Some companies, like mine, have days when we become so busy, it’s “All Hands on Deck,” meaning everybody is put to work on one task. Everybody short of the janitorial staff gets mobilized. It helps speed up customer service at a critical period of high volume, but it also causes some interesting adventures.
It doesn’t matter if you work in retail, a volunteer public service like a fire company or a 24 hour operation like a contact center or a hospital if the call to action comes. It also doesn’t matter if you are already doing the work of two people, the chili is on the stove or your boss wanted that project done yesterday; you’re off everything else to fill in on what is often to you an “additional duties as required” part of your job description.
I was mobilized this past week to cover a phone line as the number of waiting calls had spiked. First I had to find an open cubicle to sit in. Because our offices have various types of equipment, I had to find a seat with the proper setup. This means a compatible phone with a connector cable that I could find and which did not require fine motor skills to operate. Having found one, I then had to break out some disinfecting wipes because the previous fellow employee, probably happy beyond belief that they survived their shift, zealously bolted for the door before they could be snagged to stay on for overtime and left the desktop looking like a kindergarten after milk and cookies.
Knowing that our computerized phone system had been changed, I and my fellow standby personnel awaited our turn to be trained, which usually happens at the end of the training schedule, after the trainers have also run out of headache medication. When I finally did do a training review, conveniently the system underwent an update days after I completed the course, so the computer screen I found myself using had a less familiar resemblance to what I had learned.
As customers we all experience how scripted some phone center operators sound: that’s because an orderly system of handling each call speeds the service along and ensures efficiency. Really, it does. If the operator knows what questions to ask and in what order, you as a customer are almost guaranteed to get a good result. You would be amazed to see how a three-minute phone call can align everything a customer needs with what the operator needs to help them. However, I realized as I sat down to take my first call that I had never gotten a confirmation of what our current script was. I followed a mixture of old and new protocol from what I had picked up along the way. My mouth dried out in ten minutes, and I’d left my bottled water at my regular desk. Still I managed to warble through several phone calls, and the customers were pleasant and patient, even if the computer didn’t want to follow what I had been trained to do. I figured the worst that could happen is the firm that reviews our phone calls and grades each operator’s performance might randomly select one of my efforts and yell to their coworkers, “I got one for the gag reel!”
Finally the calls dropped to a level at which the extra staff could log off and go back to normal office life. Everybody got taken care of, and I don’t think any customers suffered because of my inexperience. Fortunately I still had some headache medication and enough bottled water to wash it down once I was back at my desk. Until next time.
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