Pkchukiss - Reality Wine

I have many people to apologise to, and all for one thing: the bunch of innocently looking servers hidden in the farm located somewhere else in the building.

It isn’t that the server has done something naughty to deserve some spanking, but being direct and objective without being offensive, the coding sounds like something I would come up with at 3 am in the morning after sticking toothpicks in my eyelids.

I know coding at 3 am sounds cool and nerdy in everybody’s eyes, but I seriously doubt it is going to impress anybody when the code is ridden with colons where semi-colons are supposed to be. Usually, the worst code happens when you get a bug that appears only on run-time, which is what we get these days.

And users get really frustrated when they don’t get what they want, and in a short time. The patient ones try again and again in the same futile attempt, and turn into angry bombs when they are unable to login for the umpteen time. To make matters worse, the angry users all queue up in the phone systems while we attempt to pacify the ones at the front of the queue.

I know that it is theraupatic to listen to soothing music, but our users don’t get appeased by listening to the radio station we relay over as the sound byte users hear while they are on hold. Generally, these users are ready to explode onto us poor CSOs after being exposed to 45 minutes of expensive radio (especially if you call from a cell phone). I do know how stiff necked anybody can get when you have to clamp a small device between your shoulder and ear while getting frustrated by an uncooperative server.

And so they do… and you’ll understand what it feels like to be a verbal punching bag. This is a job that is at the forefront of the service industry. Not only do customer service officers handle users who are frustrated by the product, they must also handle it with a professionalism that doesn’t break their momentum; and they must be able to get off a really angry call and jump right into the next call with the same positive energy as if nothing had happened.

Thankfully my National Service experience has allowed me to survive most of the angry rants (you will be surprised how unreasonable some people sound when they get angry), and come out of it a more tolerant person. Really! Angry callers now slide off me more easily, and I can now go home without bringing home the emotional outbursts from work. I dare say that customer service is a challenge to provide service to angry users without further soiling their experience with the product. After all, who would want to call a CSO if the product was working perfectly well? 

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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!

Scribbled under:
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