We are not in high school any more

I work in a call center in my town. I am customer service representative/sales professional. We are contracted with a local electronics retailer. So, basically, I answer the phone answer the phone and answer any questions the customer has and the company would like for us to make sales. Sometimes that is possible but not all the time. They would like for us to have a 15% close rate. That would 15 sales out of 100 calls. Which thankfully we do not normally get 100 calls a day. It is more around less than 50, especially now that the Christmas season is over. We sign into a phone system and when we go on broke we have what is called an AUX code we go into for breaks, lunches and meetings. The phone is also set up in a way that when you get off of a call your phone goes into ACW-after call work- to give you time to finish up notes from the last call.

I bet you’re wondering “How is this like High School?” Well let me tell you. The idea of the job is you take the calls, help the customer, notate the account about what you did and then “auto in” to take the next call. Which the more calls you take the more chance you have to make more sales. More sales, higher close rater. Higher close rate, the more of a chance you have to make a bonus for that month. Well, I have several people around me that will sit in ACW and gossip with people around them or surf the internet (which is not allowed, unless it is work related). Or they will go into a meeting AUX and walk around. What irritates me is I am sitting there taking back to back for an hour and everyone around me is goofing off. Granted I have a higher chance of making more sales and getting bonus but it is hard to stay on track when everyone around is being loud. I have, on several, occasions taken it upon myself to tell people to do their job, auto in and take calls. But then I have to deal with the ridiculing because I am “gripping”. I have also gone to my supervisor with this problem and I still haven’t seen any change. I am to the point now where I am like I will do my job to the best of my ability and TRY to block them out. I would love to see these “adults” in any other work environment where they don’t have the AUX codes to go into to blow off their responsibility. Some of them wouldn’t make it. They would either be fired or quit because they wouldn’t be able to take a break every 30 minutes, they would actually have to work.

The management team doesn’t help a lot either. Like I said I have told my supervisor and her supervisor and nothing is changing. I cannot afford to quit my job and there really isn’t a whole lot of options out there…hence the reason I am going back to school.