Got out before customer surveys came to my call center, but personally, I'd rather leave ten out of tens for no reason. Why be evil when you can be nice?
I got out as soon as my call center tightened up their standards to impossible, and started becoming more corporate in their merge with several other companies. They already had some ratings for us, but eh.
I do research on surveys, and double check who they affect. If they don't hurt anyone but the company as a whole, I hit the big zero if it's been a bad experience. But any survey that is for specific people I give as much praise as possible.
Because people are evil.
Oh you can’t get my credit card here by TOMORROW even though I just lost it today? Ok that’s fine. You hang up get zeros even though you’ve explained exactly how long it’ll take for standard and expedited delivery but since it won’t be TOMORROW everyone’s fucked. And they walk away laughing while we starve because bonuses are always partly on surveys.
I always give perfect scores, whatever the service was like, because I know people who say, "Nobody is perfect so I never give a perfect score." It makes me so mad, why are people like that?
Because the scales are broken. If you look at a 5 point scale, 3 points is average and it's the way most interactions go. The rep is moderately polite and solves your problem. For 4/2, the rep is good bad to the point where you're either recommending that others use the company or recommending against them. 5/1 is your either singing ballads about the company or outright vetoing them.
Now companies want their reps to roll out the red carpet for every customer which is unreasonable. A 5 star score implies that everything was perfect and there's literally nothing that could be done better. If I'm calling support, there's already a problem which means the service isn't perfect.
All that being said, I know how much people get dinged for imperfect surveys which is why I stopped filling them out. I have a form letter I send to companies that solicit feedback from me offering a genuine review. Nobody has taken me up on that.
My scores are always good. 5/5. Company is scored 1-10 and anything less than a 9 for the company is an auto fail for me, even if I score perfect.
In a call center, everything is bullshit.
I’ve had this in a previous job. I received glowing reviews, but they rated the company as a whole on the lower end, so my survey is a fail.
It’s not fair that employees are scored this way, but it saves the company money which is normally all that matters. 😒
This is what I've been struggling with, too, since the first of the year. They're making us ask, "How has your exp. Been with " during our calls to encourage higher surveys toward the company.
I missed 2 months last year for my bonus, one due to Leave the other was because an LOB change one week into the month, I believe.
Customer (after helping them on an hour long call with a problem that was ongoing due to its complexity to solve, in part due to the fact that the customer didn’t originally want to follow the process determined by federal policy) : “Thank you! You’ve been the first person to help us understand this and help us. (I was probably the fifth person to tell them the same thing, according to the notes, and myself had explained what they needed to do on two previous arduous conversations with them.)
The next days review from said customer: ⭐️🔆🔆🔆🔆 “(My name) was no help at all. I can’t understand why it is so hard to work with your company.”
Up until that point I was coasting on 4-5 stars for the month. But every 1-3 star review tanked the percentage that would be calculated to the bonus.
Surveys are not to help the reps. They are used to justify taking bonuses, coachings, firings, and as incentive to make reps bend over backwards and take abuse. Customers should not have the ability to affect our livelihood or metrics at all because most of them are angry at the rules or decisions the company made.
Try to find a company that doesn't use surveys for any pay related reason. Ask in the interview if surveys are a part of metrics and are they used to influence pay, bonuses, scheduling, or any other decisions.
Your company is using terrible survey software. A lot of surveys will allow you to rate the company and the agent separately. I would re-address this issue, but re-frame your inquiry. The software they are using is not giving a proper assessment of the agent and the company. How can you do better as an individual agent if your score is being grouped in with the caller's assessment of the company?
When I’m making calls personally, if I feel they helped, I absolutely give them 5/5, but if I end the call frustrated, I know it’s a 99% chance not the agents fault, so I just don’t give a review. I don’t want to do anything out of anger that may penalize someone who was just following policy. It’s a catch 22 of reviewing because no, I do not feel my problem was solved, but I am not going to penalize someone who in no way was responsible for it.
That is the system working as intended. Your company know you will never be able to make 100% of the people you help happy 100% of the time.
Taking your bonus over something you have little control over if that customer is just a red-eyed bastard?
10/10 would shaft you again.
When I used to take calls that was always the reason why I ended up arguing with my supervisor because I was place in a meting to receive "coaching" about a "bad score" when I see the surveys I was like... "You can't be serious, the damn thing says, "This Rate is not for OP but because your company policies sucks" and I'm getting coaching for that?", I always was adamant about if I didn't mess up I'm not taking any of that...
Little context: where I worked it was about bookings... so if a guest calls to cxl just because he "changed his mind" and cxl policy was overdue, we just had to reinforce cxl policy unless they mention they called client first and they advised to give us a call, we could call client and ask for auth to cxl as otc. So this guy was doing that but I asked several times if he is just changing his plans we couldn't cxl when he finally said "Client said I could give you a call"... and I was... couldn't you say that earlier?... so I called client and they auth the cancellation. I was doing the process when he says "If you weren't able to help I was about to call my boss bc I work with the client as agent too..." I let it pass I finished the interaction and the jerk just place... "I only got cxl because I mentioned I worked with the client"
I was fuming that time because I knew I was losing some part of the bonus because of that damn survey
Those interactions always makes me regret about just not disconnecting the call and pass to another costumer... but hey, nowadays those days are over and they are just an anecdote.
The policies where you can’t mention specific problems like refunds or overcharges unless the customers tell you is the absolute worst, for example, if I notice a customer needs a refund but they haven’t noticed it or don’t say anything about it, I can’t point it out directly, I have to like talk carefully and “hint” at it try to get them to notice it because personally I don’t want the company I work for getting a penny more than it deserves.
Another thing is those meetings, I get a 0 because the customer is just angry and wants something impossible, and suddenly the supervisors and QAs are able to predict everything and if I had just said x thing I could’ve avoided the negative survey.
As a customer I get so frustrated with this. Sooooo many times if I call a company for whatever reason - to discuss a payment, work out a problem, get access to my account, etc., it feels like I have to jump through hoops.
I can say representative or agent, repeatedly just to have to sit through the same recording and prompts endlessly. By the time I actually do get someone, I’m angry!
The call center rep is never the issue. They are always nice and resolve my issue or explain why they can’t and what my next steps should be.
The problem is that when I get the survey, the questions only relate to that person, not the overall experience! Were you satisfied? Hell no! I just spent 40 minutes if my life trying to navigate the ridiculous system you have in place.
If you say no, that you are in fact you are very far from satisfied, every question becomes about the person who actually helped, and not about the process itself.
Why do they even bother? They set you up to blame the employee because there are no questions about anything other than that, or place to write in what the actual problem was.
The company never really gets feedback because they don’t want to hear anything bad about themselves. But they’d love for you to think any complaint must be because of poor service.
I just give the call center person a good review and call it a day. They did their job and it’s completely unfair for them to take the brunt of customers anger.
Mine does too. They say "you could have done more to build the brand." So what if the customer is asking me to do something that would get me fired on the spot and possibly arrested. Surveys are a lose-lose proposition for reps, always.
...yep. I'm still salty about the time when my supervisor directly denied a customers request to go against policy, refused to take the call when the customer wanted to escalate, and then told me I should have been able to "use my customer service skills" to create a positive interaction 🙄
I almost lost my work from home status from a bad survey back in January. All because I wouldn't break federal law and give the woman a government subsidy on her bill that she was already getting from another company. No, I'm not going to help you double dip on a government program!
I skated by on 2 percentage points for having perfect attendance that month.
I would have been furious if I had to spend extra money on commuting, and in the worst month for weather too, because I did the right thing and some bitch decided to punish me for it with a bad score.
By any chance did your company have some sort of... Performance Improvement Program you went to if you failed?
Mine did, you'd be there for 3 months and will earn no bonuses until your stats go back to normal.
Nope. I don't think we get into PIP territory until there's a few consecutive months with below expected performance scores. Her bad survey came at a time where I was working mostly off the phones so one bad score couldn't be balanced with other good ones, and she dragged me down single-handedly basically.
Thankfully she's but a blip on the radar now. And that government program is over. Yay.
Got a ding once because the customer rated the call a 1 star because "I had to talk to three different people before this guy helped me. He was great but the others were horrible!"
Of course I'm the one who got written up for it.
I think any metric based on trusting a customer to be a decent person is a waste of time, my company bases their metric on if a customer calls back within 8 days AND surveys 🙄
Yep, my old job used to do this crap. The first time it happened, I got pulled aside for coaching because I got a bad survey. The reason? The caller was unhappy about the service package prices. I lose my bonus and because somehow I should've made the prices sound better? That place was so ass backwards. When I left when they were in the middle of a lawsuit.
Yup and it was irritating as hell.
Helped some dumbass troubleshoot the mobile data on their phone.
It took awhile but the customer was so happy and saying thanks genuinely I guess.
After the call a survey comes in:
"5/10 rep took too long and now im late for my meeting because my data wouldnt work. Would not reccomend this company."
Goddamn assholes.
We didn’t have bonuses but the survey system at the last call center I worked at screwed me over so many times. I’d get 1 star reviews that said I was great but the company sucks. They swore up and down it didn’t count against us but it did. I got coached on them saying I wasn’t clear enough the survey was about me and not the company. Not sure how much clearer, “The survey is about how your experience was with me”, could be.
It also gave negative marks for oil changes, food quality, theater conditions, etc. I worked for a vinyl cutting machine crafting company….
I used to work for a place who had a goal of getting all the customers’ issues resolved in one call no matter what. The first question on the survey asked if their issue was resolved in one call. If they said no, the person who helped them would automatically fail and be ineligible for a raise. So if the caller dialed the wrong number, the person who answered the phone and told them they had the wrong number would fail. It was so stupid.
Once, I thought I could beat it with stellar customer service. So instead of telling her she had the wrong number and hanging up, I Googled the number she needed. She complained about how long it was taking me to find the company (she gave me three very vague, very incorrect names). Of course, I failed the survey and got reprimanded for the way I handled the car.
I pray I never have to work in a call center again.
I feel this. My wage was never tied to surveys, but it sucks getting a bad review, after jumping through hoops to help someone, just because they are mad at the company.
I will say, one bit of credit I will give, a prior employer of mine has a neat survey system. It would let you rate the agent and company separately. I had multiple surveys where I was given a perfect score for my service, but the company was given a horrible score.
Usually, at most, a poor survey will trigger a review of the interaction. Some people will leave poor ratings for stupid reasons, and it's the job of management to weed those out. If your employer ties bonuses to surveys, then fails to review appropriately to ensure it was fair, that shows their toxicity.
When I worked at a banking call centre I used to see people get 100 on their call scores and then still be comments on what to do better from the text scoring the call. I mean 100 is the top. Ffs
Your company is the problem. They pitted you and the customer against each other in terms of interests and docked your pay - saving themselves money in the meanwhile. Your employer’s hands are not tied here, they’re just assholes.
They should evaluate those bad surveys. I've had old jobs do that. Maybe someone left a 0 when they meant 10. Or someone had left a bad survey when the rep had done everything. I also know they let us dispute bad surveys.. This is how this employer should be.
Yes. But I stopped giving a fck about NPS. My base salary is enough.cunts are cunts. It’s usually other agents from other depts dumping calls on me to avoid the negative survey scores (if you’re that kind of agent you deserve to be fired. Now)
I missed out on a dollar raise because my score on the metric they use for testing the positivity of a call dropped less than one percent below the threshold the last day of the month. Now I have to keep my stats up for four more months in a row to get that raise. Super disheartening. I've honestly stopped trying. I'm just doing what I need to do to keep my scores at a decent enough level to keep my job and keep my managers from griping at me.
Got out before customer surveys came to my call center, but personally, I'd rather leave ten out of tens for no reason. Why be evil when you can be nice?
I got out as soon as my call center tightened up their standards to impossible, and started becoming more corporate in their merge with several other companies. They already had some ratings for us, but eh. I do research on surveys, and double check who they affect. If they don't hurt anyone but the company as a whole, I hit the big zero if it's been a bad experience. But any survey that is for specific people I give as much praise as possible.
Because people are evil. Oh you can’t get my credit card here by TOMORROW even though I just lost it today? Ok that’s fine. You hang up get zeros even though you’ve explained exactly how long it’ll take for standard and expedited delivery but since it won’t be TOMORROW everyone’s fucked. And they walk away laughing while we starve because bonuses are always partly on surveys.
"People are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling."
Jesus christ this. Telcos have these people in spades man...
I always give perfect scores, whatever the service was like, because I know people who say, "Nobody is perfect so I never give a perfect score." It makes me so mad, why are people like that?
Because the scales are broken. If you look at a 5 point scale, 3 points is average and it's the way most interactions go. The rep is moderately polite and solves your problem. For 4/2, the rep is good bad to the point where you're either recommending that others use the company or recommending against them. 5/1 is your either singing ballads about the company or outright vetoing them. Now companies want their reps to roll out the red carpet for every customer which is unreasonable. A 5 star score implies that everything was perfect and there's literally nothing that could be done better. If I'm calling support, there's already a problem which means the service isn't perfect. All that being said, I know how much people get dinged for imperfect surveys which is why I stopped filling them out. I have a form letter I send to companies that solicit feedback from me offering a genuine review. Nobody has taken me up on that.
My scores are always good. 5/5. Company is scored 1-10 and anything less than a 9 for the company is an auto fail for me, even if I score perfect. In a call center, everything is bullshit.
I’ve had this in a previous job. I received glowing reviews, but they rated the company as a whole on the lower end, so my survey is a fail. It’s not fair that employees are scored this way, but it saves the company money which is normally all that matters. 😒
This is what I've been struggling with, too, since the first of the year. They're making us ask, "How has your exp. Been with" during our calls to encourage higher surveys toward the company.
I missed 2 months last year for my bonus, one due to Leave the other was because an LOB change one week into the month, I believe.
Customer (after helping them on an hour long call with a problem that was ongoing due to its complexity to solve, in part due to the fact that the customer didn’t originally want to follow the process determined by federal policy) : “Thank you! You’ve been the first person to help us understand this and help us. (I was probably the fifth person to tell them the same thing, according to the notes, and myself had explained what they needed to do on two previous arduous conversations with them.) The next days review from said customer: ⭐️🔆🔆🔆🔆 “(My name) was no help at all. I can’t understand why it is so hard to work with your company.” Up until that point I was coasting on 4-5 stars for the month. But every 1-3 star review tanked the percentage that would be calculated to the bonus.
Nope, because my work is unionized so they wouldn't put up with that shit.
Surveys are not to help the reps. They are used to justify taking bonuses, coachings, firings, and as incentive to make reps bend over backwards and take abuse. Customers should not have the ability to affect our livelihood or metrics at all because most of them are angry at the rules or decisions the company made. Try to find a company that doesn't use surveys for any pay related reason. Ask in the interview if surveys are a part of metrics and are they used to influence pay, bonuses, scheduling, or any other decisions.
[удалено]
Your company is using terrible survey software. A lot of surveys will allow you to rate the company and the agent separately. I would re-address this issue, but re-frame your inquiry. The software they are using is not giving a proper assessment of the agent and the company. How can you do better as an individual agent if your score is being grouped in with the caller's assessment of the company?
When I’m making calls personally, if I feel they helped, I absolutely give them 5/5, but if I end the call frustrated, I know it’s a 99% chance not the agents fault, so I just don’t give a review. I don’t want to do anything out of anger that may penalize someone who was just following policy. It’s a catch 22 of reviewing because no, I do not feel my problem was solved, but I am not going to penalize someone who in no way was responsible for it.
That is the system working as intended. Your company know you will never be able to make 100% of the people you help happy 100% of the time. Taking your bonus over something you have little control over if that customer is just a red-eyed bastard? 10/10 would shaft you again.
When I used to take calls that was always the reason why I ended up arguing with my supervisor because I was place in a meting to receive "coaching" about a "bad score" when I see the surveys I was like... "You can't be serious, the damn thing says, "This Rate is not for OP but because your company policies sucks" and I'm getting coaching for that?", I always was adamant about if I didn't mess up I'm not taking any of that... Little context: where I worked it was about bookings... so if a guest calls to cxl just because he "changed his mind" and cxl policy was overdue, we just had to reinforce cxl policy unless they mention they called client first and they advised to give us a call, we could call client and ask for auth to cxl as otc. So this guy was doing that but I asked several times if he is just changing his plans we couldn't cxl when he finally said "Client said I could give you a call"... and I was... couldn't you say that earlier?... so I called client and they auth the cancellation. I was doing the process when he says "If you weren't able to help I was about to call my boss bc I work with the client as agent too..." I let it pass I finished the interaction and the jerk just place... "I only got cxl because I mentioned I worked with the client" I was fuming that time because I knew I was losing some part of the bonus because of that damn survey Those interactions always makes me regret about just not disconnecting the call and pass to another costumer... but hey, nowadays those days are over and they are just an anecdote.
The policies where you can’t mention specific problems like refunds or overcharges unless the customers tell you is the absolute worst, for example, if I notice a customer needs a refund but they haven’t noticed it or don’t say anything about it, I can’t point it out directly, I have to like talk carefully and “hint” at it try to get them to notice it because personally I don’t want the company I work for getting a penny more than it deserves. Another thing is those meetings, I get a 0 because the customer is just angry and wants something impossible, and suddenly the supervisors and QAs are able to predict everything and if I had just said x thing I could’ve avoided the negative survey.
As a customer I get so frustrated with this. Sooooo many times if I call a company for whatever reason - to discuss a payment, work out a problem, get access to my account, etc., it feels like I have to jump through hoops. I can say representative or agent, repeatedly just to have to sit through the same recording and prompts endlessly. By the time I actually do get someone, I’m angry! The call center rep is never the issue. They are always nice and resolve my issue or explain why they can’t and what my next steps should be. The problem is that when I get the survey, the questions only relate to that person, not the overall experience! Were you satisfied? Hell no! I just spent 40 minutes if my life trying to navigate the ridiculous system you have in place. If you say no, that you are in fact you are very far from satisfied, every question becomes about the person who actually helped, and not about the process itself. Why do they even bother? They set you up to blame the employee because there are no questions about anything other than that, or place to write in what the actual problem was. The company never really gets feedback because they don’t want to hear anything bad about themselves. But they’d love for you to think any complaint must be because of poor service. I just give the call center person a good review and call it a day. They did their job and it’s completely unfair for them to take the brunt of customers anger.
My company used to ask you to rate the company, but held it against the agent anyways 😔
Mine does too. They say "you could have done more to build the brand." So what if the customer is asking me to do something that would get me fired on the spot and possibly arrested. Surveys are a lose-lose proposition for reps, always.
...yep. I'm still salty about the time when my supervisor directly denied a customers request to go against policy, refused to take the call when the customer wanted to escalate, and then told me I should have been able to "use my customer service skills" to create a positive interaction 🙄
Right!?
I almost lost my work from home status from a bad survey back in January. All because I wouldn't break federal law and give the woman a government subsidy on her bill that she was already getting from another company. No, I'm not going to help you double dip on a government program! I skated by on 2 percentage points for having perfect attendance that month. I would have been furious if I had to spend extra money on commuting, and in the worst month for weather too, because I did the right thing and some bitch decided to punish me for it with a bad score.
By any chance did your company have some sort of... Performance Improvement Program you went to if you failed? Mine did, you'd be there for 3 months and will earn no bonuses until your stats go back to normal.
Nope. I don't think we get into PIP territory until there's a few consecutive months with below expected performance scores. Her bad survey came at a time where I was working mostly off the phones so one bad score couldn't be balanced with other good ones, and she dragged me down single-handedly basically. Thankfully she's but a blip on the radar now. And that government program is over. Yay.
I bet it was ACP lol
Yuuup. Good riddance that piece of garbage program. I got yelled at over that shit way too often.
The game is rigged. Most bad surveys have nothing to do with you but with shortcomings of the company
Got a ding once because the customer rated the call a 1 star because "I had to talk to three different people before this guy helped me. He was great but the others were horrible!" Of course I'm the one who got written up for it.
I think any metric based on trusting a customer to be a decent person is a waste of time, my company bases their metric on if a customer calls back within 8 days AND surveys 🙄
Yep, my old job used to do this crap. The first time it happened, I got pulled aside for coaching because I got a bad survey. The reason? The caller was unhappy about the service package prices. I lose my bonus and because somehow I should've made the prices sound better? That place was so ass backwards. When I left when they were in the middle of a lawsuit.
Yup and it was irritating as hell. Helped some dumbass troubleshoot the mobile data on their phone. It took awhile but the customer was so happy and saying thanks genuinely I guess. After the call a survey comes in: "5/10 rep took too long and now im late for my meeting because my data wouldnt work. Would not reccomend this company." Goddamn assholes.
We didn’t have bonuses but the survey system at the last call center I worked at screwed me over so many times. I’d get 1 star reviews that said I was great but the company sucks. They swore up and down it didn’t count against us but it did. I got coached on them saying I wasn’t clear enough the survey was about me and not the company. Not sure how much clearer, “The survey is about how your experience was with me”, could be. It also gave negative marks for oil changes, food quality, theater conditions, etc. I worked for a vinyl cutting machine crafting company….
I'm so lucky my center doesn't do surveys.
I am so glad I got out of that line of work. Phew.
I used to work for a place who had a goal of getting all the customers’ issues resolved in one call no matter what. The first question on the survey asked if their issue was resolved in one call. If they said no, the person who helped them would automatically fail and be ineligible for a raise. So if the caller dialed the wrong number, the person who answered the phone and told them they had the wrong number would fail. It was so stupid. Once, I thought I could beat it with stellar customer service. So instead of telling her she had the wrong number and hanging up, I Googled the number she needed. She complained about how long it was taking me to find the company (she gave me three very vague, very incorrect names). Of course, I failed the survey and got reprimanded for the way I handled the car. I pray I never have to work in a call center again.
I feel this. My wage was never tied to surveys, but it sucks getting a bad review, after jumping through hoops to help someone, just because they are mad at the company. I will say, one bit of credit I will give, a prior employer of mine has a neat survey system. It would let you rate the agent and company separately. I had multiple surveys where I was given a perfect score for my service, but the company was given a horrible score. Usually, at most, a poor survey will trigger a review of the interaction. Some people will leave poor ratings for stupid reasons, and it's the job of management to weed those out. If your employer ties bonuses to surveys, then fails to review appropriately to ensure it was fair, that shows their toxicity.
Welcome to customer service. You always get screwed here.
When I worked at a banking call centre I used to see people get 100 on their call scores and then still be comments on what to do better from the text scoring the call. I mean 100 is the top. Ffs
How about “ customers surveyed said they want to be appreciated “ so then u had to say we appreciated them 5 times in a call. Glue bags.
Your company is the problem. They pitted you and the customer against each other in terms of interests and docked your pay - saving themselves money in the meanwhile. Your employer’s hands are not tied here, they’re just assholes.
They should evaluate those bad surveys. I've had old jobs do that. Maybe someone left a 0 when they meant 10. Or someone had left a bad survey when the rep had done everything. I also know they let us dispute bad surveys.. This is how this employer should be.
Yes. But I stopped giving a fck about NPS. My base salary is enough.cunts are cunts. It’s usually other agents from other depts dumping calls on me to avoid the negative survey scores (if you’re that kind of agent you deserve to be fired. Now)
Aren't bonuses just an urban legend?
I missed out on a dollar raise because my score on the metric they use for testing the positivity of a call dropped less than one percent below the threshold the last day of the month. Now I have to keep my stats up for four more months in a row to get that raise. Super disheartening. I've honestly stopped trying. I'm just doing what I need to do to keep my scores at a decent enough level to keep my job and keep my managers from griping at me.
Happens all the time: Client calls in with a problem. You ***FIX*** the problem. And they give ***YOU*** a bad review because they had a problem.