) has enabled me to empathise with CSOs even better; it really is strange that you don’t get to see the other side of the telephone system, and this is even less understandable when your blood is boiling over while the computer system keeps you on hold for 45 minutes. (It’s true. I had a customer who told me she held on for 45 minutes. I hadn’t even stopped to take a break, and the calls just kept pouring in) Meanwhile, the harressed person on the other end gets bombarded by frustrated customers who had enough of listening to expensive radio over the phone.

It’s tough, and I meditated over what Boss #2 told me after I got off an extremely difficult caller.

She said, “If you can handle being a CSO, you have the capability to handle just about any other job.” She gave me a pat on the back, and it was back into the flow of things.

Smile when greeting the customer, never be rude to them. It’s tough when you just had a really bad caller, but I managed ok. However, I usually never want to open my mouth after every day is over. Nor see a computer for that matter. That was why I didn’t write. But today is an exception because I didn’t go to work today.

Actually, I wasn’t scheduled to break today, but I felt extremely terrible this morning, and the prospect of handling calls today with a smile really made me cringe, so I pleaded with Boss #2 for today off, which she granted, really reluctantly. Given the high volume of calls, it was really an expensive request, and I am really grateful to her for letting me off for today.

I went for a swim, which was an exercise that I didn’t endulge in for the better of 2 weeks. (Excuse me, I have work commitment!), and found out that I got tired after only 16 laps. I limped to the library to borrow inspiration books. You need inspiration books when you get your pride trampled on by rude callers every day. I found this extremely interesting book that has a daring proposition which goes against the grain of most self-improvement book: thinking can interfere with your true happiness.

Don’t be deceived by this apparently mis-leading title: This is a blogger issue. Yours truly has trouble paraphrasing the gist of the book properly, but the reasonings of the book is a sound and logical one. I’ll check back once I can write a decent summary.

Ok, this post turned out to be a long one, I did try writing 2 days ago, but I got turned off after writing the first sentence: that was how severe my distaste for computers went at that time. This rest day has really recharged me - by a lot. Tomorrow: Company casual dress day, and the prospect of more laid back calls than during ordinary weekdays!

I seriously love my job and bosses; it is just that the customers can get really annoying. But I love them too, because you pay me! Haha!

Filed under: General