Re:Two years in the first line? (Score 1)

Tech support agents certainly have a poor reputation with the general public. I would also say that they have a poor reputation from one company to another, and often times within the same company. I worked in and around the call center environment for 10 years as phone support, helpdesk, trainer and developer, beginning in my first year of college. At first, it was to work through school and later, because there was nothing else around. The problem is that initial phone support is often contracted out, whether within the U.S or overseas. These contractors typically earn less money than the vendors, often hire less-educated individuals and don't hold themselves to the same standards as the vendor company. Vendor employees don't necessarily like the contractors and occasionally, multiple contractors are in competition with each other. In my experience, for three years, I worked with 2 other trainers, teaching 3-week-long classes back to back. For much of that time, we saw attrition rates well over 100% at 90 days, not because of poor training, but because the employees hated the job. I have seen new students who admittedly, had never sat in front of a computer before. I was once told the only reason the employee was there was to get their parents off their back. Another employee told us that they were quitting after the 3-week class because they were going to move. Other people, who really wanted to work, left after several weeks, unwilling to put up with it any longer. Our training material was passed down to us by the vendor, tightly structured, almost to turn the employee into a machine. Use the callers first name this many times. Being forced to read scripts in exactly the right sequence. No more than xx seconds of silence at any given point. Thank you for calling... my name is... may I please have your telephone number so that I may access your account. Thank you... May I please place you on hold while I gather more information? Thank you for holding... Are there any other issues with your account that I can help you with today? Call times too short, you must be doing something wrong. Call times too long, someone is breathing down your neck to get you off the phone. Customer surveys that penalize the employee because the customer hates the company as a whole. I would never do it again, nor would I ever recommend it. My question is this: Knowing what you know now about your call center experience, would you recommend the job to a friend? A call center is a good place to learn customer service skills and basic technical skills, but in a resume, doesn't count for much. Emphasize the skills you learned along the way and find ways to demonstrate those skills, but don't put a lot of weight toward working in a call center, because they don't count for much.