This just came to me while thinking of a good thing to blog about. There are a lot of people who thinks that call center life is boring, redundant and lacks excitement …. I really BEG to DISAGREE. And as I come to think of it, the call center life can even be a very good subject for a soap or a reality show that can showcase the evocative drama of real life.
Like for example, last week has been strenuous, if not intoxicating. For starters, I finally ended up being a “coach” (supervisor) after being ping-ponged from one position to the next. I guess I just settled for that position because I have ran out of options. Thanks to the GOS, our company has streamlined the organizational chart into the agent, then the boss of the agent, then the boss of the boss of the agent, then finally the top man himself, the boss of the boss of the boss of the agent. No more quality assurance, no more work force management, and the like. Because due to the streamlining, formerly the tasks that were being accomplished by 3 different people are now assigned to just one person …. And that’s the coach.
Like what has been said in one Spiderman movie, “With great powers, come great responsibilities!”
One very close (and fabulous) friend of mine, when asked on why she decided to be a coach, her remarkable answer was, “To have the powers to bully other people around.” Yup and this is one of the perks of being a coach. But, in general, not all coaches has the ability to bully other people around, there are still some coaches, who became coaches, because of their inept quality to control and influence other people but merely because of their analytical skills or just because of their lack of personal talent, their only talent is to follow orders from their bosses.
Little by little, I am beginning to feel the pressure of my job. It takes a lot of guts and skills to juggle a handful of tasks within the shift, which at the beginning looks very impossible to accomplish. Now, I think that my dream of reconciling with my social and personal life, which was just remotely possible before, now has been totally obliterated.
There is one very good agent that I know who always thought twice of becoming coach, she thinks that if you have a family (a husband/wife and a kid) makes you less qualified of being coach because the job will eat up most of your time. Little would you know, you are already being kicked out of your bed and your kid won’t recognize you anymore. After carefully pondering about it, I realized that’s partly true; almost all of our coaches are single and not committed (ergo lifeless).
Aside from flip-flopping from one administrative task to the next on one hand, you still have to look over your agents on the other hand. Dealing with various people is not always a walk in the park. I always believed that you can not please everybody and because of that, you don’t have to please everybody. Now, it seems that my personal belief has changed. I am always in the constant pursuit to make everybody happy or feel good at least. Agents are responsible for their individual performance, but I strongly believe that the coaches are partly responsible for that as well. When you deal with your agents, you deal with a variety of personalities.
There are agents, who are sensitive and uptight. These are the agents who are traditional, you always have to be careful with your choice of words when you are talking to them because you wouldn’t know if they are already being offended or not, which in most cases, they are offended by everything that comes out of your mouth but they don’t say anything about it.
And then, there are the agents who are very vocal with their thoughts. They are the non-traditional people who have very modern personalities. You can say whatever to them. You can be your own person when you’re with them. They are the agents that you can always open up with. They are the easiest to talk to but the hardest to control.
And, of course, there are the agents who lack so much of a personality; you really don’t know how to handle them. You can’t see their strengths and as well as their weaknesses, you don’t know when they are happy and you don’t know when they are sad or frustrated. In short, you don’t know them and it’s hard to get to know them.
On the other hand, there are some agents who have so much personality, they’re too much to handle. When dealing with them, it’s like dealing with different people every other day. They are pathological. They are very good in lying and they are very good in making you feel comfortable when you’re with them. When you ask them to explain something (i.e why they’re absent or why they’re late), they are the ones who can come up with the most creative and the most out-of-this world reasons.
And finally, there are the feel-good agents. These are the agents who would use their charm to get through to anything and to anyone. Sometimes, you can get really really mad at them but when you are finally confronting them, all your frustrations would dissipate into the clouds because they would just flash their dimples, their pearly whites or even their legs.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, there are still a lot left unsaid. Anyway, I think that there is always drama wherever we are. And it makes life a little more colorful.
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