“Maybe in the beginning when the industry started it was like that, but nowadays we have very educated people. In my office we have people with their masters, PhDs, we have sculptors, bioengineers, everything.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you have had some not fun times with customer support in your life. Perhaps even reading the words customer support makes you have flashbacks of one such time that really takes the cake? Deep down we know that we should be happy that companies even have customer support, and yet you’d be hard pressed to find someone that has a favorable opinion of their time spent on the phone trying to solve a problem. Today’s guest, João (Joe), is the manager of a customer support team for an international travel website. He’ll give us the inside scoop on what it’s like to deal with all the haters and live life on the other side of the telephone.
“Many times you pick up the phone and you’re immediately greeted with a barrage of expletives and very loud voices, to the point that we can hear it even if we aren’t on the phone with the customer.”
“I did law for 5 years…it’s something that if you think about it it’s a more prestigious job, but at the end of the day what’s important is if you’re happy with your life and I felt that when I had to wear a suit and tie every day I was playing a role.”
Interview Contents
3:45 - The amount of angry people that call in.
6:30 - Being the manager.
9:00 - How much flexibility and autonomy do the customer service reps have?
10:45 - Training the reps in the call center.
15:00 - How do you handle people being rude?
17:30 - Bizarre phone stories.
23:00 - Work hours.
26:00 - Pay.
30:00 - Communicating the bad news.
32:30 - Misconceptions about call center employees.
37:00 - The diversity in the workplace.
40:00 - Advice for calling into customer service.
Links
No links today.
THIS EPISODE WAS MADE WITH THE SUPPORT OF
Roxanna
Michelle & Jim Wortner
Janelle Swanson
Jimmy Seymour
