To all my call center bretheren

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed below are strictly my own. They are not representative of the opinions of my employer, my dad, my best friend, my dog, or anybody else. They are strictly mine. Okay? Okay.

I hear you, call center vets, thinking to yourselves, "Who the hell does this guy think he is, giving us advice?"

I've been working in a call center for over a decade now. I've pretty much heard it all. While I know there are others who know more about it than me, I have driven around this block a few times and know where the bad stretches of road are.

For example--the accusation, implied or stated outright, that the caller did something wrong. Even little, insignificant things. If at all possible, do not do this!

Think about it--your siggoth says something like, "You left the seat up/down again." Even if this is an extremely minor issue with you, something that's just a tiny annoyance--on a scale of one to ten, it's about a 0.5--it still starts you down that road to aggravationville. If you siggoth follows it up with, "I'm sorry, but I just don't feel like going out tonight" or something like that, you are even further along. Where before you might be inclined to understand and be sympathetic, since you are already a bit irritated you just get a little more irritated. A few more remarks and the neighbors are calling the cops.

For example--I get calls all the time from people who are trying to set up our software. There are detailed, meticulously written (by me) and illustrated articles (screenshots, anyway--again, by me) on our website that anyone should be able to follow.

The article on setting our software up is 40 pages long, but it's like a picture per page, so, text-wise, it ain't all that much. I still have people who get to page five and for some reason think they're finished. The remaining 35 pages aren't there for decoration but they seem to ignore this. So, they start using our software and it doesn't work right. They call me. I look at what they're doing and see that they have failed to follow the directions I wrote that anybody should be able to follow.

I'm tempted to let my irritation show. Instead, I say something like "Your file came in without your ID." Like it just came in that way--not like "You didn't follow the directions you moron!" It's more like, "Huh. How did that happen? But we can fix that like this . . . " and I walk them through the remainder of the instructions. Which takes maybe five minutes, normally.

It's not hard, really, once you become aware of it. When you accuse, the walls come up. You don't need that. I know I don't. The important thing is to resolve the issue to the caller's satisfaction, which you will probably be able to do most of the time. Not all the time, but most of it.

Go, thou, and do likewise.