Once my classroom training was complete, followed by a two week stint in “the tank”, I was officially a customer service rep. The tank is a part of the training process where trainees work with actual customers . The experience was everything that I thought it would be. Daunting. Contrary to what my trainer told me on my first day of training, I did not bust into tears on my first call and I did not get cursed out. I did ,however, stutter a lot while trying to take notes in the system on what the complaint was about and making sure I said everything according to the standard script. All my calls were monitored by my tank leader who stood by and gave me feedback on every call at the end of the day. While others chose to freak out between calls, return inappropriate comments from customers with inappropriate four letter words of their own and in some cases, quit during their lunch break, I pushed through. I once saw a trainee walked out of the building after she hung up on a customer. To be honest, I was tempted to do the same on at least 8 out of every 10 calls I handled. But I didn’t.
As the weeks went by before I would “graduate” to the main floor , I kept waiting to be rescued. My nights after my shift, were filled with hours surfing the internet for any position I qualified for. And some that I didn’t qualify for but took the risk of applying for anyways. With every lunch or bathroom break, I would check my phone for any missed calls from a recruiter or my emails for any interview request. There were none. I kept hoping that by the time my stint in the tank was over, I would be offered another position elsewhere. But alas, I graduated after two grueling weeks in the tank. Trainee count went from 20 to 15. On my last day in the tank, I was assigned a supervisor and a permanent time schedule after a cake reception in the conference hall to celebrate. There seems to be a theme here.
My first three months on the production floor was myriad of very unpleasant feelings. In a perfect world, handling customer calls would be a much more streamlined process. Customer would state their complaint/request, and customer representative will handle it while keeping their time on the phone under a certain limit and limiting the number of times when a supervisor would have to intervene. But think of situation where no one wants to what they need to do. Your supervisor does not want to attend to issues that are no longer in your control and you get the blame for it when the customer gives your a bad survey after every call. I noticed very quickly that if you did not meet their expectations , they could easily fire you and replace you like you never ever existed. All it took was a “call into the office” for your short lived career at the company to be put to an end. The turnover rate ( a term that I learnt in business school) was extremely high. Periodically, a new batch of recruits would be given a tour by a trainer through the main floor to give them a glimpse of what it would look like to work there. With each group that passed by, I would try to make eye contact with each recruit, telepathically telling them to run and not to turn back. But, alas.
However, in any environment, be it the jungle, the class room or the corporate world, there are always those who rise above the fray. The superstars. These select individuals took the theory of survival of the fittest to another level. In the mist of Cheetos-eating agents void of emotion, handling all their calls with robotic flare, issue avoiding supervisors and anxiety laden reps like myself trying to deescalate customer calls demanding a kings ransom in refunds, these individuals managed to rise above the ratchet. The cream of the crop with their perfect stats and perfect customer feedback. They had discovered how to not get called into the office for poor performance where their career would suffer a swift and painless death. It might not be an ideal career but it was one they were not willing to lose. I wanted to learn their ways.
A very wise creature by the name of Yoda once said ” Do or do not, there is no try”. What it took to survive at this job was one that I certainly was not going to do and it certainly didn’t matter to even try.
Stay tuned for part 6. Thanks for reading.
The Musings of a Job Seeking MBA 