Magellan Inbound Call Center

Most of us know what a call center agent does.

Have you ever wondered how long a call center agent talks? How long does his saliva last? Does he injure his tonsils? Hmmm….

As soon as the agents arrive in the office, the first thing they do is to chat with their colleagues, with the employees in the company or with any people assigned in that site. However some sleep first as they arrive in early but as soon as they’re awake, expect to hear their non-stop talks wafted everywhere. It’s like they never ran out of gossips or stories to tell. Endless, indefinite, limitless that’s how I can describe it.

As their shift starts, you can see everyone turning on their pc’s, getting their headsets in their respective lockers, preparing their coffee, filling up water in their tumbler, putting on their headsets and still chit chatting with their seatmates.

In my experience, the length of the operation in this contact center is 9 hours inclusive of an hour break and two 15 minute breaks. Agents should be seen on the floor 7 hours and 30 minutes comprising the entire shift. But how do they talk to their customers? Is there any pattern or any time limit that should be followed? Well actually there, is especially in the inbound call center department. In Inbound, most of the scripts are verbatim while in Outbound it depends. Inbound and Outbound have lots of accounts and in every account there’s a respective script. A script that should be followed most of the time due to its sensitivity and a script that is being used as a guide to close the call properly and to not mislead the customer. Also, the length of the scripts vary. Some are short, some are long and some are average in length.

During the operation, contact center agents converse with the customers using their respective scripts. Some encounter short conversations, few have long interaction with the customers and others converse with the customers for a middle length of time. So when you enter a call center operation site, expect to hear the non stop talks of the agents.

But do you have any idea if what an agent does during his break or lunch? To tell you the truth most of the agents used their 15 minute break for smoking with their colleagues and chit chatting with their coworkers. Thus, some used their 15 minute break for napping, eating and discussing stuff with each other. It’s the same way during the 1 hour break. Also at the end of the shift you can still see them talking with each other. Talking about their experiences with their worst customer for the day and a lot more things that will pop up in their mind. That’s how they maximize their voice in a single day.

We better be careful in using our voice because it is our primary means of communication. Once it’s been abused, we might get difficulty in winning it back.