Monday, October 29, 2012

Pouring My Heart Out

Hi All,

I am writing after a careful thought about my work and the obstacles which I have faced for the past 2 years in my current position. Waaa, so dramatic hehehehe I know but rest assured that this is going to be a very serious post, very serious indeed.

Before we begin, let me share a little bit of my working history and what I do. I am currently working for a BPO company. In layman terms its "Legal Human Trafficking" hehehehe. We run contact centers which were outsourced to us and our clients includes some big names in Malaysia and abroad. been here for almost four and a half years now. Started as a normal staff up to my current position now.

My work is quality related and so anything and everything related to the communication which has taken place between us and customers, my team and I will be monitoring, provide coaching, feedback and training if deemed required.

But I guess the level of understanding is different amongst different people. I have been facing continuous issues especially ever since the rewarding program was introduced by the clients. Should you have no complaints, no failing the quality monitoring session, each staff will be rewarded with RMxxx amount of cash. So whenever, anyone failed, the TL will come and humping on the scores and wanting it to be changed so that everyone can get the recognition and money.

I noticed that the environment is getting very mundane with each staff getting more and more robotic. First, they want everything to be scripted and the staffs will be following the script blindly and not knowing how to react when being asked on questions which are out of the 'norm-script'. My approach? To get the staffs understanding on the real purpose of the script, the logic behind it and the work around for it.

The staffs were told to ask "Are you happy with my service?" before ending the call. And one staff actually shared his uneasiness with the script, because he felt like a male-whore on the call. And customer giggling towards his question only emphasize the feelings further :)

Another classic example was when a staff was shouted upon asking the same question.
"Are you playing dumb or really really stupid? Of course I am not happy with the service!" Guess what, the staff did not know what to do and so responded by simply saying "Oh you are not happy is it. Thank you for calling xxxx". What the hell?!?!?!

Well those are a few examples of how things can be. Well, according to internal SOP staffs are to transfer the dis-satisfied calls to a 2nd level team whose duty is purely to salvage the customer. But because the staff did not have the slightest idea or clue of the purpose of the script, that is what happened.

I have noticed a few things throughout my tenure in this company, which I believe is not right. And through continuous efforts I still failed to have some changes done for the better, for they believe that quality should be stagnant and no improvement is required or needed since it appears to be harmless.

I have been attacked personally for the past two years and last Thursday I had actually broke down and cried. It is just so much that a girl can endure that I don't think I can take it anymore. I am asking for the participation from everyone else in a minimum level and even that, I am seen as a trouble maker and adding work to some other people.

We were told that we are the SME - Subject Matter Expert but we are actually not. Well, if we are then people will be listening to us right? But people have been opposing to everything that we are trying to do. You have to start some where before you can improve on certain things. You don't expect an improvement from something from the thin air. Human capital is what we are delivering and hence I believe that is one thing that we need to be good at, if not perfect but sadly people think its useless.

My work is killing me in the sense that its taking too much of space in my brain that the only thing left to do at home is playing games to ease my tense. I am seriously considering to leave this position. Well, I know you would say that its shallow to do so just when you are faced with a challenge. Trust me, the challenges I have faced non-stop for the past two years are more than what I have shared above but its for me to know and handle :)

Well, if the quality itself is at an Okay stage there's no need for company to pay me right because that is what I have been asked to do and indeed it has been achieved.