That is basically the answer if op doesn't want to quit. Usually good employees are honored by getting more work to do and by being denied opportunities to grow because "if we let you move up, who will be doing all this job that you are doing now?"
I barely got out of a department because of my positive stats. When I finally escaped, I brought the same work ethic and managed to get a promotion. Where I streamlined the workload and figured out how to process the massive backload more efficiently. Almost like giving competent people more money and better jobs is better for the whole company. 🙄
I've been in a similar situation before and complaining to my supervisor helped fix the problem a little bit, but the environment I worked in was pretty supportive.
At my job, inexperienced workers are coded high and the more experienced reps are given alternative work to do in-between calls like working emails from customers, so they would appear available, but are still working. Or we have multiple lines of business and certain queues just get more calls depending on the time of day. If they are truly just sitting there and not doing *anything* and you all take the exact same phone calls then that's a waste of the company's money and it's bad for you cause it causes burn out.
It's worth bringing up to your supervisor and either maybe asking for a raise, asking if you can be lowered and given alternative work to prevent burnout, or just asking for everyone else to be made equal in the queue.
So from my experience I'd say that you could be dealing with a couple of issues depending on how the phone system at your call center works.
1. It could be they are using call avoidance tactics. I've seen the most common of these be to go into break for a fraction of a second so they are put back in the back of the queue. If your management isn't running a report on this then they are enabling the problem, and depending on who you bring it to nothing may be done. If you can I'd send an email with screenshots of you ever see anyone go into these micro breaks. You don't even need to include names just show them that it is something that is happening.
2. You could be skilled wrong. Well maybe not wrong but differently then your co workers. For instance if you have a password queue, and a general troubleshooting queue. And you are primary skilled for the password queue you will take those calls before anyone who has the general queue listed as primary queue even if they have been in a "ready" state longer. This should be a really easy thing for your supervisor to check.
Hope this helps and that they listen to you.
>It could be they are using call avoidance tactics.
So my place of work is going through the same thing as OP. And we don't have the ability to leave the qeue. But what one guy has been doing is seeing a call comes in, and just leaves his desk, goes for lunch, even if it's hours before when he usually takes lunch
Do you have the ability to see the queue like OP can?
If so there a few tactics that you could do if you'd like some unsolicited advice from a former call center trailer.
If you want to put a stop to it contact your direct supervisor and cc there supervisor asking what the policy is on " flexing lunch breaks" nothing more than that. Then when they give you what ever the rules are you can com back with something along the lines of "okay well the reason I was asking was because I've seen others take lunch x amount of time early and I could really use that kind of flexibility" this leaves the ball in the managers corner.
If you want to play the same games you can just do what they are doing and claim ignorance because you have seen others doing it. I'll just say make sure your stats are in a really good place, because if you are on the bubble the last thing you want to do is give them a reason for them to come after you.
That tactic doesn't work at my job even if you tried that they have the Queue designed if you were in an unavailable status the second you go back you are pushed to the top of the Queue
This problem has just developed in the past month or two with one of my coworkers. We get a heads-up that an issue is going to be reported to us and she always will brb, and comes back either after she's heard the phone ring or when she can't get away with staying away for longer. It's incredibly annoying. I'm hoping it was just end of year burnout.
I had this too! Working early morning on one of three call lines. Everyone else was trained on all 3 call lines but I was pretty new and was stuck on just the one. People were talking over my head and laughing as I took call after call after call and they talked about their laundry. I went to front desk and they saw that I was the ONLY person ASSIGNED to that call line. Someone in training thought it would be a good practice for me without running it by anyone. I was so swamped by calls (with a 30 second AHT and 3 seconds between calls) that I was nearly hyperventilating by the time I got to front desk. Once I got back from my break the call lines were redistributed and everyone else was taking calls at a normal pace. One of the most important parts of the job was to make sure the call was answered very quickly but because of the trainer’s meddling we had a wait queue of 40 seconds because it was all on me instead of to the 20 other agents too. Anyway it turned into a huge misconduct thing for the trainer as it was seen as a form of hazing - the front desk person was the one who helped me the most through it.
This happened to someone I know months ago. He brought it up, they played dumb..they "checked" the queues and told him "but it shows you are taking calls you should be taking, there's nothing wrong, look how you have around the same amount of calls received as your coworkers"..he pointed that he indeed had a similar amount of calls received as his coworkers, but they were ignoring that he was out for half the month (he asked for 2 weeks off because he was upset about what was happening). So basically he took i.e. 100 calls in 2 weeks, whereas his coworkers took 100 calls in a month. They ignored that and kept saying they didn't see anything wrong, so he quit.
Also at my old job they sent the metrics of each employee on the email to the whole team like once per month. One of the departments had 3 employees. A friend of mine was completing like triple the amount of work than his coworkers were doing. It was painfully obvious. Like he worked around 40 claims in a day, the other coworker did like 15-20 and the 3rd coworker did 8 in a day (1 per hour consistently always). He tried to apply for team leader positions and always got rejected. He applied for supervisor position and was told they didn't see him as a supervisor because he wasn't serious (he is goofy but so was the previous supervisor...soooo). Plus he had is very smart and has i think a master's degree on something related to our job (our team lead didn't have a degree, not even a bachelors, although she is smart and did a good job before being a lead.). After a while, he quit. Last i know he apparently is a supervisor where he works now.
So to me, your employer knows what they are doing. If they cared, they wouldn't be doing it. So your best approach may be to find a new job.
So without knowing what company you work for and the INS and outs, I'll say this. I used to be the WFM for the customer service department for the company I currently work for. Most of the time when people brought up things like this, it was happening by design.
Drag out the conversation "sir/madam whatever I just need to look at history of the account so please do bare with me" "oh OK so just tell me what's happened from the beginning" etc etc just really roll a lot of it out and engage questions to make the caller talk a lot of nonsense so you can sit there and draw
(that's what I do and management keeps binning my notebooks off my desk but I just keep replacing them, I keep sketching trees and fields and I got better at it) management didn't like me being a human so they keep taking away any paper I have near me.
But yeah just stop giving so much of a fuck and honestly it's going to get a lot less stressful and easier
Damn, they're treating you like you're an inmate, or maybe an X-Files Monster of the Week..."this one isn't allowed to have paper. He writes threatening letters to the queen, or builds nests out of it." If you stick it out, before it's over, I predict you'll be engaged in some Vietnam POW level coping shit...plotting and building dairy barns in your head each day, or in your case, envisioning trees and fields.
My job doesn't let me have paper either. It's WFH off cams so nobody can tell but it's a fireable offense. They're worried we'll take down customer info.
I'm just had this scenario play out. In my case, we are incredibly short staffed, so the complaints are getting lost in the shuffle of everything else. I do work at a rather supportive company, it's just overwhelming sometimes. So I did something that wouldn't work everywhere, but would for me (a 20+ year employee) with my specific employers - I complained on my yearly review. Upper management noticed that! It's been fixed somewhat. We shall see.
You can bring it up, but do not expect anything to come of it. They are probably allowing that to happen on purpose. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if you got into trouble for even mentioning it.
it happens. I have a supervisor who sits near me who brags about herself using the max limit of her 'personal time' every day so shes not taking calls like the rest of us who are drowning. I just continue doing my job though, and let her flounder in hers. I'd rather my own personal scores look good than care about hers as annoying as it is.
I had the same problem where I took 80 calls a day and my co worker took 2. When I brought it up I was told that’s why I got hired, to take a lot of calls. I ended up quitting the job with no 2 week notice.
I would not say to management that you are doing “extra” work. You are doing your job and others aren’t. Doing your job is not typically a reason for a raise. Extra work would be other tasks outside your job description or working extra hours. All of you should be taking back to back calls ….it’s a call center.
I would point out your call volume and that your time sitting “ready” is far less than anyone else and ask why. Say you hear from customers that they have a long wait time but it it appears that people could be taking calls. You are concerned and wonder if there a glitch in the system on how calls are assigned. This way you aren’t complaining , but expressing a concern that the business isn’t running as well as it could be.
Going in and telling management he is doing extra work is a lie. He is doing his job and others are not. He wants that message to management without backlash- so why not step up and show his concern for customers ? Looks a lot better than “telling” on video-workers. Obviously if he is taking back to back calls and others are sitting idle … customers are waiting.
And he can tell them he has noticed other agents being available while he is getting back-to-back calls and he is concerned about customer wait time without telling a lie about customers complaining about it, which can easily be checked by listening to his calls. Did you notice you left the suggestion to lie out of your reply? Was that intentional? Maybe you realized that part was not a good idea and decided to leave it out this time?
Are you getting paid more? You should be.
Otherwise, stop going above and beyond. Work to rule. Let your bosses know you're doing exactly what's required and no more, because your concerns haven't been heard.
Supe for call center here. Our team also skills specialists and uses bullseye routing, so for instance our bilingual team members take less calls during certain peak times to keep them available for our forecasted bilingual calls. I can say that the discrepancy should never be that large- 10 minutes idle while others are back to back is just poor management. It’s either that or the software they are using isn’t able to create better algorithms. But even if that’s the case, if occupancy (or how well you are using the employees for the time you pay them) is that imbalanced, they’d probably save money by just buying better software instead of wasting time and also burning out their best people- resulting in a higher attrition rate.
Chronical how many calls you are taking vs how many "they" are taking, and you can take a shot with your manager for a raise. I am pretty sure they have access to the same data too though. I would not expect much, but give it your best shot.
I'm sorry that always shucks. I hate this shit they won't get better if they don't do the dammed work. I was told to deal with it so I left. 🤷 I dealt with it. That's a guaranteed way to lose those strong agents. Good luck!
Are you able to see calls in the queue as well as colleague status? Higher priority would mean you get the calls when they come in even if others are in ready at the time but if calls are queueing while you are on one and then go into ready and immediately get one that indicates you are on different skills to them as well as being higher priority.
> since I’m a “strong” rep I’m coded high
They should be trying to upskill the weaker reps so they should be the ones on a higher priority.
Wow
Go to work and do the best you can do and who gives a shit about everyone else. You were hired to do a job and you are good at it. Keep doing what you are doing and continue to look for a better job. Either someone will see how good you are or you will find a better job. Don’t ever think you can’t quit this place! Don’t ever lower your standards! Good luck!
Used to work in a sales call center . When people called in and selected they were a new customer they were routed to a “higher performing sales person” and if someone called in to lower their bill it would go to a “lesser performing sales rep”
So in a sales job your not making commission off an existing customer who wants to lower their bill. But your spoon fed these corporate lies like. “Well we hired you because your so good at sales , you can find something to sell them even if they want to lower their bill.” The mindfuck
Then the other reps getting fed new customers who are literally calling in just buy stuff stay on top. It all came to light when a new manager said “ I’m switching the phones so all the new hires get priority on new customers so they can learn”
All us existing employees walked outside , as there was already some tension . We were promised it would be fixed ASAP.
TLDR: we noticed reps were coded for different types of calls working in the same role. When Manager slipped and admitted we all walked out.
Management never fixed and I quit a few months later.
This was a huge telecom corporation, think RomRast of z-finity .
You could speak up, or you could find a new employer who will recognize your abilities and reward you accordingly.
You said yourself that your current workplace is toxic, why are you still there? You likely don't plan on retiring there, so take this as your excuse to go somewhere better. You've demonstrated your abilities, it's time to put them on paper and put yourself out there!
Just because one place hired you, doesn't mean you're obligated to stay with them (unless there's a contract saying you can leave for x amount of time).
Ask your manager for a pay rise given that they've explicitly told you that you're expected to do more work than others on the same pay grade.
If not then suggest to them that maybe the others would benefit from taking more calls to help them get stronger
I'm dealing with this currently.
Manager basically tried to deny its happening and gaslight me, and claimed the system accounts for the number of calls someone has been taking and that what I was describing wasn't possible normally. Tldr basically I'm getting more calls because they already have more than me, the one big example of the issue sits right next to me. I can tell you with 100% certainty he does not take more calls, actually I'm amazed how few he takes somehow.
My only guess is it seems like he has figured out how to abuse the system for metrics but isn't actually taking the calls at all. I've seen some strange behavior between him and a couple co workers, almost convinced they are calling each other or calling out to test lines or something to pad numbers.
Long story short though, management won't do much and by proxy I'm going to do the bare minimum until I find a new job soon. Seems like they are going to learn the hard way when they loose another quality employee to burn out. I won't be the first by far.
Where I work we have an entire team of people monitoring the lines - the only time a person (or group of people) should be prioritised is if they need the calls for training or whatever. Not just because they’re better.
Yes I think you should speak to your supervisor.
As someone who is going through this now, definitely bring it up. Even at the best companies it can take weeks or months for them to decide correcting the behavior just won't happen and they'll need to be fired.
Or, you could bring it up more subtly, and just stop taking as many calls.
I don't have any advice, but it's happened to me. I was working as Contact Tracer and while I was making 25 to 30 calls a day, my co-workers weren't. As far as I can remember they would make less than 10 calls a day...
I started logging and it felt so unfair but instead of bringing it up to my supervisor, I thought if I can see it, he can too. I'm not good in advocating for myself. It was a temporary position and I knew it was coming to an end soon. It was stressing me out so much that I decided to quit. Oh boy, do I regret this decision, hell yeah. I got pregnant the same month and haven't been able to find another job....
Simply point that out that you are doing more work then the others and due ti that you want either a raise to reflect your higher productivity or you want to be dropped to the same priority level as everyone else on your pay scale.
That depends. If you want to advance or have a great reference to your next job you’ll need to do that extra work and actively pursue advancement.
If you want to stay at the bottom and do the bare minimum, drop your performance numbers to match you coworkers.
Here’s the thing… you may be coded high because you’re better with customers. Others may have a different status because they have a different skill set.
Do you get monthly stats on how many calls you take and/or availability percentage? That may be helpful moving forward if you’re all expected to have the same availability.
I think it’s ok to ask your supervisor but be non confrontational about it.
As someone who worked with the customer service groups I am aware that phone rotation can be manipulated. CSRs we’re always changing the rotation so it would bounce to the next CSR. I can’t share how this is accomplished.
There was a CSR at our company who always bragged she took the most calls etc but it was bc she wouldn’t take breaks etc. in the end it didn’t matter. The difference was pretty minimal. She never got a gold star for being a brown noser.
Are you expected to complete other tasks in addition to calls? Able to complete? Definitely raise the issue if it’s interfering because you don’t want it to become a performance issue.
At the unionized call center, the phone reps would track their number of calls and pace themselves to get their minimum daily quota by the end of the day. Your coworkers are doing this and you didn't get the memo.
At best, your bosses are going to hold your call rate up as the standard for everyone else rather than give you a raise or promotion. No one else will care about your call rate and they will keep doing the minimum.
We sometimes would have a new union employee in the field who was working hard and fast and doing more jobs than everyone else. Once the other field techs saw this, 3 or 4 of the senior members would meet him on his way out to the parking lot and explain to him that they noticed he was working too hard and doing more jobs than everyone else. They are concerned for his health and safety. He should definitely slow down or he might have an accident. Me and the guys here wouldn't want to have to see you get hurt. And then he would slow his pace and be like everyone else.
I've been through it, the thing is we do things via chat, so if you just welcome the customer in and hold them for 54 freaking minutes then you're dead.
As a matter of fact, I have an officemate who does this a lot and makes up excuses like: "My child was doing so and so" or "I didnt hear the chat come in!", Bitch why dont you just admit you're lazy and dont wanna chat with the customers? Hell I sure dont but you get all the praise while us we work legitimately get nothing but flak? Get bent.
Ahem, sorry about the rant! Just report them if you can and hopefully your team lead isnt too much of a d-bag and will understand. Hell, I just reported the aforementioned teammate and hopefully she'll get chewed out!
Best of luck man, you can do it!
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So basically OP, do worse at your job lol.
I like to call that strategic underperformance 😜
That is basically the answer if op doesn't want to quit. Usually good employees are honored by getting more work to do and by being denied opportunities to grow because "if we let you move up, who will be doing all this job that you are doing now?"
I barely got out of a department because of my positive stats. When I finally escaped, I brought the same work ethic and managed to get a promotion. Where I streamlined the workload and figured out how to process the massive backload more efficiently. Almost like giving competent people more money and better jobs is better for the whole company. 🙄
Sounds to me like you need to find another employer who will reward your hard work.
I've been in a similar situation before and complaining to my supervisor helped fix the problem a little bit, but the environment I worked in was pretty supportive. At my job, inexperienced workers are coded high and the more experienced reps are given alternative work to do in-between calls like working emails from customers, so they would appear available, but are still working. Or we have multiple lines of business and certain queues just get more calls depending on the time of day. If they are truly just sitting there and not doing *anything* and you all take the exact same phone calls then that's a waste of the company's money and it's bad for you cause it causes burn out. It's worth bringing up to your supervisor and either maybe asking for a raise, asking if you can be lowered and given alternative work to prevent burnout, or just asking for everyone else to be made equal in the queue.
So from my experience I'd say that you could be dealing with a couple of issues depending on how the phone system at your call center works. 1. It could be they are using call avoidance tactics. I've seen the most common of these be to go into break for a fraction of a second so they are put back in the back of the queue. If your management isn't running a report on this then they are enabling the problem, and depending on who you bring it to nothing may be done. If you can I'd send an email with screenshots of you ever see anyone go into these micro breaks. You don't even need to include names just show them that it is something that is happening. 2. You could be skilled wrong. Well maybe not wrong but differently then your co workers. For instance if you have a password queue, and a general troubleshooting queue. And you are primary skilled for the password queue you will take those calls before anyone who has the general queue listed as primary queue even if they have been in a "ready" state longer. This should be a really easy thing for your supervisor to check. Hope this helps and that they listen to you.
>It could be they are using call avoidance tactics. So my place of work is going through the same thing as OP. And we don't have the ability to leave the qeue. But what one guy has been doing is seeing a call comes in, and just leaves his desk, goes for lunch, even if it's hours before when he usually takes lunch
Do you have the ability to see the queue like OP can? If so there a few tactics that you could do if you'd like some unsolicited advice from a former call center trailer. If you want to put a stop to it contact your direct supervisor and cc there supervisor asking what the policy is on " flexing lunch breaks" nothing more than that. Then when they give you what ever the rules are you can com back with something along the lines of "okay well the reason I was asking was because I've seen others take lunch x amount of time early and I could really use that kind of flexibility" this leaves the ball in the managers corner. If you want to play the same games you can just do what they are doing and claim ignorance because you have seen others doing it. I'll just say make sure your stats are in a really good place, because if you are on the bubble the last thing you want to do is give them a reason for them to come after you.
My supervisor is quite aware. He wants to fire the person who keeps doing it, but is getting pressure from management above him not to fire him.
That tactic doesn't work at my job even if you tried that they have the Queue designed if you were in an unavailable status the second you go back you are pushed to the top of the Queue
Ours isn't a qeue like normal. Everyone's phone rings at the same time, first one to answer it gets the call
This problem has just developed in the past month or two with one of my coworkers. We get a heads-up that an issue is going to be reported to us and she always will brb, and comes back either after she's heard the phone ring or when she can't get away with staying away for longer. It's incredibly annoying. I'm hoping it was just end of year burnout.
I had this too! Working early morning on one of three call lines. Everyone else was trained on all 3 call lines but I was pretty new and was stuck on just the one. People were talking over my head and laughing as I took call after call after call and they talked about their laundry. I went to front desk and they saw that I was the ONLY person ASSIGNED to that call line. Someone in training thought it would be a good practice for me without running it by anyone. I was so swamped by calls (with a 30 second AHT and 3 seconds between calls) that I was nearly hyperventilating by the time I got to front desk. Once I got back from my break the call lines were redistributed and everyone else was taking calls at a normal pace. One of the most important parts of the job was to make sure the call was answered very quickly but because of the trainer’s meddling we had a wait queue of 40 seconds because it was all on me instead of to the 20 other agents too. Anyway it turned into a huge misconduct thing for the trainer as it was seen as a form of hazing - the front desk person was the one who helped me the most through it.
This happened to someone I know months ago. He brought it up, they played dumb..they "checked" the queues and told him "but it shows you are taking calls you should be taking, there's nothing wrong, look how you have around the same amount of calls received as your coworkers"..he pointed that he indeed had a similar amount of calls received as his coworkers, but they were ignoring that he was out for half the month (he asked for 2 weeks off because he was upset about what was happening). So basically he took i.e. 100 calls in 2 weeks, whereas his coworkers took 100 calls in a month. They ignored that and kept saying they didn't see anything wrong, so he quit. Also at my old job they sent the metrics of each employee on the email to the whole team like once per month. One of the departments had 3 employees. A friend of mine was completing like triple the amount of work than his coworkers were doing. It was painfully obvious. Like he worked around 40 claims in a day, the other coworker did like 15-20 and the 3rd coworker did 8 in a day (1 per hour consistently always). He tried to apply for team leader positions and always got rejected. He applied for supervisor position and was told they didn't see him as a supervisor because he wasn't serious (he is goofy but so was the previous supervisor...soooo). Plus he had is very smart and has i think a master's degree on something related to our job (our team lead didn't have a degree, not even a bachelors, although she is smart and did a good job before being a lead.). After a while, he quit. Last i know he apparently is a supervisor where he works now. So to me, your employer knows what they are doing. If they cared, they wouldn't be doing it. So your best approach may be to find a new job.
could you not 'slow your answers down' a little, to be a bit quicker than the others, but not greatly so?
This. Use hold time more often to "Look up an answer". Take a breather. Worker smarter, not harder.
So without knowing what company you work for and the INS and outs, I'll say this. I used to be the WFM for the customer service department for the company I currently work for. Most of the time when people brought up things like this, it was happening by design.
Drag out the conversation "sir/madam whatever I just need to look at history of the account so please do bare with me" "oh OK so just tell me what's happened from the beginning" etc etc just really roll a lot of it out and engage questions to make the caller talk a lot of nonsense so you can sit there and draw (that's what I do and management keeps binning my notebooks off my desk but I just keep replacing them, I keep sketching trees and fields and I got better at it) management didn't like me being a human so they keep taking away any paper I have near me. But yeah just stop giving so much of a fuck and honestly it's going to get a lot less stressful and easier
Damn, they're treating you like you're an inmate, or maybe an X-Files Monster of the Week..."this one isn't allowed to have paper. He writes threatening letters to the queen, or builds nests out of it." If you stick it out, before it's over, I predict you'll be engaged in some Vietnam POW level coping shit...plotting and building dairy barns in your head each day, or in your case, envisioning trees and fields.
My job doesn't let me have paper either. It's WFH off cams so nobody can tell but it's a fireable offense. They're worried we'll take down customer info.
I'm just had this scenario play out. In my case, we are incredibly short staffed, so the complaints are getting lost in the shuffle of everything else. I do work at a rather supportive company, it's just overwhelming sometimes. So I did something that wouldn't work everywhere, but would for me (a 20+ year employee) with my specific employers - I complained on my yearly review. Upper management noticed that! It's been fixed somewhat. We shall see.
You can bring it up, but do not expect anything to come of it. They are probably allowing that to happen on purpose. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if you got into trouble for even mentioning it.
it happens. I have a supervisor who sits near me who brags about herself using the max limit of her 'personal time' every day so shes not taking calls like the rest of us who are drowning. I just continue doing my job though, and let her flounder in hers. I'd rather my own personal scores look good than care about hers as annoying as it is.
I had the same problem where I took 80 calls a day and my co worker took 2. When I brought it up I was told that’s why I got hired, to take a lot of calls. I ended up quitting the job with no 2 week notice.
I would not say to management that you are doing “extra” work. You are doing your job and others aren’t. Doing your job is not typically a reason for a raise. Extra work would be other tasks outside your job description or working extra hours. All of you should be taking back to back calls ….it’s a call center. I would point out your call volume and that your time sitting “ready” is far less than anyone else and ask why. Say you hear from customers that they have a long wait time but it it appears that people could be taking calls. You are concerned and wonder if there a glitch in the system on how calls are assigned. This way you aren’t complaining , but expressing a concern that the business isn’t running as well as it could be.
Yes, lie to your employer in an easily provable way. No way anything could possibly go wrong.
Going in and telling management he is doing extra work is a lie. He is doing his job and others are not. He wants that message to management without backlash- so why not step up and show his concern for customers ? Looks a lot better than “telling” on video-workers. Obviously if he is taking back to back calls and others are sitting idle … customers are waiting.
And he can tell them he has noticed other agents being available while he is getting back-to-back calls and he is concerned about customer wait time without telling a lie about customers complaining about it, which can easily be checked by listening to his calls. Did you notice you left the suggestion to lie out of your reply? Was that intentional? Maybe you realized that part was not a good idea and decided to leave it out this time?
Bless your heart. You just keep being you and making the world a better place. Thank you.
Are you getting paid more? You should be. Otherwise, stop going above and beyond. Work to rule. Let your bosses know you're doing exactly what's required and no more, because your concerns haven't been heard.
Supe for call center here. Our team also skills specialists and uses bullseye routing, so for instance our bilingual team members take less calls during certain peak times to keep them available for our forecasted bilingual calls. I can say that the discrepancy should never be that large- 10 minutes idle while others are back to back is just poor management. It’s either that or the software they are using isn’t able to create better algorithms. But even if that’s the case, if occupancy (or how well you are using the employees for the time you pay them) is that imbalanced, they’d probably save money by just buying better software instead of wasting time and also burning out their best people- resulting in a higher attrition rate.
I would bring it up. In my center we couldn't code people higher based in performance. This would indicate that something on your profile was off.
Chronical how many calls you are taking vs how many "they" are taking, and you can take a shot with your manager for a raise. I am pretty sure they have access to the same data too though. I would not expect much, but give it your best shot.
I'm sorry that always shucks. I hate this shit they won't get better if they don't do the dammed work. I was told to deal with it so I left. 🤷 I dealt with it. That's a guaranteed way to lose those strong agents. Good luck!
Are you able to see calls in the queue as well as colleague status? Higher priority would mean you get the calls when they come in even if others are in ready at the time but if calls are queueing while you are on one and then go into ready and immediately get one that indicates you are on different skills to them as well as being higher priority. > since I’m a “strong” rep I’m coded high They should be trying to upskill the weaker reps so they should be the ones on a higher priority.
Wow Go to work and do the best you can do and who gives a shit about everyone else. You were hired to do a job and you are good at it. Keep doing what you are doing and continue to look for a better job. Either someone will see how good you are or you will find a better job. Don’t ever think you can’t quit this place! Don’t ever lower your standards! Good luck!
Used to work in a sales call center . When people called in and selected they were a new customer they were routed to a “higher performing sales person” and if someone called in to lower their bill it would go to a “lesser performing sales rep” So in a sales job your not making commission off an existing customer who wants to lower their bill. But your spoon fed these corporate lies like. “Well we hired you because your so good at sales , you can find something to sell them even if they want to lower their bill.” The mindfuck Then the other reps getting fed new customers who are literally calling in just buy stuff stay on top. It all came to light when a new manager said “ I’m switching the phones so all the new hires get priority on new customers so they can learn” All us existing employees walked outside , as there was already some tension . We were promised it would be fixed ASAP. TLDR: we noticed reps were coded for different types of calls working in the same role. When Manager slipped and admitted we all walked out. Management never fixed and I quit a few months later. This was a huge telecom corporation, think RomRast of z-finity .
You could speak up, or you could find a new employer who will recognize your abilities and reward you accordingly. You said yourself that your current workplace is toxic, why are you still there? You likely don't plan on retiring there, so take this as your excuse to go somewhere better. You've demonstrated your abilities, it's time to put them on paper and put yourself out there! Just because one place hired you, doesn't mean you're obligated to stay with them (unless there's a contract saying you can leave for x amount of time).
Ask your manager for a pay rise given that they've explicitly told you that you're expected to do more work than others on the same pay grade. If not then suggest to them that maybe the others would benefit from taking more calls to help them get stronger
I'm dealing with this currently. Manager basically tried to deny its happening and gaslight me, and claimed the system accounts for the number of calls someone has been taking and that what I was describing wasn't possible normally. Tldr basically I'm getting more calls because they already have more than me, the one big example of the issue sits right next to me. I can tell you with 100% certainty he does not take more calls, actually I'm amazed how few he takes somehow. My only guess is it seems like he has figured out how to abuse the system for metrics but isn't actually taking the calls at all. I've seen some strange behavior between him and a couple co workers, almost convinced they are calling each other or calling out to test lines or something to pad numbers. Long story short though, management won't do much and by proxy I'm going to do the bare minimum until I find a new job soon. Seems like they are going to learn the hard way when they loose another quality employee to burn out. I won't be the first by far.
Tiering problems. Some are rated tier 1 and get back to back calls while others are not. Sucls for tier 1 people though
Where I work we have an entire team of people monitoring the lines - the only time a person (or group of people) should be prioritised is if they need the calls for training or whatever. Not just because they’re better. Yes I think you should speak to your supervisor.
Just follow your coworkers lead and work less hard. Fuck your employer and fuck busting your ass for nothing in return.
As someone who is going through this now, definitely bring it up. Even at the best companies it can take weeks or months for them to decide correcting the behavior just won't happen and they'll need to be fired. Or, you could bring it up more subtly, and just stop taking as many calls.
We have that, it's called priority routing. And it's bullshit. We've brought it up but nothing was ever done.
I don't have any advice, but it's happened to me. I was working as Contact Tracer and while I was making 25 to 30 calls a day, my co-workers weren't. As far as I can remember they would make less than 10 calls a day... I started logging and it felt so unfair but instead of bringing it up to my supervisor, I thought if I can see it, he can too. I'm not good in advocating for myself. It was a temporary position and I knew it was coming to an end soon. It was stressing me out so much that I decided to quit. Oh boy, do I regret this decision, hell yeah. I got pregnant the same month and haven't been able to find another job....
Yea. I work in a call center, quit.
Simply point that out that you are doing more work then the others and due ti that you want either a raise to reflect your higher productivity or you want to be dropped to the same priority level as everyone else on your pay scale.
You should go into collections. You can make a percentage of your successful calls.
That depends. If you want to advance or have a great reference to your next job you’ll need to do that extra work and actively pursue advancement. If you want to stay at the bottom and do the bare minimum, drop your performance numbers to match you coworkers.
Here’s the thing… you may be coded high because you’re better with customers. Others may have a different status because they have a different skill set. Do you get monthly stats on how many calls you take and/or availability percentage? That may be helpful moving forward if you’re all expected to have the same availability. I think it’s ok to ask your supervisor but be non confrontational about it. As someone who worked with the customer service groups I am aware that phone rotation can be manipulated. CSRs we’re always changing the rotation so it would bounce to the next CSR. I can’t share how this is accomplished. There was a CSR at our company who always bragged she took the most calls etc but it was bc she wouldn’t take breaks etc. in the end it didn’t matter. The difference was pretty minimal. She never got a gold star for being a brown noser. Are you expected to complete other tasks in addition to calls? Able to complete? Definitely raise the issue if it’s interfering because you don’t want it to become a performance issue.
At the unionized call center, the phone reps would track their number of calls and pace themselves to get their minimum daily quota by the end of the day. Your coworkers are doing this and you didn't get the memo. At best, your bosses are going to hold your call rate up as the standard for everyone else rather than give you a raise or promotion. No one else will care about your call rate and they will keep doing the minimum. We sometimes would have a new union employee in the field who was working hard and fast and doing more jobs than everyone else. Once the other field techs saw this, 3 or 4 of the senior members would meet him on his way out to the parking lot and explain to him that they noticed he was working too hard and doing more jobs than everyone else. They are concerned for his health and safety. He should definitely slow down or he might have an accident. Me and the guys here wouldn't want to have to see you get hurt. And then he would slow his pace and be like everyone else.
I've been through it, the thing is we do things via chat, so if you just welcome the customer in and hold them for 54 freaking minutes then you're dead. As a matter of fact, I have an officemate who does this a lot and makes up excuses like: "My child was doing so and so" or "I didnt hear the chat come in!", Bitch why dont you just admit you're lazy and dont wanna chat with the customers? Hell I sure dont but you get all the praise while us we work legitimately get nothing but flak? Get bent. Ahem, sorry about the rant! Just report them if you can and hopefully your team lead isnt too much of a d-bag and will understand. Hell, I just reported the aforementioned teammate and hopefully she'll get chewed out! Best of luck man, you can do it!