Have you ever wondered what it's like to work at a call center? Like most people I had never put much thought into it but on the surface it looked easy. How hard could it be to sit and talk to people on the phone everyday? As I would come to find out, it is very hard and I grew enormous respect for the men and women that work there because of the experiences I got from working in three centers this past year. This is my story.
Call Center number one. The very big sign outside of the office door promised many full-time postitions at a very good salary. According to the sign you could make up to $2,800 a month working for this call center. Who wouldn't like a good wage like that so I went in and asked for a job application. I was told it was a call center, it didn't mention that on the sign, and that they took charity donations over the phone. I loved working with people, I was good at it and thought I'd enjoy the work and so I filled out the application, had my interview and I was hired the next day.
A small group of us showed up that first day and we were shown around and told that we'd have a week of training before we were put on the phones. We were escorted to a small room to await our trainer. In all of my life I had never met someone who was so high energy and extremely peppy as our trainer was. He told us that all we'd have to do to get donations was be energetic and enthusiastic like he was and we'd get donations . He also told us that we wouldn't be making the big salary that was promised on the sign. We'd be paid minimum wage and we'd only get that big wage if we had a high sales volume on our calls. We also found out that this little bit that he had just told us was all the training we would be getting. We'd be shown how to take the calls and that would be it so off we went to the call center floor.
The place was ghastly. The walls hadn't been painted for years, the phones, computers and chairs were old and broken down. I was shocked at the dirt on my keyboard and the monitor's screen. You could hardly read the screen through the thick coating of dirt. My keyboard was missing keys as well. It was awful. But this was a job and I wanted to give it my best shot.
The people we talked to on the phone were on an automated dialing system. The company computer would call them up at random, and we would give them the sales pitch. At first we would ask for $200. If they said no we lowered it to $100. If they still said no we gave it one last try and asked them for $50. If they said no to that, we put their numbers back on the dialer and they would be called again later.
Have you ever tried to sell someone something that they have no interest in buying? It can't be done. Contrary to our trainer's words that all you had to do was be enthusiastic and peppy to get people to give you money, I found out after two hours on the phone that you couldn't and what an impossible and bad job it was. We had also been told to high pressure the older people on the phone, they were the ones who would give in and we'd get our donations that way. At lunch time I decided I'd had enough. I had gotten no donations, I hated the high pressure tactics we were
told to use and I hated the filth and rundown condition of the place. I quit.
Onto the second call center. I still wanted to work with people and I thought that if I went to a call center that took different kinds of calls things would work out better so I went to a call center that handled many different types of accounts and no high pressure sales so I thought I had found the right place for me.
I was put into the telemarketing area to begin with. We weren't asking for donations, we were phoning people to see if they would be interested in purchasing extented warranties on vehicles. Their names were on an automated dialer and when the people got on the phones, we would ask them if they would be interested in buying a warranty for their cars. This didn't sound too hard, it wasn't high pressure sales, if they said no, we could take their names off the dialing list, it sounded good. My co-workers were friendly and nice and so I felt at home right away and I looked forward to the job.
