|
Edited on Thu Aug-05-10 10:25 PM by Poll_Blind
...picked up, first working the phones as the "gatekeeper" (it was for an enterprise product) and then as a technician to support the product. I'm a good guy and never did any of these, and eventually I was awarded a management position because of that. My quota as a gatekeeper was 113 calls a day. As a technician, about 13, FWIW. The quotas are set based on a formula of expected service and if these guys are getting almost double that, they're not giving the required service. This is soley from the gatekeeper perspective. Absolutely every call was to be logged and notated as thoroughly as possible because the same people often called back to continue work on a case.
Here are some things they might be doing:
:graybox: Outright dumping the calls. Just hanging up. Now this generally didn't work in our particular industry because the people would call right back and get someone who sat relatively close to you, complain, and your supervisor would find out about it very quickly.
:graybox: Call control into Hell: The operator at some point intentionally misdirects their call in order to essentially dump them, but to someplace where it's likely they'll get all sorts of strange run-arounds and delay calling back. Using good call control techniques it's possible to get a person to ask to be transferred into Hell, though they don't know it. Basically they'd use logical fallacies, presenting the customers with only a subset of their actual options- all of which would yield quick resolutions, usually with very low notes.
:graybox: Dumping into the queue: Same as above but they don't perform appropriate gatekeeper vigilance, transferring the person into the service queue either without notes, incorrect notes, shitty boilerplate notes or some other reason which reflects on the level of service the customer actually achieved.
:graybox: Boiler-plating their notes. They have textpad open with several (or several dozen, depending on the business) boiler plate notes to jam in the record. If done correctly, this is not only not a bad thing it's working smart. As long as you fill in the appropriate blanks.
:graybox: Actually manipulating the call system itself to rack up artificially high numbers with calls which appear to have an appropriate service length. This is one trick which is usually very specific to the phone system and how the switch (and maybe even the database software) works. Old timers who are either moving on to a different department or quitting will drop this to people they physically sit next to and if you keep track of your individual representatives' call volume/length you can actually see this go down. This knowledge is both really hard to come by and can be very difficult to spot. Manager goes on break? Plug in three extra calls. Manager goes on lunch? 10 extra calls. That sort of thing.
:graybox: Blowing the manager or being your manager's dealer. This does happen. Managers can usually manipulate the system (at least where I worked) and although it could be audited to catch this sort of behavior it was almost never done.
That's just the big ones I can think of.
Now, it could be that you're just busting your balls when you don't need to. You might care a little too much and giving a higher level of service than the company requires of you. It can be a good thing or a bad thing when it comes to review time, depending on who's chewing on your boss and why. Ask your boss, they'll usually help you find out what they really expect from you. The place I worked, though, you'd never get a straight answer: The managers themselves could get chewed out for any reason and they just couldn't predict what metric they'd actually be held accountable for.
It's a shitty job but you can actually get very good if you don't just treat it like work but actually do some research, and spend a little time outside work, just trying to improve your "game". Most people don't want to think about work when they're not working but, really, these folks could have streamlined themselves into top positions because they're willing to do that.
Two hours a week and after a few weeks I bet you'll get higher numbers. Work smart, not hard. :)
Good luck! If you eventually find out what they're doing, drop me a PM- I'd love to know!
OnEdit: You can find out just by listening to them. Get near to them enough times, take your break and find a reason to be near enough to overhear them, etc. If they're turning over that many calls, it really should not take long to figure out exactly what they're doing.
PB
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
