Working at a call center

Ithior

Well-known member
Has anyone here ever worked at a call center? How was it?
I need money if I want to move out and live by myself, but I can only work part time right now. The only part time jobs I've seen around are pretty much in call centers, so I don't have a lot of choice. If it's something that I think I can handle, I'll go for it, otherwise I'll just have to endure living here for a few more years.
 

PerseverareJasmine

Well-known member
My first and only job so far was at a call center called GC Services. The pay was good, and the job let me be able to help my mom out with paying bills, but it was tough. I think the biggest challenge for me was trying not to take what the customers on the phone said personally. Some were rude for no reason and many of us would get cussed out just for doing our jobs. There's always the possibility of having to deal with a rude customer in just about every job though, so I guess if you feel like you'd be able to not take what a customer might say to you to heart and try to keep in mind that they might be speaking out of anger or frustration then that aspect of the job wouldn't get you down too much.

Depending on the day and how busy we were, there would either be rapid calls back to back and it would feel pretty chaotic and at first overwhelming, or we would have down time between the calls with quite a while to wait for another call. I preferred when the calls came back to back instead of there being downtime between them, but that was mostly because during the periods of downtime we were able to talk a bit with other coworkers in our area who weren't on calls themselves, and I never really knew what to say to most of my coworkers so I kept to myself most of the time. There were people who were in charge of coming to us and telling us when we could go on our breaks, and we had 15 minute breaks. We were responsible for clocking in and out and making sure we locked our computer stations and properly put our phones to the setting that would make us unable to receive calls while out on breaks or lunch.

When I was there we had about four/five (I've forgotten which) weeks of training before we had to go out on the floor to actually take calls. The training was helpful, it just could be tiring since it lasted for many hours. Towards the end of my training we went out onto the floor and were able to hook up to other employee's phones for a certain amount of time while they were on a call to listen to how the employee handled the call, to write down notes or tips, and to ask the employee any questions we had after they were done with the call.

At GC there were a lot of different screens we had to have up while on the call, and we had to document the call while the customer was talking, so multitasking skills would come in handy. We had to notate the customers' accounts and fill out information such as how much they paid or were scheduled to pay, the method of payment, and the date of their payment. We were given binders that we could keep that had handouts from our training in them to help us with calls, and there was also a paper they gave us describing what we should say when we first go on the call (I had to say "Thank you for calling Toyota/Lexus Financial Services, my name is Jasmine, my agent ID is so and so, how may I help you today?" for example).

Working there wasn't a good fit for me, but that doesn't mean that'll be the case for you. I guess it somewhat depends on if you think you'll be able to tolerate it. Sorry this was so long, but I hope it might help. I'll try to answer if you have any questions.
 

Froggy246

Well-known member
I think it depends as well if you will be making outgoing calls or if they are incoming. Incoming is bearable, outgoing is not imo. Jasmine you broke that down incredibly well! That pretty much sums it all up, it's interesting that the same techniques are employed in the US and UK for working in call centres, the initial training period then buddying up. I quite liked the work for the fact that it was often back to back calls so there wasn't any quiet moments where the pressure was there to think of things to say to colleagues, I think sometimes I may have even pretended to be busy when I wasn't.
 

PerseverareJasmine

Well-known member
I think it depends as well if you will be making outgoing calls or if they are incoming. Incoming is bearable, outgoing is not imo. Jasmine you broke that down incredibly well! That pretty much sums it all up, it's interesting that the same techniques are employed in the US and UK for working in call centres, the initial training period then buddying up. I quite liked the work for the fact that it was often back to back calls so there wasn't any quiet moments where the pressure was there to think of things to say to colleagues, I think sometimes I may have even pretended to be busy when I wasn't.

Oh yeah, working either inbound or outbound does make a difference too. I was inbound, I agree that not having to make the calls to customers myself made it easier. I'm with you on preferring the more hectic moments over having a lot of relaxation time.
 

Ithior

Well-known member
Thanks for the replies. Jasmine, I appreciate you taking the time to be thorough in your explanation. I guess I'd prefer inbound, but I probably wouldn't be able to handle it well if there are back to back calls. I think I might try to find something else, but it seems unlikely.
 

PerseverareJasmine

Well-known member
Thanks for the replies. Jasmine, I appreciate you taking the time to be thorough in your explanation. I guess I'd prefer inbound, but I probably wouldn't be able to handle it well if there are back to back calls. I think I might try to find something else, but it seems unlikely.

You're welcome. Hopefully whatever job you try to go after will be a good starting point for you to move out by yourself and hopefully you'll try to keep your head up if you decide to keep searching for a different type of job, job searching can definitely get rough. Good luck.
 

superman

Member
Working in IT I have worked in a call center in the past. It wasn't that bad but I would need to get up and walk around every now and then because I felt trapped sitting in place the whole day. Other than that it was good. I would get kind of anxious about what calls were coming next due to my anxiety though.
 
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