Tuesday Morning (How To Leave Your Job!) by Alfred N.Muggins : Part 2

Part 2

8/2/23 (25/8/23)

    Some of the calls the day before had been fine, small enough issues which he could deal with, pleasant customers, who weren’t needing too much expertise from him. Maybe he was getting better at the job?

    But then he got one around lunchtime, which involved a long story over a few months. The customer had been with an energy supplier who later was taken over by the company Alfred represented. The customer had asked for the meter to be changed from prepayment pay as you go to a regular continuous supply, but apparently the meter still demanded top up credits and did not give continuous supply. The power ran out. So an engineer had come out and decided to swop the pay as you go meter to a traditional continuous meter. Then soon the customer realized that the company was counting the estimated meter readings as if it was the same meter as before, the readings taken as if the old meter numbers were clocking up. The perfectly pleasant and patient lady had been unable to supply the new readings because the company had not accepted that a new meter was in place.

    Alfred’s energy supplier had taken over without the fact being understood that the meter had been changed, and was clocking from a different initial reading level. She had sent photos in and email explanations, and despite some forms being made to get the company to look at these issues, nothing had really been done, and the customer had not been informed that anything had been decided or resolved, because it had not.

    And so 6 weeks into the frontline job she had fatefully called up the company, and found herself talking to still quite inexperienced Call Centre Agent Alfred. (There was even more to the complexity of the issues facing him, regarding credits given and amounts due, but Alfred had not really focused on that aspect of the situation at this stage).  He had opened a can of worms, so to speak, by coming onto the call queue at that moment and receiving that particular phone call. At least the lady had been very nice, understanding, and patient, but otherwise, as Alfred put her on hold and tried to read the case notes and memos and research the emails which were indeed on file, and were plentiful enough to make it complex to navigate these files.

    While he was coming to appreciate something of the problems she wished to address, he was by no means sure of what he himself could do about it all. Surely he would have to ask for advice, but as usual, when there was any type of problem, he wondered, as did the customer, why these issues had not been dealt with and put right long before now? What was he, barely trained, supposed to do about it all?

    Inevitably he could not avoid admitting to the customer that he did not really know what to do about it all immediately. Perhaps, he said to himself, he ought to raise yet another case form of some kind so that somebody more capable would be able to look at it and deal with it. However there had been a number of cases on it already, and nothing really seemed to have been done at all to resolve these issues.

    It became time, after a fairly long passage of time, while he had looked at the correspondence and cases, for the customer to need to go and pick up the kids from school. So what was he to do. As typically might happen when customers were itching to go, they would ask if he could take their phone number, do some further work on their case and then ring them back later! They never seemed to appreciate that a Call agent was there to take incoming calls, and to deal with customer queries while they were still on the line, and then return efficiently to the call queue. The call agent job was not ideally suited to longwinded, difficult, or intractable jobs. So what was he to do? Pretend he would call back? But what would be the point if he had resolved nothing, and made no real progress. He resolved to let the customer go now and at least to ask for some advice from the drop in adviser, who he would meet in a virtual meeting from computer to computer (the wonders of science!)

   Alfred just hoped his young team leader/ manager was not watching, or listening in, to complain, as he would no longer be on a live call, and had been told that he should not spend much time, or indeed any time on ‘Busy with Case Work’. The trouble was, the computer was tracking his every activity, recorded for posterity, and they could even listen in to his calls if they wished! Calls were certainly all timed, and he had been told, an efficient call Agent should not need to spend time on anything but active Call Time! One thing this case certainly needed was more time, that was for sure, and someone, or some agents dedicated to actually getting something done.

    The customer rang off, and after quite a long time his Team leader queried what he was doing on Busy Case Work, and he tried to explain this case was difficult and he ought to go to Drop In for advice, but he still didn’t think he would be able to achieve much. The Team Leader merely said, “if customer has gone off line just get back on line!” There was to be no thought for dealing with customer’s needs (and this was supposed to be a customer service job!). Alfred resolved to stay on Case Work for a time, in an effort to do something at least for the customer. He went to Drop In (via the computer network) and received general advice to do a case to metering re the basic issue. So Alfred cobbled together a rough case re the basic issue, but this was not the first time one had been done. Hopefully someone would look at it and do something, but he didn’t hold out much hope. Dutifully he went back on the Call queue, but not before he had taken his long overdue half hour lunch break, and refreshed his pressured mind somewhat.

    The Team Leader’s ‘oh so helpful’ intervention earlier to remind him not to stay on ‘Busy with Case Work’ had for Alfred effectively been his last straw in the job, so to speak! It proved beyond all doubt that this job, especially in the mind of the young Team Leader, was merely about answering live calls, but not about coming up with solutions for clients’ problems. By promoting such Team Leaders the real management had proved they were not really concerned to get clients’ problems sorted out. He had learned a lot in this couple of months, but it still wasn’t enough to sort out or make progress upon this client’s complex problems. Instead of handing the case over to someone capable or willing to sort out the various issues he was forced to leave it having raised yet another case.

    At least the call was over for him, and this had been, in a sense, the call he had been waiting for, to prove that this was not a job he could ever master, or to prove that the organization was not worth working for. He had suspected that a call of some sort would come along sooner or later which he couldn’t handle, which would indeed be the final straw in his employment. He had thought it would probably, or possibly, come from an irate customer who had complaints and ran rings around his ability to keep up with what he had to do to answer their questions, or perhaps by some issues, as in this case, which he didn’t know how to deal with. He had not expected that the call would be one from a customer who had been perfectly reasonable and patient, but whom he had nevertheless failed to help, despite trying to comprehend her problems and to constructively deal with it in some way.

    There were other issues too in his decision to quit, but the call was the main one that convinced him to leave. That call was the final straw for him. As he went to his overdue, much delayed half an hour lunch break he knew that when he left work not so much later it would be his last time in this job. He would not be coming back. There was a calm which was descending upon him as he knew the mental torture of not knowing the job well enough was shortly to end. He hoped his last few calls would not be difficult ones, that he would be able to handle those and then be able to slink away without further pain or difficulty.

    Luckily the last couple of customer calls for that day were not so difficult or pressuring, and he got an email too after the open call times were passed which he was able to answer in some way. Without any further sign of stress, or admission to any colleagues that he was about to leave them for good, he walked out of the large open plan office one last time and quietly went home.