Archive for the 'Work' Category

QA Average

Published
by
mattfast1
on April 5, 2008
in Stories and Work
. 0 Comments

Well, stats have come back from the last month’s incentive period.

Out of the 20+ teams in our call center (which happens to be the best in the company), my team is #5 overall. Out of the 30+ agents on my team, I was #3 overall, and for two weeks I was #1 for the week.

My bonus for being awesome is 12.6% of my gross on the next two paychecks.

As Quagmire would say, “All right!”

Also, for those wondering, my QA average for the 1st quarter of 2008 is 94.16%. The average handle time of my QA’d calls is 10:16. Compare this to 2007 (I started in October of 2007), when I had an average of 92.73% and an average time (on these calls) of 14:51.

F* you.

Published
by
mattfast1
on April 1, 2008
in Stories, Stupidity and Work
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Now that I’ve got your attention…

F* you, HyperQuality.

So now I have to explain myself. Well, on Friday I’m sitting there taking calls, and unbeknownst to me, I get QA listening to my call. It’s an authorization call, and a repeat call at that. Well, step 2 of troubleshooting is “Send a hit”, which is supposed to send any receivers on the account commands to reauthorize themselves. It takes about two seconds to send a hit using Dish Promo, one of the pieces of our account management software. However, the previous agent failed to send a hit, preferring to be lazy instead. They noticed the software on the receiver was outdated, so they had the customer update their software.

So, I’m working with the call, and the first thing I asked was the software version. Then I asked for DNASP information, the version of the firmware on their smart card. That’s about when I noticed, looking at previous notes, that no hit had been sent. So I sent the hit, and verified the receiver and smart card numbers, because at that point I didn’t trust the previous agent knew what they were doing, even though the receiver and smart card numbers were in their notes, I wanted to kill some time while the hit was sent.

Well, I did a hard reset, and it came back on like I knew it would. I made sure she could change channels, I knew it was resolved, and I also knew a 87-year-old woman didn’t know or care how it was fixed as long as it was fixed, which it was, so I didn’t bother to “summarize actions taken for resolution“.

Now I’ve got this 92% score which I KNOW I don’t deserve - I was quick, efficient, and arrived at the correct resolution following the steps laid out by engineering, unlike the previous agent. I solved this lady’s problem in 6:17 - with 1 minute being probing/verification, and a minute and a half waiting for her receiver to reset after unplugging it from the wall. I would call that efficient customer service, even though we made her repeat two pieces of information twice - Receiver CAID and Smart Card ID. Also, what really burns me is if I hadn’t have asked, they would have knocked me for not following the steps outlined in the CSCWeb, and probably for “not picking up the line of questioning appropriately”. HyperQuality is not supposed to be a Catch-22, it’s supposed to be a “you did this wrong” or “keep doing this shit, this is great” tool.

Funny thing? They tell us “well, they’ve done your job, so they know what they’re talking about”.

BS.

Now there’s a game I was good at.

Changes

Published
by
mattfast1
on February 6, 2008
in Work
. 0 Comments

Bah.

They’ve changed the goals for agents once again. Now, they’re adding all sorts of metrics into our stack ranking - AHT, Adherence, NPFs, Quality of Dispatch, QA scores among others. While this is good news for me - I do my job well - it is not good news for some of our agents who have been platinum by simply taking enough calls per hour, and have not been providing resolutions.

First Real Asshole with a Billing Problem

Published
by
mattfast1
on November 15, 2007
in Stories and Work
. 0 Comments

I got the pleasure yesterday of dealing with a very upset Italian woman who was having issues with her bill yesterday. I believe her monthly bill had gone up by $17.62, and she kept me on the phone for quite some time ranting about it. I got so confused in her bill (because she had made so many programming changes in October) that I had to get my trainer over to check it over and try to figure it out. He couldn’t even find it, and he was a platinum agent on the floor for over a year before he started training people. So he went into Dish Promo, which shows things like that a little better, and he discovered the America’s Everything Pack (basically EVERYTHING DISH OFFERS) had been added (by the automated system, as I found out when I went through the notes again), then removed 10 days later.

It took another 10 minutes on the phone to get it through this lady’s head that yes, she was being charged correctly, that extra 17.62 was for those 10 days of having America’s Everything, and that her bill would return to normal next month, while she tried to convince me that this was some Spanish agent’s fault when I knew already that it had been the automated system that upgraded her programming, and I could see notes from the day before that another agent had already advised her about the partial charges. Basically, she’s trying to call up and find someone at DISH who will just throw money at her problem, and it ain’t happening. Even if someone does adjust off the charges, it probably won’t be approved, and it doesn’t matter anyway because this lady would still have to pay that extra this month.

And of course the next call after that was a guy who was very upset about a tech that came to his home, and keeps calling to tell agents he’s gonna cancel if the tech didn’t fix it by Friday. Fortunately, it looked like I could schedule someone for Friday for him. Of course he was still angry, and bitched and moaned about it. I just told him the tech would be there on Friday, and it seemed to satisfy him. Of course DNS uses an entirely different system than we do, so they don’t get the notes on the account to find out what’s been done already to fix it.

Dominate!

Published
by
mattfast1
on November 3, 2007
in Work
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The first thing any Technical Service Representative (TSR) learns at Echostar is to dominate the call (and the customer). This message is repeated several times daily, in order to ensure it sinks into the head of everyone in the class. It is shouted by the class (if they are lucky to get my trainer, he’s awesome). However, no amount of training can help one deal with *drum roll* the first call. I took my first one Friday afternoon, and felt good about it - the only opportunity that was noticed by my mentor was the final step - educating the customer. Teaching them why that setting made a difference, how what you did fixed their problem, etcetera… that was the only thing I didn’t do. However, I handled the call well, got top marks on my first live call, and I feel good.

I think this job might work out for me. I hope so, from what I hear, the benefits of being one of the top agents are pretty sweet. A 20% bonus on my gross for the next month, plus access the Platinum lounge, sounds pretty appetizing. I’ll have to work to get there.

Echostar-ho!

Published
by
mattfast1
on October 12, 2007
in Stories and Work
. 2 Comments

I know I’ve been lazy ever since Target fired me. However, now I will be working at Echostar Communications, based in Englewood, CO at their Riverfront Call Center in Littleton, CO. The building used to be the worldwide headquarters for Echostar, and before that it was a mall, the Riverfront Festival Center. My official job title is Technical Service Representative (TSR), whose job it is to help those who call with a problem with their service, billing, or hardware.

I will be starting training on Monday, October 21, 2007, and progressing to the call center itself a few weeks after that.

Red Bastards

Published
by
mattfast1
on August 16, 2007
in Stories and Work
. 0 Comments

Target Corporation, who I have worked for since June 1, 2005, finally decided to bring that employment relationship to a close. As the exact details of my termination are confidential company property (technically, I shouldn’t even have access to that information), I cannot disclose them. However, let’s just say that the new management that has taken over in the last few months never really liked me, and they took their opportunity now, while they could.

It’s just as well. I was planning on putting in my 2 week notice today anyway.

…I’m qualified for this?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Published
by
mattfast1
on February 15, 2007
in Stupidity and Work
. 0 Comments

A more accurate title would be “I can LEGALLY do this?!?!?!?!?”

So yesterday, our ETL-Pharmacy came down to Food Avenue on her lunch break. Nathan, Andrea, and myself were all working there, and just happened to ask whether any of us would like to fill a shift for her next Friday (the 23rd). Well, we all looked at schedule book. As it turned out, Nathan was out of town at that particular time, and Andrea was already scheduled that day. I, however, had the day off.

So, now I have brand-new sparkling 10-hour shift in the Pharmacy next Friday. I just didn’t know I COULD legally work in the pharmacy, being as how I’ve never studied anything about medicine or drugs or things like that.

MTR’d!

Published
by
mattfast1
on October 9, 2006
in Stories, Stupidity and Work
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Right, so I drag my butt up from bed far too early this morning, take a quick shower, then hop in the car for another fun-filled day making the local people coffee. At least, that’s what I think. Instead, I arrive at work to find my register at Starbucks in an obvious state of distress. Apparently, the tech guy was out working on the thing last night until 12:30, and he was scheduled to come back “in the morning”. So after several calls to the Target Client Support Center, which in turn generated calls to the tech, his wife, and his boss, he shows up at 10:00.

Around that time, Sue (one of the managers here) got the bright idea of sending myself and Nathan down to T-0933 (the old Parker store, closed so a shiny new SuperTarget could open just down the street) and helping them prepare all their merchandise for transfer off the sales floor into various other stores across the country. So we went down and started boxing up a couple aisles bound for T-2023 (the Lonetree store, just down the street). When we were done with that, we started on a pallet bound for T-0064 (the Boulder store) which was actually packed yesterday, and done COMPLETELY wrong. Apparently they just couldn’t get through to the english-as-no-language people who were sent, and they packed it so it appeared to the system as only ONE carton when there was, in reality, 20. So the entire pallet had to be voided, and re-scanned. So we did that until lunch, after which we were summoned back to our store.

Quite annoying, really.

Another day, another 75 bucks to my name…

Published
by
mattfast1
on May 12, 2006
in Work
. 0 Comments

I had a bad feeling about today when I woke up.

That was the first thing I thought when I woke up. I thought, “Jeez, this day’s gonna be terrible.” Then, I looked at the clock. 7:15. Dang, that means I still have a while to kill, since I don’t go in to work until 9:30. Fast forward to 9:20, when I can’t get my car started because the battery is so dead. So, I finally get it started, get to work 10 minutes late to find a huge rush at Starbucks. About an hour later, the phone rings, and it’s Nathan on the line, calling out for his shift tonight. So, since no one else will close, I end up “volunteering” to do it, which makes my day 10 hours long.

At least I’ll be paid well for it.