No ID cards were yet
issued for our batch here in TRANSCOM and when I checked at the reception area
in the fourth floor of the building I only get to see that only five of my co
trainee's had been issued with an ID, the rest which includes me still have no company I'd yet. The five co-trainee's of
mine who had an ID was "Alan", "Dan" , "Jason",
"Mark" and another one which I can't remember.
In other news
Most my co-trainees
were terribly worried about our actual calls, "Mico" seems to be calm
though she says that she will do her best on those calls , "Mcvin"
was in Anxious and the same thing goes to "Gwen" and "Rose"
, while me an "Jason" were not worried at all and was very calm
probably because we knew that the QA is will not listening on this one and this
is just some sort of Phone exercise.
At 11pm Norman (our
trainer) told us to go to the 4th Floor production area to hear some live calls
that agents are handling, We stayed there for about an hour and listened to the
calls , Then after which we were ordered to go back to the "Palawan"
training room to have our issued headsets given.
There is nothing
much to say about the head sets, Seriously and all I could comment is that the
headset is somewhat not that as good and impressive as the
"PLATRONICS" brand that I used way back in TELETECH Company. For everyone's information the Headset brand
, We were using is a "JABRA" brand.
A few minutes later
after all of our headsets were given, Norman told us to go to the 5th floor
production area (just right beside our training room) to our assigned stations
and get our software tools ready. Minutes later we clicked in our "ready icon"
on the soft phone and we were now "Live". I was expecting that there
would be a flood of calls the moment I clicked the icon - To my surprise there
was none and an hour pass not a single call came.
Aside from getting bored waiting for a call ,
I was starting to feel that I need to take a piss and I left my station and
headed towards Norman to ask permission to go to the toilet. To my dismay and
horror , he told me to back to my station and said I cant go to the toilet -
Son of a Bitch , Bastard !!! What the hell does he want me to do ? Piss on the
computer ! - Fine if that's the case ! Hell ! The only reason why I approached
him was only because of courtesy and I don’t want to sound disrespectful , but
if that will be the case then Fuck courtesy ! Next time I wont ask permission
anymore and will be going straight ahead to the toilet, its my fucking personal
right to relieve myself on the toilet and piss there - otherwise I'd be pissing
on the company computers. My fault on one part and I forgot to remember that we
Filipino's are not that humanitarian towards fellow Filipino's.
One good thing of
being furiously mad is that I get to have an extra strength to holding my piss.
For the whole four
hours of taking calls I only got two calls , one is a customer who hang up
after 30 second after getting the call and the other was something asking for
enquiries about his broadband contract - and that’s about it.
After the phone
exercise, we went back to the training room and was informed to open our online
email clients and see the email. Upon opening it was a memo from our trainer
reminding us that too many absences will leave us be removed from training
(i.e. Fired) and that we have to "digitally" sign the said memo like
a some sort of contract. When "DAN" read the email memo , he joking
replied "This is more like selling your soul to the devil" , I could
only giggle in his hilarious remark and quite frankly he's right. But it's ok
and this isn't the first time that I signed unfair contracts.
Second day of taking
in calls , but an hour or 30 minutes before we went to the 4th floor production
area to barge in a few calls. Me, "Jason", "Mark",
"Dustin" and a few others were talking and having a chat on what
other call center companies out there would be at suitable in looking for a
job. "Dustin" said that he's pretty much committed to getting a job
here than anywhere else and said that he's already tired job searching , he
added that he'd try to settle as long as he can here if in case things work
out.
We discussed a few
possible companies "Out there" like "AEGIS 24/7 people's
support" (sounds more like a political party than a BPO company) but we
all agreed that "AEGIS" pay its employee's too little like only 14K
PHP compared here in TRANSCOM which amounts to 16K PHP basic. We also discussed
an Australian account based company called "Acquire Asia" which
supports DODO and perhaps Telstra , but
apparently from what "Gwen" claimed the work load there was
tremendous - So tremendous that she resigned.
A few minutes later
, Norman approached us in the 5th Floor cafeteria and told us to prepare and
proceed to the 4th floor production area. So we went there and listened to call
handling by other telephone operators , Classic stuff then after an hour we went
back to the training room for a fifteen minute break then afterwards the usual
drill in taking in calls at the fifth floor production area.
My station was
seated next to "chard" and we keep asking each other questions when
had trouble on callers. So far being a Customer service agent for billing is
somewhat problematic for me on the big fact that "call flow" is
non-linear which meant that there's no exact step by step call process and i
have to think creatively on how to address the customers issue , which
apparently takes time for me to *Think*, The only advantage I figured out for
the customer service job category is that calls here are very short and fast
paced ,lasting only for 5 minutes to 11 minutes tops.
For the actual call
handling on this day , I never had any serious problems such as "bill
explanation" or "I -Want-to-Talk-To-Your-Supervisor" calls -
just had a few transfers , bill payments and general enquires - nothing to get me distraught. Unfortunately
though I handled calls with minimal problems , some of my co-trainee's were not
that lucky, "Gwen" encountered a few piss off callers ,
"Erich" had trouble explaining bill charges to customers ,
"Rose" was generally ok with the calls, "Dustin" had been
transferring callers in a "Cold transfer procedure" ,
"Mico" on the other hand was disconnecting calls every now and then
for various reasons, "Mark" along with "Alan" are the
luckiest and were not able to take in calls due to issue's with their log in
passwords on the company server. In other words they just watch while we bleed
on calls.
("Warm transfer
" means that you have to make formal introduction on another telephone
operator and informing the situation of the customer before passing it to the
*other* operator , while in "Cold transfer" you simply dump and ditch
the customer to the other telephone operator and let the operator handle the
situation )
At 4am we went back
the room for debriefing about our calls and at around 6 am, "Norman"
gave an ice breaker . Apparently "Mico" was not in a good mood at
that time and was pretty menstrual about being joked at, Resulting to "Mico"
bad mouthing to "Norman" and making offensive comments like
"This game sucks" and "I'm going to leave this room" .
Everyone in the room didn't like how "Mico" was behaving and
"Norman" just let "Mico" left the room without saying a
word.
I guess this was a pretty good example that
the call center is open minded to all forms of opinion , be it either good or a
bad one , It is respected without any backlash or harsh punishments - although
some of the time it is taken advantage of. In the Maritime Industry , those
things we take for granted at the call center are non existent and if it do
exist - it is very limited. No personal freedom there and the right of open
expression , If someone even dared to do that - there will be serious
retaliation.
On the Next day….
I was so exhausted
that I slept the whole day and ended up being waking at around 7pm, barely got
45 minutes to prepare for everything.
Upon arrival at TRANSCOM , I did my usual routine and saw
"Dustin" waiting on the cafeteria , then after that I went to the
fourth floor to log in to the internet station there and check my FB account
then I return back to the fifth floor and saw that "jason" and
"mark" are also there with "Dustin" , Soon afterwards some
of my co-trainee's arrived one by one .
10 minutes before
the Training class begin , "Rose" told me that the Company ID's have
already been out at the reception desk - I hurriedly went there and
"Rose" was right.
When the class began
, All of us were surprised to see that "Norman" was not around and
that "Jack" took over his class. Apparently "Norman" went
to an unspecified emergency leave and "Jack" had to fill in for him for
a day. Initially all of the class perceived her negatively , but later on
things lighten up and she wasn't that bad at all . "Dan" even joked
to "Jack" , About the meaning of NTE technical term saying that its
called "Notice to Explain" instead of being "network terminal
equipment" , Everybody laughed on that smart ass comment made by
"DAN" .
In other matters…
"Alan"
might not be coming back at all and perhaps has gone AWOL , its been three days
that he went absent straight and there's little or no chance at all that he'd
show up, However in other related matters
"CJ" showed up though he already used up his absences , it
seems that he's back in the game or perhaps he's just showing up to get his
salary first before going "AWOL".
In other matters
also …..
Everyone is
expecting and anxious about our salary which also includes me. As a matter of
fact "Badong" , "Jason" and "mark" are coming
early at TRANSCOM just to get their ATM's from payroll Department. According to "Rene" the COMPENBIN
office is open at least 12 midnight , though she is not sure about the office
hours of payroll department.
