Talking with AT&T (or any other mega evil) on the phone

[djredeye]

Goddam them and their fucking scripts they have to use!!!! Talk like a fucking human being and let's solve the problem. You just used 56 words to basically say, "ok let's try and fix this". Simple, "yes" "No" and "ok's" will suffice. I just spent 15 minutes on the phone with them and nine minutes of it was them saying specially worded sentences and reviewing everything in triplicate to fix a minor fucking problem that realistically took two minutes. Ease up on the verbage guys!!!

Almost as bad as those voice mail recordings that tell you all the options after the outgoing message has played. When I'm done I can hang up??? Really? This new technology is mind boggeling!

[Deff Gordon]

they have to deal with a billion idiots. the extra time they took on using those scripts actually saves them time when dealing with moron joe & jane q public.

[djredeye]

i know what its supposed to do...but you should be able to option out of the script as a customer. hahaha! i literally wanted to stop him and say "hey, it's okay..you dont have to do all that, it's cool. Let's just be normal" coz by then end of the call i was literally wanting to pull my eyeballs out coz he wouldnt shut up about "We here at AT&T strive for the best in blah blah blah blah blah and I hope that i have helped you in a satisfactory manner and blah blah blah......now let's review what we've done" then goes step by step into the last 15 minutes of confab!!!" UGH! Enough already!
The whole reason i called was because my ringtone wasnt showing up......that's it. It took all of one minute to fix..and the time on the phone was literally almost 15 minutes

[SmackPickles]

Press 1, if you graduated high school. Press 2, if you did not graduate high school.

[Leo]

Those scripts suck and cs reps hate using them, but a good cs rep can use it & still make it seem conversational.

[likwid]

if the higher-ups arent tightasses.... lol.
with some companies, the reps would have to say exactly what was on the script, word for word, otherwise they got it all wrong when the call got reviewed. if the company is any kind of smart, instead of doin that, they'd let it be a bit more conversational, making sure they covered major points (greeting, restating the prob to make sure both people understand whats goin on, making sure there wasnt anything else they needed, closing + company branding).

and agreed... lol. strictly scripts is no better than talking to an automated system >.<

[juandingo]

i hang up anytime i get a black person.

[Ash]

The more money you spend on a product, the smarter the support person on the other line sounds when you call in. True story.

[Ash]

Originally Posted by juandingo

i hang up anytime i get a black person.

pretty good policy there.

[Tyler Durden]

Originally Posted by Deff Gordon

they have to deal with a billion idiots. the extra time they took on using those scripts actually saves them time when dealing with moron joe & jane q public.

Which happens 100 bajillion times a day for some of these folks. And if anyone's ever had the misfortune of working in a call center environment you'd know that some of these CS supervisors are idiots and will fire you for stepping outside of the call center's Quality Assurance bubble.

I once got a failing score on a call review because I resolved a users scanner issue within 2 minutes skipping many required steps. I knew what the issue was, fixed it but the recorded call was reviewed by a non-technical person who said I didn't do most of the 20 things they wanted us to check. So that review received a failing score that went on my personnel record. After that all my calls were painfully slow to all the callers. We were not even allowed to let more than 3 seconds of dead air go without putting someone on hold. Every second of the call had to be filled with some form of mindless chatter. Anyone ever try to troubleshoot a difficult problem and have to talk about someone's dog at the same time? I resorted to thinking outloud and vocalizing everything I was typing into the ticketing system.

On the flipside, having been a technical trainer I know those steps are there because so many people are lazy and skip steps, make assumptions (and therefore make costly mistakes) or just don't know how to troubleshoot their way out of a paperbag.

Basically, those jobs suck, don't pay chit and it shows in the call.

[djredeye]

god ..what a horrible horrible job. "Call reviewer". Sitting there and scanning someones calls all day.


i'll take suicide please.

[DJPePe]

There's a reason why more women work at call centers than men.

<----Personal experience

[Sinner]

what's that reason?

[djredeye]

guys dont have boobies....well, most dont.

[Tyler Durden]

Originally Posted by DJPePe

There's a reason why more women work at call centers than men.

<----Personal experience

That's funny you say that because the entire QA team was all women, a few closet gays and the manager was a Lady. But over all it was a technical call center that was split 50/50 by gender.

I haven't worked at any Mass Markets centers so I don't know what the breakdown is there but for a technical environment about 10 years ago 50% female was unheard of. It's usually 95% male.

Why would a call center have more ladies in general? I don't get it.