Things That I Have Learned From My Call Center Experiences

I have worked for more than three years as a call center agent, with two different big companies and a small one that just started out to expand. I have stayed for three consecutive years with an American call center company, five months with a British, and four months with an Australian call center company. It was such a nice experience because apart from the good pay, each of the three companies were from three different continents that have different English accents, so I had the opportunity to learn three different accents. It was full of memories, good ones and bad ones, but it substantially helped me as a communicator, and now as a writer.

The American company that I have worked with for my first time as an agent was an outbound call center. We did surveys and interviews with American households everyday. At first, I was thrilled of how I was going to handle the flow of conversation with the American people especially with the irate ones. Irate respondents (that is what we call to people we interview or survey with) were expected since the BPO industries already boomed at that time and United States receive thousands of calls everyday from telemarketing call center companies. Hence, the Do Not Call Law was passed and amended to help consumers who do not wish to be called by telemarketers.

Since I was not a native English speaker, my first few months as an agent were crucial and struggling. I was confident that I was good in telecommunication because I had a good education, but adapting the American accent was still a difficult learning process during that time. Most of us experienced objection from respondents because of our different accent. But eventually, we were able to speak fluently and sounded just like Americans, and receive remarkable compliments from our respondents.

Five months with the British company was too short but it has a noteworthy contribution to my work experience and knowledge. Again, it is an outbound call center where I was a customer service agent. Though I was also trained as an inbound call center agent for the customer complaints department, but my entire experience with this company was with outbound. We call British and Scottish people to follow up their orders made through shop TV. I have learned so many things about the United Kingdom and Scotland, because we were required to study about their culture during the training before we formally had live calls.

My experience with the Australian company was very quick because the campaign was terminated unexpectedly. The reason was that the company did not benefit from the campaign because of so many competitors. They can not afford to spend more for this campaign without projects coming in. Still an outbound call center company where I was a Lead Generation Agent. We call Australian business establishments to advertise our website services by sending them the complete details through email.

Among the three, I realized that Australian are nice and most polite people. When situation arises because of unavoidable circumstances during the call, they are the most likely to calm down right away if you are just kind enough to explain the reason of your call, as long as it is not selling anything. Eventually, they will politely decline the call.

More than three years may be sufficient enough to boast with my work experience at call center industries but I did not pursue my career in this field because of the unhealthy lifestyle. I am not discouraging those who aspire to work at this type of industry. It is just that I can no longer stand regular night shifts due to poor health reasons.