You know the drill: First there’s a recorded message thanking you for your call. Then you’re put through a maze of select-the-number choices to help you reach the right department. Then there’s the painfully unimaginative on-hold music; finally you hear ringing and a live person gets on the line.
Then your heart drops. Your faces collapses into a frown and you begin to abandon all hope of satisfaction: the person on the other end of the phone has foreign accent.
We’ve all been there and we all feel the same way. It’s been interesting to me to dissect why we feel this way, because I’ve had the opportunity to work with call center employees around the world and here’s what I’ve found:
- These people are nice.
- These people are intelligent (you’d be surprised at the high percentage of off-shore call center employees with university degrees).
- Once you get used to the accent and the cadence of their speech, you realize that most speak better English than we do.
What we worry about when we hear that accent is that call center employees work from a script, and there are only so many situations a script can accommodate. Ours won’t be one of them. We’ll be forced to discuss the obvious, repeat all the things we’ve already tried, and at the end of the call we’ll probably end up needing to talk to someone else anyway. Complete waste of our time.
Or is it? We all fall into certain patterns of behavior based on whom we’re dealing with (Think you don’t? Do you talk to your parents on the phone the same way you talk to your friends?). What we can to do is analyze what can be done on our end to optimize a call center conversation, because let’s face it, we’re all going to have many more of these experiences.
I’ve done the analysis for you. Here are three simple steps to get the most out of a call to a call center:
- Be nice: Set yourself apart. Believe it or not, call center employees are real people just like you and me: they have bills to pay, families to feed, work expectations to manage. On top of that they deal all day long with scores upon scores of calls, many of which include impatient, disappointed or aggravated callers.
Set yourself apart from the crowd: try being polite, patient and empathetic. Help the employee understand your needs as nicely as possible. I guarantee that taking a few extra seconds to add “Wow, sounds like you guys are busy there” or “Here’s where I think you can help me” will go a long way to moving you to the top of that employee’s priority list.
- Keep your emotions under control. Losing your cool with a phone rep doesn’t do anybody any good. Yeah, it makes you feel better for about 15 seconds, but remember that the person you’re talking to is standing between you and your objective (well, they’re most likely sitting between you and your objective, but you get the idea). Just like a bouncer at a night club who determines who gets in and who doesn’t, you want to make this “gatekeeper” your friend, and it’s much more likely someone will want to work with you if you don’t have “that edge” in your voice.
- Stay focused. It’s tempting to vent to the person you’re talking to on the phone, relating all your unsatisfactory experiences with her or his company. Temping yes, and very unproductive. Remember that the phone rep is not part of the organization’s marketing department, and it’s to Marketing that your feedback should really be directed.
Every complaint, every side comment about your experience with their company is a distraction to your call. Save the feedback for the post-transaction survey, noting whether your comments relate to an issue prior to your call and are not due to the mishandling of the call by the person with whom you spoke.
Believe me, I get as frustrated as the next person when I don’t get immediate gratification. What I’ve learned through experience is that there are ways to ensure the call goes better, and that’s ultimately what I’m after. A nice side-effect of employing these three tips is that instead of feeling frustrated at the end of the call, you’re left with a far more satisfying feeling.
Given everything else in your busy day, who isn’t up for that?
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