I’m no Luddite, but sometimes I don’t think of technology as progress. Particularly when it involves my employees during work hours.
I never thought smart phones would be the bane of my existence, but phones in call centres try my patience. Any employee can be distracted by their phone. In an admin environment it gets annoying when too much time is spent texting, but otherwise isn’t much bother. Unless of course the employee is too dumb to switch their phone to vibrate/silent.
Cell phones in my call centres caused major productivity headaches. Phone reps would sit in wrap up for an extra minute to shoot someone a text. This is a problem when you have 25 callers sitting in your queue waiting five minutes each.
You might think high queues would prod employees to answer the phone they are being paid to answer, but you would be wrong.
We had an outright ban on cell phones on the call centre floor, but that stopped no one. If I turned my back on some employees, the phones would zip out. It drove me nuts to be constantly on my employees for not doing their jobs.
Did they ever stop? Sure, when the call centre closed.
The dumbest cell phone incident I can remember came when a new rep was still in training. In any call centre, new reps usually spend the last day or two taking actual phone calls with the help of the trainer or an experienced employee. In this case, the trainer had the small group each take a few calls and helped them when they needed it.
While on a live call with a customer, a new rep I’ll call Marsha had her cell phone out on her desk and turned on. It rang during the phone call.
What did she do?
Why, she tossed off her headset mid-call and picked up her cell phone, of course. You could hear the confused client through the headset, “Hello, hello?”
The trainer was standing right behind Marsha, so this wasn’t an attempt to be stealthy. Clearly not a bright rep.
We conferred with HR and decided Marsha was already a lost cause. If she behaved that badly in training and in front of management, can you imagine what she’d do when we weren’t looking?
For some reason Marsha seemed surprised by her firing. Another sign we’d made the right decision.
Sometimes team manager equals juvenile babysitter.
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