Remarkable. Creative. Successful. Upmarket businesses push the envelope -- does yours?
In this week’s Tales from the Call Center, Nicole Nagy asks the increasingly desperate questions that occupy the minds of many customer service employees. Not the least of which is this: What happens when you have to pay the rent somehow but your job makes you sick to your stomach?
“Working in a call center, it’s hard to relax. The next call could literally be anything. One small victory overshadowed by the complexity of a new problem I may not be able to solve, and the bad calls leave deeper and longer-lasting emotional imprints on minds and souls. Do we cling to small victories because the alternative is to sink into despair?”
Tales from the Call Center: “I’m supposed to be the antidote to the automated telephone system, but it doesn’t always feel that way. Couldn’t I help people more effectively if we could just interact like human beings? Productivity and efficiency are buzzwords in the business world, but is it working?”
Kevin Spacey in his GEITF 2013 keynote: “Give people what they want… when they want it… in the form they want it in… at a reasonable price… and they’ll more likely pay for it rather than steal it.” New news? Unlikely!
For so many, work is considered a necessary evil – merely what must be done to earn a paycheck. As they toil through their workday, the primary goal is to make it to the weekend so they can really live. Going through the motions, working alongside others whose hearts and minds they seldom truly connect with, they withhold the very parts of themselves that make them come alive.
