A Salute To The Call Center Mob

I am just one of those clueless people who got lurking horrible thoughts about the BPO industry or in layman’s language -a call/contact center company. These ideas came from several sources that accumulated and amassed into general conclusions that I held onto for a long time. I believed that call centers are for desperate jobless that for some reasons can never get in the circle of in-demand workforce.  I long believed that since I am a graduate of a business degree from a reputable University, I should never work in a call center because nursing graduates are supposed to populate the industry since a large fraction of them can not find the adequate jobs to sustain their careers. I thought of it as one of the easiest jobs in the world where fluency of the global language is your only investment. That thought is even supplemented by my opinion that your brain goes dull in such industry because it remains unchallenged.

Then I ‘accidentally’ got hired by the best contact center in my country. Yes you read it right, I term it accidental because I was not planning to apply in a BPO company. A head hunter approached me while I was strolling at a mall called Trinoma and after a minute of convincing me to take the initial interview, I dismissed all the doubts. Well, to get to the point, it was not just the initial interview that I passed. I got through the 4-level procedures surprised to find my heart and brain in total silence after hearing them argue the entire five-hour process. My heart didn’t want me to take the risk but my mind was jumping in excitement yelling “Take it! Take it!” to the highest level.

For the following weeks, I found myself struggling to get up at one in the morning to attend my grammar and product training classes. During the span of our training, I embraced a renewed thought that the job is not for empty-headed people. I confidently told myself before that work in contact centers is just as easy as reciting the vowels, as if it is. Though I did not know where I get the idea. And I was so ashamed of myself because I didn’t even know how to enunciate those vowels correctly until training. I was enrolled in a U.S based medical insurance account. The complexity of the product can never be mastered in just two months of training or even in the first three months of your actual calls.

Each day my brain complained of too much information I forced into its cells. I don’t have an exquisite long-term memory which made the challenge gorier. Sometimes I wonder why nobody invented an external memory drive to upgrade a human brain’s storage capacity.

I passed the training miraculously and was endorsed to production to do the actual job. During training I pompously told everyone that I’d stay for the entire six months to gain experience. On my first week in production, I decided to drop the endure-the-six-months dream and told myself to hang on for another three months. The stress was distinct and beyond physical. I could not figure out how my co-agents surpassed their first few weeks in the industry.

Though I worked hard to hold on to my motivation, my spirit was already shaken during my second week. It was aggravated by a realization brewing in my mind that I was not born to excel on that job, and worse, to be happy with the job. I survived the second week with a firm decision to forget the three months battle and now it’s down to one month.

On my third, (yes you guessed it right), I realized I could not even finish my first 30 days, and that’s when I quit. I got sick of Acute Laryngopharyngitis, a kind of ailment where your voicebox is swelling due to excessive usage.

Well I’m just one of the many employees from the industry who was not able to live up to its standards. I continue to envy those whose careers in call centers had shot up to its peak. These people possess something others don’t, that I don’t. Perhaps to some centers, admission is fast and easy yet to remain and stand out, you have to get hold of these keys to create your path upwards – Motivation, Flexibility, Healthy mind and body , Passion and Excellence.