First of all, I would congratulate you on the way you have dealt with the issue. Most people in a similar situation would consider this problem to be “someone else’s” fault. You have clearly taken personal ownership of the situation. While it’s hard to give you specific advice without knowing how this role fits into your current life and future plans, I think it’s important to ask yourself a number of questions:

The first question would be whether or not you are in the right job. A major dilemma for many call centers is that they recruit staff who are highly motivated entrepreneurs and then put them in a position and environment where this type of person gets bored and frustrated. This is particularly true in directory consulting positions where the nature of the work is highly repetitive in nature. There are many other call centers where the type of work is less repetitive and you may want to consider them. When we provide career guidance to people in the call center industry, we always go through a series of questions with each candidate and always find that the candidate has the answers within himself. He has taken the first step of asking the first question and now it is time to ask the follow up questions. Why are you frustrated? What can you do to change this? What resources do you have that can change this?

The second thing to ask yourself is if there is anything you can do to make the job less repetitive. You may not fully appreciate the importance of your role. With so many calls that seem to be very similar, it’s often very easy to see the role as a type of production line, but this is simply not true. It’s always worth remembering that the days of the free directory service are long gone and that anyone who calls you is calling because they urgently need help. If it wasn’t urgent, they would have looked up the number on the internet for free. If you look at the role from this perspective, I’m sure you have a lot to do to improve the caller experience and you’ll be surprised how rewarding it can be.

The third thing I would ask you is what you can develop yourself within your current role. Within all of us, there is a burning desire to learn and in this role, it may seem like you are not learning anything. If we’re not constantly learning and challenging ourselves, it’s very easy to get frustrated. I’ve been to so many call centers full of agents with a situation similar to yours and asked them what they can do to expand their own skills. Most people will normally remain silent, but the few who do speak up are usually the people with negative opinions. They feel that it is the responsibility of the company to provide them with opportunities to learn. While it’s true that successful companies actively encourage their staff to develop new skills, the ultimate responsibility for your own success lies within yourself. Based on the way you asked your initial question, it sounds to me like you already recognize this and are therefore already a step ahead of everyone else. Of course, skeptics might say that there are no development opportunities because of the way the company operates. A few years ago, I did some consulting work in Manila with what I would describe as one of the worst call center operations I’ve ever seen.

The day I started, the telecommunications manager (Paolo) resigned to go to work in the United States, where his salary would be $60,000 a year, which was $54,000 more than what he was making in Manila. I sat down and asked him why he was leaving, but I obviously had a feeling that money would be behind it. What struck me was not his reasons for leaving, but how he managed to put himself in such a position of opportunity. He had previously been a call center agent and realized he wanted more. Paolo’s shift ended at 6 am and he always spent 2 hours with the previous telecom manager in his spare time learning how the system worked. When the previous telecommunications manager left, he became the only person with any knowledge of the phone system and thus took over. The owner of the company did not increase his salary due to his new responsibilities but Paolo did not worry too much since he was still learning and knew what his life project was. Skeptics might say that this is an extreme situation for someone to have a 1500% pay raise and indeed it is. However, I can guarantee that anyone who can find enough compelling reasons to take control of their own development will. I can also guarantee that there are always opportunities to develop in any call center position. It’s just a matter of where you look for them.

The fourth and final question I would ask is “What can you do to help your team leader or others make the job less mundane?” At CallCentrePeople.com, we are one of the largest call center team leader recruiters in the country. It never ceases to amaze us how many team leaders believe their job is limited to sending emails, taking calls from supervisors, and doing paperwork. From your question, I am assuming that your team leader may well be one of these people. A good team leader spends so much time training his people that he would understand his frustrations and guide him in developing a plan to improve this. While it would be all too easy to blame the team leader, it’s worth appreciating that they likely learned their approach from their line manager, who also didn’t coach them effectively. So it’s worth thinking about how he might manage his team leader to help him work through these frustrations. A team leader who doesn’t coach effectively usually works in a reactive state dealing with problems as they arise and since he wouldn’t see your frustrations as urgent, then he would probably place a low priority on understanding them and working with you to overcome them. them.

In 2004, I was in a meeting at a call center that I was outsourcing some work to. While waiting for my meeting, I overheard a conversation through the paper-thin partitions. An agent wannabe was telling his overstressed team leader what he was going to do to support him after he had lost faith in his team. As the dominant agent on the team, he felt that he could encourage the team to work hard for him, but in return, he wanted the team leader to spend all his time at work sharing his knowledge with the team. He would not be allowed to spend any of his time on his computer. He even offered to do any reporting he needed to do on his spare time and, therefore, he would have no reason to be on his computer. He accepted. I watched as the two walked out onto the trading floor with the girl looking very pleased with herself. The following week, I had another meeting in the same call center. As I was being shown around the floor, the operations manager told me that one team in particular (which happened to be the team the two people I had seen earlier were on) had improved dramatically in one week in all areas from absenteeism and measures Of conversation. The team seemed much happier and even the team leader seemed much happier. I’m fully aware that many team leaders won’t be easy to manipulate in this way, but with the right approach, you can get your entire team to act in ways that make your job feel less mundane.

The next time I visited that particular call center was 5 months later. The team leader was still in the same position, but his team had been the 2nd best performing team for the previous 3 months and he had come up with some novel ways to empower his employees and he had also come up with some great ideas to make them work works. more fun environment. The only reason his team didn’t perform the best was because the agent who had given him the ultimatum had been promoted to team leader and his team beat him every month. Regardless of how your call center is run, everyone has the ability to develop and implement ideas that can make your day more fun.

Now that you’ve asked yourself all these questions, go back to the first question and ask yourself again “Am I in the right job?” Many people will now be much more positive about this question after the other questions have been asked.