Very Bad Call Center Experience

I recently had to publish a comment by one of my beloved readers who had something to say about the DELL call centers. It struck me a bit because it reminded me of the same experience I had with one of the previous call centers I worked for. The comment goes like this:

"You better remove Dell on your list CCV. They are the worse not the best! Kapal ng mukha! Una tech support kalang, tapos pag-training ka nila sa sales sabihin sayo di kasama sa metric (totoo naman siguro yung 1st month). Tapos nung una desktop lang ang sinu-support mo tapos mag-training uli pati-ngayon portable kasama na at take note walang nag-babago sa position level mo at higit sa lahat walang nag-bago sa sweldo mo. Grabe kapal ng mga mukha! Palibhasa madaming galing government employee dito kaya diskarting government din . Isip-isip po kayo bago kayo apply dyan. Kung trip mong mag-call ng 2-5hours isang customer sige go at nga pala yung breaks mo di mo na makukuha pag-nalampasan mo."

My team and I were in the same exact situation when we started out the pioneer batch of the now defunct account in my old workplace. We started out providing customer service and tech support for a VOIP account. The call center was correct in hiring tech support and CS profiled agents and team leaders. But 2 months into operations, sudden change in directions started to emerge, most probably because of my old call center's need aching need to impress the client. We were told that our teams must now handle 4 lines of business that includes the previous 2 and Inbound Sales and Customer Retention.

Up to now I believe that was a bad idea for several reasons. For one, the need to take up a new line of business would not fit the kind of skills the existent manpower holds. So there was training... but a person not inclined to sell and does not want to sell WILL NOT SELL. It was frustrating for all, from the managers who can't figure out why agents can't convert down to each and every agent who can't sell or even retain a customer. Then people started to fall off ( resign ) starting with the mid-managers and then the upper managers and then the agents themselves. Less than 9 months in existence, the client announced that it decided to move to another off-shore site where they can cut operations costs further. End of story.

I gave our upper manager a piece of my mind telling him that the account is in grave danger 2 months prior to the client's announcement of pull-out ( 1 month before I resigned myself ) but he was still trying to figure out and work his way out of the bad situation. But the reply I got was disheartening. He was still pointing out that we were not doing enough to increase our productivity and stats. They threw out all kinds of monetary, awards and other incentives they can think of to boost sales and other stats but it had dismal results to say the least.

I could name 2 things where they went wrong in that account:
1. Wrong hiring - they should have anticipated hiring sales people in the first place. If it was not possible, hire sales people before taking on new lines of businesses.
2. They account managers never adapted to the change.
3. No considerable salary increase for everyone since everyone was performing more tasks than stated in their contracts.
4. The managers were not able to anticipate or see the downward trend. Worse, even if they did see it, they didn't react to it appropriately.

The sad fact is, DELL is not the only call center doing this thing. Marami dyang call centers and call center managers na sa sobrang gustong magpasikat, e hindi pinag-iisipan muna mabuti kung kaya ba ng account nila or kung handa ba sila sa bagong trabaho. Worse wala silang Plan B and Plan C. Result bye-bye NZV. ( Hehe... you guys go figure what NZV is and you will know who I really am!!! ) Goodluck!

Posted in: CallCenter Issues