I'm Super Efficient!

[Aria]

I'd put this into the Bragging section but I'm honestly a little disturbed.

Handle times are not part of my teams goal metrics, largely because we sometimes have to burn an hour or two sorting out crazy shit. Also, the dealers can require handholding. Still, the times are recorded and if someone is wildly out of kilter they get some coaching on how to fix that.

I always have excellent handle times. I know that because my manager told me so. The thing is... I think of myself as a complete slacker. I get up to make tea. I go to the bathroom. I talk to my mom. I post on this forum... *cough* How can my times be so good compared to everyone else?!?

Maybe it's because when I'm working, I'm WORKING. I try to make everything as quick and painless as possible. I do pride myself on being efficient. It still makes me wonder what everyone else around here is doing...

[KuariKaydrith]

I know your feels all too well because that is how it was for me when I was still at my recent call center job. They didn't track handle time either but I would get dinged on my aftercall work because I'd spend the 2.5 minutes typing all my notes - it should be noted that I didn't put callers on hold to type my notes up like so many of my co-irkers did. And I still routinely had the highest number of calls in a week, even when I was on the chat team!

I figure what it ties into is so many of my former co-irkers screw the pooch as much as they can. Yes, I used to get up routinely to head to the bathroom and take mini-breaks as needed so I wouldn't lose my marbles due to anxiety (and also to keep from smacking the people sitting around me). But so many of my co-irkers would do everything in their power to stay off the phones instead of taking calls, sometimes in the name of research or waiting for a response from a senior agent when they could have taken more calls while waiting for responses, or not dicked around when they were allegedly doing research for a callback.

[BlaqueKatt]

when I worked in the account set-up portion of a call center, we were assigned "cases" to set up or disconnect internet billing lines for companies, each case was worth a set number of points(an 8 point case took maybe 10-30 minutes), we had an amount to get per week (it was around 40 IIRC). everyone else waited until thursday or friday and panicked, I did mine on monday and tuesday, and tackled the unassigned disconnect cases the rest of the week(no one liked them), I always had the highest score even though I spent my fridays wandering the cubes. I called it "creative slacking".

[WishfulSpirit]

It's been my experience that call centers will hire anyone with a detectable pulse. Thus if you're using even half your backside trying to do a good job, you're probably better than most of your co-irkers.

[Aria]

Ugh.

I kind of have an update... there's a contest to see who can decrease their handle times by the greatest percentage. ::eyeroll:: I have NO hope of winning. No point in even trying. I might be able to shave a bit off if I work extra hard, but that's nothing compared to what other people could do if they tried.

Not to mention that I was sick today but working anyway, so not super efficient. Sigh.

[wolfie]

there's a contest to see who can decrease their handle times by the greatest percentage. ::eyeroll:: I have NO hope of winning. No point in even trying. I might be able to shave a bit off if I work extra hard, but that's nothing compared to what other people could do if they tried.

Has management ever heard of "perverse incentives"? People who are already efficient can't shave off more than a few percent. People who are wasteful can easily "cut the fat", and some people will do a half-assed job (or even drop calls) to bring their handle time down. Way to go - bringing in a contest designed to reward the worst workers.

[Strathclyde]

If I would have to guess, the thought upon that reward is to convince the worst workers to work harder. Those who already have high handle times don't need convincing. But it has the potential side effect of making people do worse for a bit so that they can later get the reward.