Curious to see what others deal with here. Normally it's the generic inbound customer mad at service not working.

What about the people who have to call the customer first.

For example at mine the customer gives us their details so we can arrange an appointment and this is the fun I have:

-"why do you have my number? Delete my number"
-Wife put down husband's number without telling him
-As soon as I say who I am the customer rambles on about everything they want for 5 mins and I havent even told them the call's recorded
-"Hi this...", "when can you do?" sigh as I hope theyll understand I have a process to go thru

I'll add more later as I think of them

Not sure if I can use company names so I will leave them out.

Company A was sold to a Canadian company B. Hours are absolutely inconsistent- no work since Dec. 27th. They were heavy into DEI. The surveys that are conducted have not been approved by the government. We keep getting emails telling us soon and fingers crossed by the supervisor at my call center, who started with company A. I feel she really doesn’t know…

Will we ever have work? Or are they phasing us out?

Curious to see if anyone has any good stories. The heroes who took one for the team to punish abusive callers.

Not at a call centre but I remember seeing an Auditing Britain video at a warehouse in Slough. AB was filming these guys, which he is allowed but obviously annoying, and after AB decided he was done and went elsewhere, the security followed him down the road to film AB back.

I am a Registered Nurse who has just taken a job in Telehealth Triage. I am really enjoying it so far compared to being in the hospital (hospitals are fucking toxic places). I have noticed that a lot of patients will go on and on about completely unrelated shit and tell me their life story when I ask them a question and I honestly don't know how to interrupt them and put them back on track without sounding incredibly rude. Sometimes I honestly feel like saying "I don't need to hear your life story, I just need a yes or no answer" however I would be pulled up by QA. Does anyone here have any tips or scripts they could recommend to help me keep patients on track and stop them from talking my ear off whilst not being rude? Thank you for your help.

Just need a little rant. For context I had a breakdown in December and my mental health isn't quite back where it should be.

Friday is our busiest day. My (inbound) call volumes usually peak at around 70-80 on a Friday. Yesterday I took 146 calls. The next highest call taker took 98. I burst into tears when my shift finished and my lead's response was "yeah, I bet you're knackered." This is a company that boasts about its mental health support.

Anyway. I went home, ate chocolate, went to bed early and I'm feeling ok but a bit meh today. I'm just a bit disappointed that, idk, I didn't get a debrief or something.

Does anyone here struggle with their handling time too?

Our average handling time should only be 8min but my customers are problematic. I can't solve their issue within 8 minutes.

Now my metrics is letting me feel I'm incompetent

What has been your experience with the actual impact of AI on call center jobs?
Is it a different impact for in-house vs. outsourcing firms like CNX/Teleperformance/TTEC?

Below is a summary of what I've read / heard over the past few months and what I think:

Ultimately, I wonder if it's still a good idea to look for call center jobs given the rapid advancement of AI from what I've seen. And if it is, then is it better to look for opportunities on a call center at a big firm or at one of the big outsourcing firms? I'm thinking the big firm might be steadier but could just decide to cut their call center one day? Would love to hear your thoughts if you have direct experience here.

Why do they think we cant see all the calls they’ve made. Just had a customer get mad about me not being able to see future plans for her husband when we already explained it to her in OCTOBER of 2024, that was actually an escalation call too.

I pulled the notes and while reading off it says “we have explained to her that……

So why call again thinking it has changed? This is how I can tell who’s worked a real customer service job or not. She tried to raise her voice with me and says “I don’t care what you can’t see y’all should have the information I was told it comes every 3rd Friday of the month” LOL once I told her “THEY also TOLD YOU from reading the notes from that call” she gets all quiet and nice!

I really need these people to use their brains and stop calling thinking they know it all you do not work behind this computer quite frankly you don’t know shit.

First Job: I started working at a scam call centre in a small cubicle with 10 people inside it. The work was, I had to use a fake fb profile and target western people through it, and try to extort money from them. I worked there for 15 days. The owner told me I didn't have the skills to scam people, and kicked me out without giving me any money.

Second Job: I got a job in a small room with around 22 Indians inside it, all trying to sell fake insurance policies on phone calls. The noise inside was deafening, with everyone shouting on top of their lungs to try to sell fake insurance and get incentive of $2.5 per sale. I spent one day there. They had landline phones there. No headphones. No desktops. Just a slip of numbers to dial and try to sell fake insurance policies. I left that job as I couldn't hear customers on call. My family was disappointed on me for leaving that $100/month job.

Third Job: This was my breakthrough. I got a job in a reputed call centre, Sitel, now known as Foundever. They were paying me $220/month. I was in the chat process. I flourished. I gained confidence as it was the first time I wasn't kicked from a call centre within the first 3 months. I spent 7 months there.

Fourth job: I decided to leave and joined Teleperformance in chat process, and now my salary was $250/month. Not bad.

Fifth job: I joined Concentrix, chat upselling process, I flourished, started making $500/month. Left after 6 months.

Current Job: Currently I'm at American Express in the chat process, making around $650/month, which is good enough in India. It's a dream job for people in customer service.

So yesterday just before i was due to finish my shift a customer called in . I couldn’t locate her on system so asked for her to repeat postcode & flat number multiple times. She raised her voice and I said there’s no need to shout as I’m trying to help. I went to try a different way & needed her to confirm first line of address…she then started barking again & one of the lines she used was “Are you on fucking drugs or something” i felt on the verge of tears…so I swiftly terminated the call! The past week or 2 has been absolutely crazy at work & on a normal day I’m quite thick skinned, but lately I’ve been feeling quite overwhelmed and struggling mentally just generally feeling shit. Debated telling my team leader, but she had finished before me. Thankfully I’m off today, but I’m not sure if I should mention it to her on Monday & low key a little worried if I”ll get into trouble for not following the proper call ending process, plus that lady may not even be our customer 🫠

need a virtual assistant for cold calling and outreaching clients and the budget is 15$ per hour depending upon the experience you have

Long time lurker first time poster. Worked in a call centre for 8 years. We handle a lot of personal information basically the kind of stuff that if it got out to the wrong person could be used for identity theft etc as a result our ID processes are set in stone there is no exception if you cannot provide what we need or your not the person on the account we can't help you.

But the amount of times i get abused by husbands calling for wives and vice versa or mothers calling for teenagers etc is frustrating and businesses owners are even worse like they would be the first to cry if we released their info to a stranger. Just unreal how lax they are.

It was a rough shift, I'd taken many more shitty customers than usual from CSRs, and finally one contacted me with a customer I'd had escalated to me a few times this week, and quite liked, as he swore like a poet. When she told me why he needed escalation (nothing huge, but absurd) I started laughing and couldn't stop. Like for a solid minute. My CSR thought I'd lost it. I had.

Anyone else had a weird ass stress reaction like that?

Customer hops on chat line asking for an invoice> mentions that it was sent to an email address that is inactive> I checked on the previous interaction and invoice was already generated> resent it to email address that they want it to be sent> came back and asked customer to check the email now if they've received it.

Replies with "no, because it was sent to a wrong email". I swear to god, these people can't read for shit or has a memory of a gold fish. I'm not a native english speaker but this is just embarrassing from people whose only language is just english all their life. I needed to learn 2 languages before English. Another thing to remember is we are on fcking chat so it's not like the customer misheard me.

I’ve been working from home as a debt collector for the last few months and to cut to the chase, this week I started to crack. I didn’t work the last half of my shift yesterday because I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I have to start my next shift in 30 mins and I have so much anxiety over it, I just don’t think I can do it anymore. I left a message with my supervisor to talk but I still need to speak with them about what’s going on. I’ve been a good worker, but yesterday I started speaking over a customer, raising my voice super loudly before I just hung up on them and threw my headset at my computer. I’m just not cut out for this and don’t know what to do. Cut my hours? Take a leave of absence? Quit altogether for my mental health and try and find something else where I’m not getting verbally abused constantly?

I have seen posts like this on this subreddit before, basically saying there’s a script they have to give stating that a supervisor is not available or something to that affect. I had no idea other call centers did this, I really thought it was just my call center due to the line of work. Does anyone know the reason for this or how common this is?

Does anyone has a list of disconnected or busy numbers?

You would think working conditions like the ones in a call centre would mean they’re usually union but they almost never are. Reasons that come to mind:

-People think they’ll be there for 3-6 months until they get a better job. Often true but then you get people still there 3-6 years later.

-Remote workers are unlikely to want to organize; hard to know who to trust when everyone is just a headshot in MS Teams and otherwise a stranger.

-Young or otherwise vulnerable workers who don’t know any better are tricked into accepting abhorrent working conditions.

-Threats implicit or implied of offshoring jobs to some low wage country with even fewer worker protections.

Why do you think call centres are so unlikely to be unionized compared to say a production plant?

Hi guys, I'm currently working at a CC(crazy right?) Well the thing is that there is an opening for a new role in the company that i work for (its a credit bureau) where apparently agents need to analize businesses info through outbound calls and web searches using different sources, it's a data entry role and it looks like I'll have to use excel on a daily basis, has anyone been at a role like this before? Any thoughts if it's a good idea to move into that role, currently all I do is service inbound calls and I already know a lot but I just don't like hearing problems from someone else over and over because as many of you already know is exhausting at the end of the day/week. Thanks for reading all of it if you get here!

Edif: I forgot to mention that the only downside for the other role I mentioned is that I would need to work 9:30 hours

Which is the lesser of the two evils?

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Hello everyone,

I am currently seeking call center job opportunities. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology and have over a year of experience in quality assurance and customer service. I understand that this line of work can be challenging, but right now, I am looking for any position that can help me put food on the table.

If anyone has leads or can assist, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you!

I use five9 with Oracle service cloud. Anyone have an idea as to why my five9 isn't working. I log on the Oracle and where five9 is supposed to be is blank/white, nothing in the box. I have reset tools, etc. IT can't even figure it out as I am able to log on to five9 on the website and they've also started me a new log in to see if that works but no. Nothing works. It's like five9 just isn't loading in Oracle. I am losing working hours over this 😔

So at my current call center job, we get two 15 minute breaks and one 30 minute lunch over the course of 8 hours. So 1 hour in total. Sounds great right? Except...they discourage us from just going to the bathroom outside of those breaks.

I'm someone who enjoys drinking water, but I have to schedule my water drinking in order to abide by these limited breaks. This means I end up drinking less water than necessary during the day. I have to make it up after work which then leads to overnight bathroom wake up calls.

I would bring it up, but I'm sure other people who've been here much longer than me have already done so.

I know it sounds trivial, but does anyone else have this issue or something similar?

EDIT: So it's come to my attention that this my situation is basically standard across the board. I guess it is what it is.

EDIT#2: So I've been seeing a lot of doctor's note comments and I might just need to do that. I try to hydrate enough for health reasons, but adhering to this strict schedule makes it difficult for no reason. I'll have to look into this.

I work in Chat Support where I have to take both chat and call with the customer. It's a 9 hours shift job where I have to work 6 days a week. The process and the company I work for is really shitty. There are new process updates released every week and we have to follow them and if we make a mistake we get threatened and rebuked by our supervisors. We have to comment on every chat and sometimes by mistake if we forget to do so we get threatened by our supervisors. It's not like a call process where you talk to one person at once. I have to chat with 3-4 customers at once and if they're having certain type of issues it's necessary to call them in those cases. It's obviously not possible to call 3-4 people at once. But those customers start getting angry and frustrated because I've kept them in hold. My days revolve around getting stressed out by both the customers and my supervisors. I do not know how long I'll be able to work in this place. Sometimes I wonder whether it's only this job that is so stressful or I'll still be unhappy if I move to another job in a different sector.

I need some income coming in. Can you guys give me some tips to get a call center job with no call center experience. Also, what were things you feel helped your application and interview?

While ik every cc is different i think we all have THAT type of call which you just absolutely hate and want to hang up immediately upon knowing/detecting why the customer is calling...

I personally work for a bank, at the disputes department, people call in already angry/concerned most of the time, but it gets specially bad with two types of calls for me:

1. Denied claims: Most of the time people are either calling because they noticed a credit reversal and want to know why "the merchant charged them again if they cancelled the trx" or that "the bank had gave them a refund and took it back" because obviously they don't pay attention to what you tell 'em upon filing the claim, they just hear that a credit will be provided and forget about the whole ordeal when they see the provisional credit. Then they go wild when you explain them that they DID authorize the trx or that they never actually cancelled their subscription and uninstalling the fucking app or just no longer showing up at the gym doesn't count as a cancellation. "thE bANk sHouLD prOtECt mY mOnEY!" Yes idiot, from fraud, not from your own stupidity and lack of accountability.

2. Zelle sent to the wrong person: This one's especially bad because people just expect the bank to have a magic wand to just reverse any fuck ups they have, they mistype a phone number or e-mail address and don't pay attention to the 3 or so warnings that Zelle gives you because you're about to send money to an entirely new recipient, they just tap on "OK" on everything as fast as possible and then get all feisty when you tell em you cannot actually recover their money, they can't seem to grasp that it's actually their own fault.

In general whenever you tell a customer you cannot fix THEIR mistake and that THEY need to resolve THEIR PROBLEM that they caused to THEMSELVES they just lose it. But yeah sorry if it seemed like a rant rather than a genuine question, but i AM actually intrigued by what types of calls are those that make y'all go "oh god..."

I was laid off from the only call center job I liked. It’s remote, I’ve worked at other call centers remotely and on site and this is the only one I could see myself staying on with, forever I guess.

But now what? I need to find something less draining but not too physical either. Ugh. Help.

My union was scheduled to have a shift bid in June 2024 and January 2025. The union took our picks but never conducted the bid. Could I file a grievance?

I get calls like these all the time and I'm tired of people using me as an emotional punching bag. I'm sure you all have similar experiences and reading how yall deal with these helps me cope.

Tale as old as time, I work in medicaid and I get a call

Caller: "I have a $36,000 bill that took place in 10/2024"

Me: "I'm so sorry about that ma'am it looks like your coverage with us ended in 08/2024, unfortunately that bill is outside the coverage period."

Caller: "Well I don't have the money to pay for this what can I do?"

Me: " We can reinstate your coverage and backdate so you can be covered for the time of the bill but it needs to be done with this other department."

Caller: "No! I don't want to do that! I just want you to cover this bill!"

Me: "... I'm sorry but the only way we can cover that bill is if you have coverage, if you don't want to reinstate and backdate then the bill is your responsibility."

Caller: "I JUST WANT YOU TO COVER THE BILL, I DONT NEED TO RENSTATE ANYTHING!"

Me: "again, if you don't have coverage, the bill is your responsibility"

Caller: "IM CALLING MY LAWYER!" click

Like what do you want me to do! We can't just cover something because you say so.