The Philippine Online Chronicles

A decade ago, I would have died on the spot were I forced to give directions in English to a foreigner, even an Asian one. Sweat secreting where it should, but at a rate that would prompt dam spill. My tongue curled labyrinthine. And the river that is my blood coursing just as fast, overpowering my heart, with the good doctor declaring a “dead on arrival.”

My thanks to the call center, which has opened up my heart, freed my tongue, and helped me survive several bouts of half-talking, half-manual gesturing, but effectively communicating with stray foreigners.

Work hard play hard

You go on graveyard shift, starting from 9 pm up until 10 am, and if you render overtime, then in a single working day, you would have talked for 10 straight hours to around 50 customers. About 10% of that will be irate from the start, 1% your romantic affection, and 100% needing your utmost care and attention.

Petulance is thus, not an option.

We are even ordered to smile while on a call. Imagine yourself doing that while telling the customer, “Yes, Mr. Smith, we are, in fact, terminating your service because of nonpayment.” You get an invective, naturally, and you reply “Will that be all?” Of course this would call for another, at which point you can drop the call, because you are a human being working hard, and you should not have to get such treatment.

Not to mention that if you are in customer service then you would have to keep each call at 5 minutes. If you don’t you’d have your team leader calling your attention every five minutes. Also, strict adherence to quality and politeness standards is monitored by the quality analysts.

And oh, for notoriously late people, you must know that a call center will not allow that.

You have to be there ten minutes before your shift, because you will be setting up your PC for that same amount of time. The system will require at least two different passwords, sometimes four or more.

So when the operation manager has Yellow Cab pizzas delivered, everybody digs in.

In my stint as an agent, this happens twice a week. And the drinking and the smoking are nonstop. The company has funds for beer-drinking sprees for unwinding. We have two 15-minute breaks, and we smoke for 10, and run to the elevator for the remaining 5. Drinking sessions once a month for the whole account, which start at 3 am until 12 noon.

Some drink before the shift begins. Some drink while on a break. Some drink using their spill- proof mugs. These, though are prohibited by the company. And if caught, it could mean the loss of a job.

What inspires the agents to work hard are the incentives for performers. Some are told to upsell, or to solve customer problems, and near the end of the call, sell products. They get 8K on the average per month during my time as an agent, five years ago.

Others who have perfect attendance, or have high performance scores will have cash incentives from 2K to 4K per month. And if you are a member of the best team, then additional gift certificates from Starbucks, and the next promoted may just be you.

Promotion is swift.

There are some agents, though, who would rather work in a less stressful environment like in email support and not take calls. me I understand this is one of the main reasons agents transfer from one call center company to the next yearly.

Earn a lot, spend a lot

For the most part, customer service representatives (CSRs) are foppish dressers. A time came when I was asked, “You work in a call center, don’t you?” even though I was employed as a medical transcriptionist at the time, after spending a year in a financial account call center.

Agents dress well since they have money for them to look good, and with the freedom given them to experiment on what they wear.

With starting salaries doubling that in the usual day jobs, it comes as no surprise that agents get to spend lavishly. Cars, gadgets, accessories come easy. Expensive hobbies like photography, paintball, travelling overseas, and drag racing mean nothing, especially if you are in the financial accounts, or the management.

And who can blame them? They work their arse off in deity-forsaken hours. The worst I came across was a shift from 2 to 10 am. Mind the am. It’s like being a vampire caught by the sun when you go home.

Emerging call center subculture

In Charles Darwin’s natural selection, he says that geographic isolation is what makes a population unique. The more isolated a population becomes, the more different the individuals. This can also be said of call centers, being isolated temporally from the rest of us. It is no wonder that they have a different culture brewing.

Aside from Pinoys now conversing nonchalantly in English, whether they are observing proper grammar and enunciation or not, you will also notice several advertisements, like the biscuit and beer ads where the characters speak in British English. An influence of the multilingual specialists, so it seems. This enforces our virtuosity in not only the English language and its different accent permutations but also in French, Spanish, Japanese, and others, given proper training.

A liberated lifestyle is most encouraged in the call centers. Yes, at first they say that you have to wear business casual, but in truth, that’s only for the trainees. Once you go to the work area, or the “floor” and start taking calls, then you can look like Shalani Soledad, Dr. House, or Bon Jovi, no one could care less, as long as your average handling time (AHT, or the amount of time you spend on one caller) is up to standard. But when you work as a technical support/information technology representative, AHT really doesn’t matter, so I have been told.

Some call centers are permissive of cross dressers, so the lifestyle in these companies is comparable to that in the USA

With the call center agent, you get a person who talks in straight, fluent English while on a call, talk in broken Pinoy English in places where English-only policy is applied, and use Filipino- Tagalog or their dialect as they chat and swear while on yosi breaks.

In a call center, you are able to express yourself more, even give the other agents a taste of your artistry during Christmas presentations, thematic cubicle/station competitions usually in celebration of American holidays, and even in teambuilding sessions usually done out of town.

This happens around three times a year. On Halloween, children are permitted to go trick or treating, aside from having a family day for them plus a summer family outing in some call centers.

A call center is all about individualism and affirming that if you have chosen to be an agent, to live the life of a twilight vampire, then you must be, at least in part, free-spirited.

Respect for an agent’s personal space gives his or her more leeway to focus on having high quality percentages on his or her calls. Yes, this means having a full-sized workstation where an agent can go under the desk and retouch her (or his) makeup, while convincing a customer that it is not in their best interest to talk to a supervisor.

In terms of culture though, the call centers need to be more family centered, since those in their 30s and 40s are increasing, with most of the employees being women, a large portion being moms, and a fraction of that either being single, or very independent mothers.

More support for the independent women

These moms need a free daycare center. This or they stop working. Yayas are hard to come by, believe you me, and I would rather have the grandparents take care of my kid. Even with yayas, who have to go on leave every weekend, or once a month, the call center moms would have to go on leave. However, approval of this would depend on their superiors. Moreover, if they live in the province, then leaving the kids to their lolos and lolas would mean seeing them only during holidays, when they’d be like OFWs in their own country.

Photo: “4x telemarketing” by Ju Dadalto, c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved