Confessions of a Call Center Gal - By Lisa Lim Page 0,80
your AHT (Average Handle Time). This is something that all the Team Leads and Supervisors will be watching out for. If they see that your call goes over 2 minutes, they will come and check on you. We will also be watching Not Ready since every second of Not Ready will increase your AHT, and you should typically never be in Not Ready for more than 5 seconds. Keep in mind that the AHT goal is 2 minutes. Please adhere to this policy; failure to do so will result in an informal warning, followed by a formal written warning, and subsequent termination. Thank you for all your hard work.
Siegfried Miles, CEO
Corporate HQ
I stare at the appalling email. “My AHT is seven minutes,” I cry. “What’s yours, Truong?”
“Mine’s six.” He exhales sharply. “We are so fucked.”
I pound my fist on the desk. “I got another relay call today so that will jack up my handle time!”
“Next time you get a relay call, just hang up.” Truong plonks a maki roll in his mouth.
I nibble my lips. “I’ll get fired if I get caught…”
“Well, that’s what I’ll do,” says Truong. “Hang up on the handicapped to save my job.”
My conscience immediately kicks in. “But I really don’t want to hang up on them. It’s not their fault that they are deaf or dumb, I mean mute,” I hastily correct myself. “Don’t you think dumb is such a degrading word?”
“You can call them whatever you want.” He sniggers. “They can’t answer you back!”
“Truong! You are going to Hell in a handbasket.”
Lurching forward, I playfully tug his scarf and he theatrically feigns his death. After goofing around, the reality of the situation begins to sink in.
“What they’re asking us to do is impossible,” he implores.
“I know! Troubleshooting takes time. Listening to customers’ complaints takes time, selling takes time. Let me have another one of those Spider rolls.” I reach across with my chopsticks and plunk a roll in my mouth.
Truong strokes an imaginary Confucius beard. “Just you wait and see. When they find out that no one can meet this ridiculous ‘two minute AHT goal,’ they will change it!” he proffers.
A week goes by and the Average Handle Time is still stuck at two minutes. It’s near pandemonium; everyone is in a wild panic. The AHT for the entire call center hovers at six minutes, give or take a minute. I know this for a fact because management sends out everyone’s stats on a daily basis. Last week, the overall AHT for this center was 6.5 minutes.
And they want us to drop it down to 2 minutes?
Are they loco?
“Truong! What will they do? Fire everybody?”
“I don’t know.” He fidgets with his scarf. “I don’t want to lose my job. Heck, it’s a full blown recession now.”
“Hell, if I lose mine, it’ll be a depression.”
A shadow of a frown touches his forehead. “They have to lower the handle time.”
“They won’t,” I say glumly. “I heard this rumor that they can’t lower it. In that stupid ad campaign, the caption says we service all calls in two minutes or less. So they can’t retract the ad now; it’s too late! They’ve already spent way too much money.”
Truong shakes his head at the company’s sheer idiocy. “Well, they’ll have to do something.”
And then it happened.
On Tuesday morning, the server crashed. All our systems are down. Kaput. I cannot log in to a single app. Not one!
It is complete bedlam and utter chaos in here. Armageddon.
All the supervisors and leads are running around in circles like the sky is falling, screaming out orders, “Use down scripts! Use down scripts!”
Beep!
“Thank you for calling Lightning Speed. I’m so sorry, but our systems are currently down. Is there a general question that I can help you with?”
“Nope,” says the caller and promptly hangs up.
Beep!
And on and on and on it goes.
I use ‘Down Scripts’ on every single call, while simultaneously reading The Da Vinci Code. This is fantastic! I don’t even have to use one ounce of my brain to think and troubleshoot.
I can just read my novel and repeat the same sentence over and over again, like a broken tape recorder.
Sometimes, just for shits and giggles, I make sure I sound extra robotic so the callers think they’re talking to an automated attendant and hang up. This is too good to be true.
Suddenly, Hillary barks over my shoulder, “You cannot say that our systems are down, you are supposed to say that our systems are UNAVAILABLE. That is the mandatory