Yes. This is going into Walmarts, hotels and malls, all in the name of ‘keeping America safe’.
Aside from the whole Soviet Union style ‘report on your neighbours’ vibe going on with that. Need I remind you who they are asking to help keep America safe?
Are you feeling safe yet?
No?
Well how about now?
I feel safer already.
(Probably because I’m in Canada)
have I.
Well at least according to my last caller. Today was my first day on the phones without anyone listening directly in, so I was super nervous. By the end of the day I was doing ok, or at least less nervous. Throughout the day I was constantly 5-10 minutes late in starting my breaks as I would get calls just before they started, except the last call was about 8 minutes before the end of the day, which is normally enough time for a quick call.
This one wasn’t.
Her first question to me was, ‘How much time do you have?’, to which I replied, ‘As much as you need’. Silly me, and damn you Murphy! Thirty-eight minutes later I am finally off the phone with her. She had moved from one city to Wpg and was looking for a cell phone provider, she was looking at our website and was asking questions on the plans, as well she was going off track and talking about other things. In the end she was happy and wanted to talk to someone to say a nice word about me to them, so I gave her to one of my supervisors and she proceeded to praise me to the skies, said I ‘had the patience of a god’ and that other providers when she had called them were fairly rude and that I was extremely nice and she was going to go down and use our service because of me. So not too bad for a first day at work, and work does have a system in place to acknowledge ‘commendations’ made by callers about the reps they talk to.
Now I just hope everything I told her was correct.
So things were ok today overall, I learned some new stuff and wasn’t too bad on the phones. All I really have to work on is my after-call paperwork. Some of which is going to get quicker as I learn to listen and fill in stuff at the same time.
and I don’t know why.
Since Cliff ranted about a commercial today I figured I should at least copy him and add a commercial to my blog. Somehow I don’t think Cliff will be complaining about my ad though.
German(??) Sprite commercial (NSFW)
So next week I start on the phones all by myself. Kinda scared, kinda looking forward to it. The crappy thing is we JUST started a new batch of promotions, so that means all the promos we learned are almost all out the window and we have a bunch more to learn, basically by tomorrow, with no chance to take the material home. The majority of the docs are ‘confidential’ and so cannot be taken home nor emailed to ourselves. So its a bit annoying. Plus just as we get comfortable with that set, we’ll have another set rolling out. Fun stuff.
So far I haven’t been too nervous while on the phone talking with people, but I have had someone sitting next to me where I can bounce things off of, so when I get back to the customer I can actually sound like I know what I am talking about. Next week I won’t have that, although our trainers will be there to help us out.
We are getting a couple of cool phones, but all in all the promotions and phones are pretty weak for Christmas. We are putting in the 4g network around Feb/2011 (supposed to be released already) and thy are probably waiting for that to happen before they do anything big. But what do I know? I’m just a new hire they are throwing to the wolves on monday. *sigh*
http://kiwi.kz/watch/u8ton5kj0q7u/
NSFW. No nudity, but… well watch it and see. German(?) version of America/Britain's got Talent I think???
The female judge’s face is pretty funny during the whole thing too, specially at the end.
Oh Cliff….
Actually to get Cliff off…. the hook here, he had… no hand in this at all. Its actually from a site called Lamebook. Some of the stuff in there is pretty funny.
No not me, but made ya look right? Nyuk nyuk.
A girl was fired yesterday, and looking back its not surprising as she was really quiet in class, didn’t ask questions and apparently the trainer’s assistant was spending all her time with her. She was given lots of opportunity and lots of help, but just wasn’t able to grasp what she needed to learn. The sad thing is it was also her birthday yesterday too. Kinda sad. She was a nice girl, but some things are not meant to be I guess.
They told us at the end of yesterday why we had not seen her, and also said that the rest of us are doing pretty good, that there were no negative comments about us. So while sad to hear about the one girl, its nice to know we are doing well, even if we all feel overwhelmed by all the things we need to know.
And today (friday) we had a nice pot luck lunch. One I am still stuffed from. I made a casserole dish that my family has been making for as long as I can remember, and everyone seemed to like it. A few people cheaped out and didn’t make anything at all and instead bought something, one girl brought a bag of edamame beans, one guy didn’t have time to make the pie he had promised, so he ran across the street and bought a large bag of jelly beans. However there was enough really good food that we had a really good feast.
All in all the group I am training with is pretty fun and we seem to be helping each other fairly well. Three weeks down and three more to go before we are on the phones full time. Kinda scary right now, but we have been on the phones for the last 3 thursdays in a row. We are taking more and more of the calls and taking them longer, before the rep we are seated with takes over. So we are getting used to the idea of actually being on the phone. I’m also starting to see where I could have handled a call differently, and maybe saved a customer, or saved them some money. So its a bit interesting to actually see that, rather than everything just way over my head.
Going up friday to see my dad in Gimli and having turkey, coming back sunday for turkey with mom. Mmmm mmmm good!
Work has been ok, even though some of the program stuff is going over my head, but I’ll get it eventually. The sad thing is that the stuff I am struggling over is in a program that is getting phased out. So even though I’m busting my balls over learning it now, its gonna be gone in a few months and I’ll have a new program to learn.
I missed a yelling, pissed off lady today though. The girl I was listening with had a call when I took my break, so I missed out on a really irate caller. :( That would have been awesome. Maybe next time.
