Working in a call centre

[Nalis]

Think we need some light relief.

 

Anyone worked or working in a call centre? Got any tales to tell? I worked in a few back in the day. 

 

I was inbound service for a few well known banks. Most callers were fine but obviously there were some rude ones.

 

My personal favourite was a rude private wealth client wanting be to transferred to his relationship manager who said 'you've wasted enough on my time already' when I needed him to repeat his name as the reception was awful. So I kept him on hold while I made a relaxing coffee.

Edited 11 March 2023 by Nalis

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

Straight after uni I worked at a call centre that sold parts for modded games controllers, you can imagine the types that rang in. One lad complained his parcel hadn't been delivered, when under the house number field at checkout he'd put "Master of Worlds"

[Nalis]

Friend of a friend used to just put on a different voice when someone asked to be put through to their manager

[CosbehFox]

55 minutes ago, Miquel The Work Geordie said:

Straight after uni I worked at a call centre that sold parts for modded games controllers, you can imagine the types that rang in. One lad complained his parcel hadn't been delivered, when under the house number field at checkout he'd put "Master of Worlds"

One of your arch enemies on here probably gave you a call 

[Wolfox]

Worked at British Gas with Gok Wan

 

I used to have take test calls inbound from the Scotland call centre at 11pm as they put them through the night time service in Leicester…. A call came through from Scotland and we always had a ‘bit of banter’…. I asked them to say curly wurly so I could laugh at their accent…. They obliged, I laughed and I wished them good night…. They sounded confused and explained that their boiler has broken down…. Turns out it was a very confused punter!

[fazzyfox]

I had a support package with a PC from PC world. I had a query that would only take a moment to solve but when I phoned they said they couldn’t help because their system was down! That filled me with confidence. I said, “can’t I just ask my question, you might know the answer” but they said no, they would have to First check that I’m entitled to help and can’t do that at the moment. I have a question, he has the answer but because the system of an IT support team, experts in solving system faults, is faulty, we can’t progress 

 

I just suggested they try turning it off and on again 

[Trav Le Bleu]

I used to work in a call centre many years ago and had a customer who regularly called up, who, the first time he called and I had to I.D. him, I thought it was a prank, but it was genuine and he was a nice caller who you could have a bit of a chat with (always nice so long as they didn't keep you too long.)

 

His name was Jack Mycock.

 

No, seriously.

[SkidsFox]

54 minutes ago, Wolfox said:

Worked at British Gas with Gok Wan

 

I used to have take test calls inbound from the Scotland call centre at 11pm as they put them through the night time service in Leicester…. A call came through from Scotland and we always had a ‘bit of banter’…. I asked them to say curly wurly so I could laugh at their accent…. They obliged, I laughed and I wished them good night…. They sounded confused and explained that their boiler has broken down…. Turns out it was a very confused punter!

You have my sympathies. I worked a couple of times via agencies for BG in the 90s. Horrendous. Customers would ring up, annoyed (quite rightly) that their boiler hadn't been installed or fixed. You'd arrange a visit by the engineer on the system, and inform the customer. Then there'd be a no show, and the customer would get back really annoyed. Hope it all works a lot better now.

[Bellend Sebastian]

14 minutes ago, SkidsFox said:

You have my sympathies. I worked a couple of times via agencies for BG in the 90s. Horrendous. Customers would ring up, annoyed (quite rightly) that their boiler hadn't been installed or fixed. You'd arrange a visit by the engineer on the system, and inform the customer. Then there'd be a no show, and the customer would get back really annoyed. Hope it all works a lot better now.

Pretty much everyone of a certain age in Leicester did that, myself included.

 

At the time I was there taking customer calls was used as a punishment for some individuals slacking off in other departments. I can always remember asking my friend, a quite plummy grammar school type, how it was going and he said he'd been taking calls from the Manchester area and been advised by one customer that their supply had been interrupted because "our kid has just kicked the meter off the wall". Bit of a clash of worlds there

[Wolfox]

7 hours ago, SkidsFox said:

You have my sympathies. I worked a couple of times via agencies for BG in the 90s. Horrendous. Customers would ring up, annoyed (quite rightly) that their boiler hadn't been installed or fixed. You'd arrange a visit by the engineer on the system, and inform the customer. Then there'd be a no show, and the customer would get back really annoyed. Hope it all works a lot better now.

I was there around ‘96 for a bit…. We probably worked together 

 

it was a sh*t show!

 

I’m long since gone!

[pSinatra]

I worked at British Gas on Aylestone Rd & Royal Mail - both in the 90's.  I had just finished university.  British Gas was awful & Royal Mail was actually pretty enjoyable.

 

I never minded customers swearing, but I couldn't handle people talking to me like I was a piece of shit.  I could easily understand how pissed off some customers were & rightly so in many circumstances.  If they wanted to let off some steam, I'm an adult, go for it.  I probably terminated about half a dozen calls in total.

 

I would always give them a warning first & if they carried on - phone down.  One woman was so mad, she made no sense & when I asked her to repeat herself she told me I wasn't "very bright". When I warned her about how I was being spoken to she lost her mind.  Phone down.

 

The usual twats that would tell you "I pay your wages".  At that point I would always ask for a pay rise.

 

At Royal Mail we only dealt with customers with an LE postcode.  I picked up a call & the customer's opening line was "Hi, it's Willie".  I knew instantly it was Willie Thorne.  He was trying to locate a snooker cue he had posted (oddly enough) and we had several conversations.  He was a good bloke throughout - even though we never found the cue in the end.

 

One bit of advice to anyone who thinks they can talk to customer services how the hell they like.  The more unreasonable you are, the less likely you are of having your query/complained resolved.

 

 

 

 

[Koke]

Worked for Next call centre back in the day in Enderby, when you had to order clothes via a catalogue. I have no unique stories to tell, just usual call centre stuff. The turnover in staff was incredible though.

[Alf Bentley]

This thread is going to be more fun than the post-match threads or Lineker thread, isn't it?

 

Interpreting the topic a bit flexibly, 30+ years ago I spent several months in Sydney doing market research interviewing over the phone (small call centre), door-to-door and in shopping centres. Some highlights...

 

- Phoned a random number to conduct a survey about beer. Bloke who answered was half-cut and noise of a massive party going on in the background. He thought it was a joke at first, but did the survey and admitted to truly vast beer consumption.

- Phoned lots of folk to conduct an outrageously biased survey about plans for a rail line through an area of natural beauty (questions like: "given the massive economic benefits of this environmentally-friendly project, do you support it?). Cue lots of outrage!

 

Doing face-to-face interviews, I noticed that other interviewers didn't approach anyone a bit out of the ordinary (very tall/short/fat/scruffy, ethnic minorities, alternative appearance) so I vowed to do the opposite:

- Did a shopping precinct taste test for cheesy popcorn with a tramp who hungrily stuffed his face with popcorn, thought it very cheesy & gave a P.O. Box as contact address

- Also tested the cheesy popcorn on a Hell's Angel, about 6ft5 & 19 stone, handlebar tash & leathers - he found it "exceptionally cheesy"

- Interviewed a bloke with dwarfism at a bank and, for the last open question about suggested improvements to bank services, he really did suggest the cashpoints should be lower in the wall

- Interviewed a bloke of SE Asian appearance, asked his name at the end and it sounded like "Enjee", so I asked him to spell it and he said "N-G". Ng is a fairly common name in E/SE Asia, apparently

 

Door-to-door interviews:

- Opened the gate of a suburban house, saw porch door open so started walking down the path, only for a large, muscular dog to appear, snarling and baring its teeth. It went for me, so I scarpered for the gate and only just escaped in time. Feeling shook up, I quit interviewing for the day and made the 1-hour journey home. 100m from home, a little Jack Russell nipped out and bit me on the ankle....couldn't believe it.

- Knocked a tower block door, answered by a young woman wrapped in a bath towel - apparently fresh from the shower. She started doing the survey, but a topless, muscular, aggressive-looking bloke appeared over her shoulder, clearly suspicious and asking what it was for. He then pushed past her and started getting in my face, so I terminated the interview and withdrew. I'd be curious to know whether I'd stumbled on some odd personal situation or if he was just paranoid or a psycho. 

- I have fonder memories of the young female opera singer to whom I made repeat visits for a household expenditure survey (respondents kept a diary & shopping receipts). She was plumply curvaceous and attractive with lush dark hair - and a major chocolate habit, judging from her expenditure. She lived alone and seemed to quite like me, but I was too gutless to ask her out or anything.....ah, missed  opportunities....even if only the missed opportunity to get sacked for unprofessional conduct. 

 

 

[VLC86]

Worked in a call centre about 10 years ago.

 

Some bloke rings up first thing in the morning “the answer is xxx”. What do you mean?

 

”the answer to the question is xxx” the answer to what question.

 

”The one you have just asked on the radio” Sir, you have called the bank.

[Manini]

Not a call centre per se but first job out of uni was one in which I had to go and meet prospective clients. 
 

Met one bloke one morning, he’d promised to buy me breakfast for my trouble, I thought I was the dogs bollocks and a top business man.
 

He gave me the postcode of where to meet him. Went and it turned out to be a ****ing Costco.

 

Met him in the car park, he takes me inside and basically there’s a local cafe inside doing promo and giving away free coffee and pastries (that’s what he meant by buying me breakfast). Rest of the meeting consisted of us walking round the aisles whilst he loads a trolly up full of 50 bog rolls, a vat of Hellman’s Mayonnaise, a pallet of dog food and a carrot cake. I was in a suit and tie by the way. 
 

Never heard from him again after that. 

[Royston.]

3 hours ago, Wolfox said:

I was there around ‘96 for a bit…. We probably worked together 

 

it was a sh*t show!

 

I’m long since gone!(Senior Assistant Manager)

 

[MPH]

Worked in a mini call center for a double glazed window  sales company that was based on Welford Road back in the 90’s. It was a right dodgy set up. My sister was my boss and  she’d just sit there in a chair whilst we all called trying to get appointments. The every now and then she’d do some ‘ training’ where she’d get two of us to pretend to call each other and then tell us  if we did a good job or a bad job. It was awful.  I wasn’t getting many appointments so they cut my pay in half. Forget that. 

[Oxfordfox83]

15 hours ago, SkidsFox said:

You have my sympathies. I worked a couple of times via agencies for BG in the 90s. Horrendous. Customers would ring up, annoyed (quite rightly) that their boiler hadn't been installed or fixed. You'd arrange a visit by the engineer on the system, and inform the customer. Then there'd be a no show, and the customer would get back really annoyed. Hope it all works a lot better now.

It doesn’t…

[ALC Fox]

Worked at Readers Digest call centre back when the big place in Saffron Road in South Wigston was called Astron. We're talking about 2004 to 2005.

 

- I remember one bloke was sacked because he kept a lonely old woman chatting about Elvis for an hour. Two reasons: 1. He wasn't taking enough calls and 2. He was costing the customer A LOT of money.

 

- A woman was also sacked for logging in to her own Readers Digest account and manually clearing her debts on her account without paying a penny. (On a similar note, I also did some data processing for British Gas at the same place and there was a contract with a bank, perhaps Barclays, on the other side of the room. I remember one guy was arrested on site for siphoning off money from a dead person's account into his. Absolutely heinous and moronic.)

 

- i was in the call centre when the 7/7 bombings in London happened. Phone lines all went quiet and it was a weird feeling when people would ring up to pay a bill and then segue into talking about the bombing.

 

- Apparently the site used to be something to do with the MOD so it would appear as such on old maps, making it a potential terrorist target. One day, we have an alert in the post room. We get informed. Nobody can come in. Nobody can leave. We just sit there while a bomb could go off at any moment in the building. We get told that the press could come through to us on the phone and we get given a set phrase to say (essentially 'no comment'). A bomb disposal robot is apparently deployed (I saw the van but not the robot itself as the call centre was in a different area to the post room). After a couple of hours, the alert is over as the offending item was analysed and deemed not dangerous. From what I remember, the person who raised the alert didn't think it was a bomb at all, just a mysterious white powder that could've been anthrax but was in fact fake snow.

 

 

Edited 12 March 2023 by ALC Fox

[Nalis]

Remember the scene in Trainspotting 2 when they steal bank cards from people in a Rangers fan club on the basis they'll probably have 1690 as their PIN? It was spot on.

 

When you have to reset someones password and 4 digit passcode for telephone banking, once they say the password should be rangers or rangers related, you 100% knew the passcode would be 1690. Same rules applied for Celtic and 1916.

[SkidsFox]

21 minutes ago, Nalis said:

Remember the scene in Trainspotting 2 when they steal bank cards from people in a Rangers fan club on the basis they'll probably have 1690 as their PIN? It was spot on.

 

When you have to reset someones password and 4 digit passcode for telephone banking, once they say the password should be rangers or rangers related, you 100% knew the passcode would be 1690. Same rules applied for Celtic and 1916.

What would be the Leicester passcode? 2016?

[MPH]

39 minutes ago, SkidsFox said:

What would be the Leicester passcode? 2016?

 

1888! 

[Tommy Fresh]

Favourite calls are the sales ones, where they ask to talk to whichever board member they've stumbled across on Linkedin and fancy their chances of getting put through to them.

Edited 12 March 2023 by Tommy Fresh

[filthyfox]

I have a few call centre stories....

BUT (being a Copper 20 years ago), some of the things we got up to then would definitely NOT be allowed now.

 

Coming into work and doing a breath test, and getting your bud to drive if it failed- not me personally.

 

Looking at your mates latest conquest on love@lycos

 

Bullying the new boy into getting your cups of tea before shift

 

 

 

 

[VLC86]

This one wasn’t me but someone that was sitting next to me at the time.

 

Customer calls and it’s not their account, the call handler says they will need to speak to the account holder but was told “they have gone upstairs” to which they asked them to go and get them…

 

What they meant by gone upstairs was they had actually died, awkward.