Leave the Toxicity Behind: Overcoming Contact Center Negativity | Calabrio
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Leave the Toxicity Behind: Overcoming Contact Center Negativity

I got my start in contact centers by taking customer service calls. It was the late 90’s, and Titanic was dominating the box office. MMMBop was a huge hit, and Third Eye Blind ruled the charts. A lot of things have changed since then (like my hairstyle and affinity for wearing Jorts), but some things haven’t.

One of the big things that hasn’t changed is how people feel about working at a call center.

Call center work is relatively easy to get into, but it can be a hard cycle to break. Talented, passionate people start working as agents, and they usually realize quickly that this job can take a toll. Being attached to a phone for 8 hours a day, repeating the same information, and dealing with upset callers starts to drain even the most resolute personalities.

We are here to change that. We spend our days thinking of new ways to make lives easier for everyone in the contact center, but we have a special passion for agents. Many of us used to be agents, too. We know what the crazy hours are like, and we know how it feels to work in the second shift. We know what it is like to be denied a vacation day because the company “just can’t afford it.”

Employees are special to us. We dedicate time and resources to develop amazing agent-facing tools designed to improve the employee experience. Through better planning and forecasting, we help ease the load on the agents that show up every day. When we develop tools to help agents request time off from their smartphone, it reinforces our efforts to make the call center a flexible and healthy workplace. The agent is on a pedestal here at Calabrio, and we want to show you all the cool stuff that we have been working on.

A big mission for us this year is learning to leave the toxicity of the call center behind. If you are in the scheduling team, or the forecasting team, or the analytics/reporting team, we have some great new options that we would love to talk to you about.

Dave Hoekstra has spent his entire professional career in customer service, but it wasn’t until he found WFM that he found his true passion. With over 20 years in WFM, Dave has gained insight into the real world challenges of working in today’s customer service. He is one of the few people who truly gets excited when someone wants to talk about Real Time Adherence or Net Staffing reports.
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