Life seems to be very exciting for those that constantly seek opportunity to stretch themselves in terms of service. If the initial reaction to such service does not seem to be daunting and heavy ladened then one cannot be stretched. If the question “why on earth do I need to be stretched?” starts to bug you, then the answer to such question, though very simple, needs a thorough foundation in other aspects of knowledge to back up the claim. I am just wondering if I should go into gory details on this knowledge but I have to work. Work as in job, well this gives me a perfect anecdote to ‘concretize’ my idea;
I started my career with Globacom Limited as a Customer Care Representative (CCR) based on economic reasons only after leaving a sure career path in banking. The job function of a CCR seems to be very easy to tackle but after training and hitting the floor to be a call center agent, I quickly found the task very daunting, boring, lacking initiative, overbearing, disregarding ingenuity and routined. The only advantage to the job was availability of time and the ability to control your working hours to fit your preferences. After 2 monthe of frustration, I began to question my lack of enthusiasm to my job and quickly regretted my move to Globacom but looking back at my experience as a CCR, I will never exchange it with my banking experience.
As a CCR in a telecoms company specializing in Pre-paid services, there is no excitement about whole deal but there are deep lessons to take away which will differentiate you from your colleagues especially in my sought-after career which is Account Management. Let me try to picture what I do as a CCR;
*Answer phone in a pre-defined manner for all 150 calls that you pick-up in 6.5 hours in a day.
*The duration you spend with a customer should not exceed 3 minutes.
*You are dealing 90% of the time with formal illiterate customers who you have to provide info and solutions within the limited time.
*Your appraisals are based on quality of calls which translates to excellent attitude, courtesy and high sence of humour.
These tasks are very tedious and does not perfectly match my obvious talent which are Creativity, Innovation, Leadership, Problem Solving (quantitative and qualitative) and Marketing. The only fit was communication which I found out was the pivot in which my aforementioned skills becomes apparent. Perfoming these tasks daily, inplanted in me confidence and high self esteem- the ability to convey a solution within 3 minutes to a formal illiterate requires a lot of creativity and marketing, the ability to remain courteous and maintain excellent attitude despite accusation and abuses from un-informed customers requires leadership and to answer 150 calls within 6.5 hours require strong problem solving skills.
So, am I trying to say every Customer Care Agent possess all these qualities? Not necessarily, it is the combination of these qualities and the ability to recognize opportunity available in such job that makes you a champion. A champion, yes a champion, these particular job function led me to innovate a scheme that actually increased the revenue of the company and put me in my present position where staffs without second degrees are not permited to work because of the high sensitive and the opportunities the positon offers. Stay tuned, I will provide details soon……..
