“I’ll be at the call center ‘till something better comes along my way!” This has been one of the common testimonials of most call center agents that I’ve heard which runs thru my mind most of the time coz this is as well quite true. By the way, this is part of lyrics of one of the songs of Raymund Marasigan, vocalist of the Filipino rock band Sandwich.
I have been functioning in this line of business for a year and six months now. For all my life, I have never expected being at this point. Eight hours of non-stop talking, a thirty-minute break of three period, doing all the crazy positions on your seat while taking calls (it all depends which ever makes you comfortable), sipping a coffee and water at the same time to keep you awake and to avoid a dried and itchy throat, cracking stupid jokes with co-agents while customer is on hold, and pretending to be extremely busy whenever the boss is visible.
They say that working in a call center is the easiest job in this freaking world and at the same time you got to earn a lot. I say hell no! They’re absolutely wrong! It all depends on the kind of account you’ll be handling and to who are you catering to. It is not that easy working your ass off while everybody else is snoring late at night. If you handle U.S. accounts (like I do), you’ll have the chance to choose one of the shifts like from 6pm—3:30am, 10pm-7:30am, 1am-10:30am and or the 4am-1:30pm all Manila time. Unfortunately, none of these schedules go well with a typical Filipino life. That’s the main point right there.
Second, it’s not that easy for us to put in plain words and enlighten a variety of things to our customers by means of the universal language due to the fact that this is not our native tongue. You gotta say those words exactly how it is supposed to be said. Chances are you’ll end up having a nosebleed and much worse stutter on each word that you deliver.
Third, after a day’s work or shall I say midnight’s work and you’re pretty much exhausted and doing those big yawns once in a while, you suddenly realize that everyone else is just rushing their way to work on a 9am-5pm shift with envy on your sleepy face. When you reach home, family members are just about to sip a cup of coffee to greet that lovely morning while you are getting ready to resign yourself, say goodnight to the morning and lay your back for maximum of six to seven hours of sleep a day (that’s if you are lucky enough given that your neighbors don’t have kids that usually love to play around just outside near your room’s window). Also, you need to be ready to miss most of your family or relative gatherings and some drinking sessions on a weekend coz for sure you’ll be spending it at the office scratching your butt and wish you just absent yourself from work then call your boss and pretend to be really sick.
Fourth, you’ll realize that time passes you by so fast. Your pubic develop faster than usual all because of stress. Your tummy becomes bigger and bigger due to lack of work out. Your eye bags turn out to be horribly massive. Now who still says that this is the easiest job ever?
Alright now! Shake it off! Dust yourself off! Pay day comes, the most wonderful day of the month ever. When you check your payroll card’s balance you’ll be surprise to know that sometimes it’s more than the amount you’re expecting. Eventually, you’ll get to spend some for a night of unlimited drinks with friends and officemates, send your family or parents their monthly allowance, get to stock several groceries enough for two weeks, set aside everyday’s finances going to work, get to buy couple of things that you ever wanted, spare a little wealth for beggars, and to top it all, put away some amount on your savings account.
One of the main reasons why we are still here in this industry is because of the fact that even if most of the needs of human can be replaced by machines, still, the psychological need of a person is the best instrument to attain the highest level of customer service that is through person to person communication. At the end of the day, you’ll be thankful to know that even if you’re oceans apart from that person, you know that you have accomplished a great job and put smile on a customer’s face.
