Anyone here work in a call centre?

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I was in a call center which did cold calls and got fired rather quickly. I dealt with the anger of the poor people, I had to disturb by pretending that I played a role in a film.

I've been working in a call center for over 2 years. I am in completely inbound calls, or outbound to specific people who are expecting it. Whenever I do feel bad about a customer, I'm in the best position of almost anyone on the floor to help the client out. Also the atmosphere is rather lax and the people around me at least tolerate if not quite enjoy my company and my tendancy to say what is on my mind. If it were not for the people I work with, I would not still be here.

To be honest, I had a meltdown the first day I was on the phones, however I'm really stubbron and would not let something as stupid as a phone beat me. Over 2 years later, it still hasn't.

I work taking emergancy calls from the elderly, im just one of these people who doesnt let things get to me. As you can imagine we get some pretty nasty calls but you just have to remain calm and professional and not let them get to you.

I have been working in a call center for 4 years now.

More so:
- worked for 5 call centers in 5 different countries
- done callcenter work in 4 languages
- done inbound and outbound, technical support and others, plus some sales


In the first year or two I liked it. Clear guidelines on what to do, not extremely repetitive but routinous enough, tough decisions passed on to the boss so relatively low stress ...

Now however I am wanting to quit it. Back in Northern Ireland we had the most awful product to support, so as a consequence all calls were very angry and frustrated people. Worst of all: they were damn right, the product was awful, but you're supposed to stay calm and defend your employer... Next callcenter job was extremely repetitive, like every call lasting 30 seconds and every call is identical. With hardly any time to breathe between calls, this means 400 to 500 identical calls a day with each time the same words. I have a huge breakdown in those two jobs : the latter one made me feel like a robot or machine, the first one was just the way customers were approaching me.

I then hoped to find another job out of the callcenter world, but found none and was in need for money so out of urgency I accepted another callcenter job. I am still doing that one. It is OK for a while, we can access internet between work, calls vary each time, and part of the time is email-based support rather than calls. OK for a while, but I am needing a change right now.

Problem is: the countries I am wanting to move to have little else to offer to me apart from yet another callcenter job (the other jobs are out of reach due to degree demands, linguistic barriers or working permit laws) so if I want to get into these places I guess callcenter work is a necessary evil as stepping stone.

I don't mind longer career in the callcenter industry but I would like to quit phoning. After 4 years and several roles in different countries, I think I would be a good coach for new callcenter agents. So a role like that would please me I think. It'd be a new challenge while answering phones again in a new job would be no challenge. Somehow I never received a serious offer to be teamleader or coach in a callcenter, despite the fact that not many people have my experience in this type of job.





Anyway, it is not all bad though:
- for a traveller like me, callcenter work is easy to find because they often need multilingual people and don't mind hiring foreigners without plans to stay in the country long-term
- the routine has a downside but also an upside because in the bad days you can work pretty much without thinking too much and while putting your mind to zero.

In the end I'd say callcenter work is definitely allright for a while or as a stepping stone for something else. Just don't do it too long if you have other options, or try to get promoted to a role away from the phone (such as coach, or teamleader).

I would love to be a coach in a callcenter, but to find such a role in a callcenter in an interesting location is quite hard. It may be easier in my native country but to me that is not an option. I hope maybe some other callcenter does appreciate my experience in this field to give me a role away from the phones.

Yes, I work in the CS department of a publishing house. Luckily I don't have to do outgoing calls, but the constant incoming calls can be stressful. I've been at the job for a year and a half now and am often frustrated when I feel my colleagues are slacking off (taking personal calls, standing around talking, etc). This makes me more annoyed and stressed out. I try to tell myself my job is not a matter of life or death.

I just tried to get a job in a call centre yesterday doing outbound calls to businesses and trying to get them to switch phone providors.

And the dude interviewing me had the freaking nerve to say: "I think this job is going to be way to hard for you." All I could think was, I'm a 21 year old FEMALE. Isn't it like stereotyped that at that age, if I'm not glued to a phone, I've lost my nut?

He then went on to complain about my lack of customer experience. My last 3 jobs have been in sales, so WTF? I really would have prefered the guy being crackedpleasures, cause this guy seemed to have no clue what it was like to actually do the job he was hiring for.

I still probably would have hated the job, don't get me wrong. But I mean really! Too hard... thats one of the more interesting ways I've been told "f*** you" by a prospective employer.

You're absolutely right: your interviewer had no clue what he was talking about. If you have sales experience (which is the hardest part of callcenter work) you can handle other callcenter work for sure. He was not only wrong in his approach but also blatantly impolite.

But may I say you are better off without such boss? I had a similar thing lately: applied for a callcenter job in a city I would love to move to. Was told that they wanted people with a bachelor degree only (WTF?? I have 4,5 years of experience in callcenters and experienced often enough degrees are irrelevant to attitude and communication skills in this profession) and he told me this outcome after breaking his own deadline 4x ("you will have your reply in a few days"... in the end it was a 4 weeks wait and then he came up with this reply). As much as I would have loved to move to this city, I was in a way glad to not deal with this company as employer. I mean, if your employer treats you without respect you're better off with another employer.

The guy that interviewed you seems a similar case as the one I was dealing with: impolite to you, and he also seems to have a wrong idea of what skills are needed for callcenter work. If you got sales experience and coped with that, then surely any callcenter work will be OK for you because sales is one of the harder aspects of the job. Any interviewer ignoring that experience is not doing his job properly, period.

Update: I'm about to finish my second week of training, and I'm really enjoying it.

I worked for two call centers. The first was a Dell call center. The second was an IBM call center. Providing tech support. I lasted a long time at the Dell one. I became quite comfortable with many of the people at that call center. My creed for working there was "I love fixing computers, but I hate the people I have to go through to do, the customers." I only lasted a month at the IBM one.

I've worked a total of about 17 years on the phones, on perhaps 10 different "lines". The amount of stress depends greatly on the nature of the line.

The worst line I heard of is where the government had decided to send a one-time cheque to anybody they defined as old and poor, only to later revise the definition and so HAVE TO, BY LAW, call back a bunch of these poor freezing starving dudes and dudettes and claw it back!

The best was a vacation line for park recreation. People would call to find out about making reservations for a spot in Nature. I tell you it was as if a different Country.

In conclusion, if you have any latitude as to what kind of line, please try for pleasant subject matter. Also, I would imagine unpleasant subjects, like say, tax collection, has to follow more rigid protocol, which tends to tie your tongue behind your back, compounding the pain.

One of the best parts of being an engineer in a large company is I pretty much never have to deal with customers. If I do, they're not everyday people anyway, they're military people.

I worked once a "Developer Support Engineer". I had to deal with two different kinds of customers:

"Normal" people, how brought a B-2-B-product and software engineers how had difficulties with a database server. I did not had real difficulties in dealing with the engineers, but with the "normal" customers. It was sometimes hard for me to realize their technical understand (or better lack of). It was also hard for me not to show them that I thought of some as total idiots.

I was not that unlucky - after all - when they fired my; but think the main reason was that I did not hide my thoughts that our CEO was a total idiot on himself.