r/callcentres

I need to vent, it’s 2026 and you own a smart phone and when you say out loud I’m not technical enough to work my phone when I do walkthrough on how to access their mobile app and they are completely dumbfounded.

I’m sorry but how is it you don’t know how to use your phone when we walk around with our phones everyday. It’s usually the boomer generation that says this line but always usually say I’ve worked in software blah blah.

I’m sorry but you are technical enough to use your mobile device. But don’t act like you can’t use it because you can’t use problem solving skills.

Thanks for killing my AHT because you can’t work anything

So I started my job in sales back in August. I started out really enjoying it, however, in the last few months I have been seriously struggling. I suffer with depression and anxiety anyway, but in the past month, my anxiety has ramped up something chronic. It's at the point now where I can't take a call. The anxiety is about talking to customers. Has anyone had this and if so, how did u get through it?

I just clocked out. Mind you, my shift ended 52 minutes ago. Because of course, a call rolled in exactly one minute before I was supposed to log off, and per company policy, we aren't allowed to pass them along. You get what you get.

And what I got was a "business professional" who was having trouble processing a disbursement payment we sent them.

For context, I work for a payment processor. The disbursement they received functions essentially like a non-reloadable gift card. They were trying to run it through QuickBooks, and our bank was rejecting it. Why? Because QB was automatically trying to save the card for recurring transactions, which this payment type explicitly does not allow.

The caller was already at a level 10 because apparently another agent had failed to call them back earlier. Strike one against me, obviously. I power through the verification process while she’s ranting and raving about how much my company sucks, how this is entirely our problem, and how incompetent everyone is. At one point, I politely offered, "Would you like me to try and get that specific agent on the line for you? I’d be more than happy to check."
Cue another massive tangent. Zero answer to my actual question.

I pull myself back into the line of fire and offer to assist with the actual transaction. I ask her to try running the card again so I can see what's happening. Instead, she launches into a history lesson of everything she’s tried in the past, proudly capping it off with, "Well, I spoke with a QuickBooks 'EXPERT' for four hours trying to resolve this! QuickBooks says YOUR bank is rejecting the payment!"

I agreed with her. "Yes, our bank is rejecting it, because QuickBooks is trying to save the payment method as a recurring card, which it cannot do."
I offer an alternative: "Would you like us to issue a different payment method? We can absolutely do that."

"NO! Because that is going to affect my payroll which is in two days! I just want a new card!"
"Perfect, I'd be more than happy to issue a new card for you. Let me just explain the timeline for that process—"

Which, naturally, sent her into another spiral of absolute frustration.

Finally, I had to rein her back in before I spent the rest of my night with this woman. I asked her if she had actually tried running the card when I first asked. Before she could launch into another monologue, I cut in: "Please attempt to run the card right now, and let's look together to see if the system is still trying to save this payment method."
She huffs, opens the screen, and starts filling it out. And then, like absolute magic, mid-sentence while blaming my company, blaming our tech, and swearing up and down that neither she nor QuickBooks could ever do anything wrong... she stops.

She found the checkbox. The checkbox where QuickBooks was, in fact, trying to save the payment method.

But the universe wasn't done with her yet.
In her rushed, embarrassed scramble to finally run the card correctly, she failed to type in the full, required security information to process it completely. She jammed it through anyway.
The system flagged it. And the card locked down tightly for security purposes... until the 30th.
Remember that payroll she said was due in two days? Yeah.

I spent nearly an hour past my shift being cursed out and degraded, only to watch a "business professional" completely locked herself out of her own funds due to her own sheer impatience and incompetence.

And that, my friends, is what I call beautiful, unadulterated karma.

sup yall lmao so i was fired monday 😂 less than a month after i returned from short term disability.

they said the reason was “job abandonment” because they couldn’t reach me at the contact info they had on file.

except… i literally communicated with the leave manager that same day, and she responded.

today i got an email from operations asking to schedule a meeting to discuss my concerns about the termination and possible reinstatement lol. i’m honestly unsure about going back at this point and leaning heavily toward not returning.

i honestly don’t even know how to feel. this place is a mess. when i came back, my account was disabled and i was told to call IT to fix it. i called dozens of times and kept getting different answers every time. it finally got fixed after about two weeks.

i’ve already applied for unemployment and honestly i’m kind of relieved to not be working there anymore. this job has been hell and is the main reason i ended up on disability in the first place.

right now my plan is to stay on unemployment while i look for something else or go back to school to finish my degree, maybe do a work study. i don’t want to jump into another situation where i’m just taking whatever comes my way.

Me: Will this be for pick up or delivery?

Customer: Delivery

M: May I have the address?

C: HUH?

>Automatically, I need to know where to send your damn food dumb dumb!!

*Or*

M: I'm ready for your credit card number.

C: Are you ready for the number?

M: 🙄 Yes

C: X X X X....

M: OK, and the expiration date?

C: HUH?

>Any time you give ANYONE your credit card number, you HAVE to give the the freaking expiration date you nitwit!!!

This was my whole shift... ALL... NIGHT.... LONG....

I had a cousin who was losing her hearing for years and no one knew it. She got good at reading lips and anticipating conversation.

Anyone else lose their mind when someone calls in already pissed off saying they have been spending 2 hours trying to figure out the website..

so you offer to walk them through and they start saying:

“Do I click continue?”“Do I press submit?” “Where do I go from here?”
“It won’t let me” ( WHO IS “IT”???”)
“It’s not letting me” ( is “IT” a conscious being or an energy??)

Meanwhile the screen has ONE giant button in the middle that literally says CONTINUE ??!????

Then somehow the entire situation becomes taken out on me and snarky remarks of “Wow this website is NOT user friendly.”

Like be so serious right now. The website has arrows, instructions, highlighted buttons, confirmation popups, and is basically one step away from physically grabbing the mouse for you??

And then the best part is the awkward silence and “oh” when they realize it was actually so easy and you just have to read and not tunnel in on the center of the screen.

Sorry I guess customer service is not for me.

Everything I’ve applied is outbound sales calls and unfortunately I cannot mentally handle it. How are you all finding wfh inbound contact centers :(

My trainer was actually nice, but they hid a lot from my training class. First week of calls felt like fire baptism.

I'd probably say something like "you never told me i would be running a daycare for adults"

I got a call yesterday where i said the company name and my name, followed by asking for the callers name. The caller ignores my request and asked to speak to female he last spoke to. I ask for his name again, more firmly and he repeats himself! He then ask if I am a female and I replied “clearly not” he said something about not being able to see me, so he doesn’t know and hangs up🤡

Swear I didn’t know so many people were technically illiterate until I started doing this job. What’s funny is people will ask me “it must be a bunch of old people right ?” Shockingly NO. A lot of people from all generations lack common sense !

Been in the job since march, but we had 7 weeks of “training” so I’ve not been taking calls for too long. I think today I’m halfway through my fifth week.

Calls for the most part are fine, I basically have customers calling in looking for something and I put their details in my computer and say whether they get it or not (don’t wanna go into too much info about what I actually do in case I get in trouble)

I’ve had a few sad calls, they were tough but I take a minute after the calls to collect myself.
My team is nice, I’m pretty friendly with other people in the office. I joked with them that I’d not had an angry customer yet, but maybe I’d find it entertaining at least.

Today I got a customer transferred from another department, their details didn’t transfer properly so I had to go through security again. That annoyed her.
The dude who sent her over told me she needed something she didn’t. I started to ask her about it, that annoyed her.
She asked me a question about something I had no knowledge of that wasn’t really my department, I gave her all the info I had but called another department to check. We couldn’t really do anything for her. That annoyed her.

She then just let out all her frustrations at me, I apologised. That annoyed her.

She then said thanks for nothing and hung up, idk why it annoyed me so much but it did.

Took my “idle time” after the call and went outside for a bit.

Idk, I’ve some personal things going on atm so maybe that’s also impacting me, but like I’m just frustrated at the guy who transferred her over and how I felt he pawned her off on me, about the lack of information about most of what we do in the training, and just the amount of things I have to do in a few minutes between calls

Hello!

Does anyone have any good lines or scripting for people complaining about accents from other agents in on the same team as me. I had a call yesterday that still bothers me. We are a Canadian call centre (work from home). Canada is very multicultural…I need some lines to call out the racism and not get fired.

I don’t think all who comment on accents are racist but this guy was….thanks for the help!

Hello, is it possible to be offboarded after the background check at CHIP?

I’m currently worried about my employment status with my previous company. I filed for immediate resignation based on my TL’s suggestion, and during our discussion, I was assured that I could proceed with submitting an immediate resignation letter. However, HR later informed me that the immediate resignation was not approved. They said they will tagged me as AWOL.

I already declared my previous company during the interview process, but I’m concerned that the information from the background check might not fully match what I shared during the interview because of the resignation issue.

Would this situation possibly affect my employment or lead to offboarding?

I hate supervisor that’s never want to take calls, if a caller is asking to speak with a supervisor just do your job and take the call they are always trying to avoid it “ did you do this?” or “ did you try this ?”

Just had a boomer today tell me how I'm trying way too hard to get my way because I work outbound sales, I can tell most of these ppl have never worked a hard day in their lives, jobs require u do to things you don't want to do but you need to, I have to work for a living, I don't get to just sit in my 2 homes that were handed down to me and live off mommy and daddy's inheritance

As a chat admin I don't have to take as much pressure and anger from customers like I used to do as a call center agent, but the chat volume is insane every day that I can barely get out of the chair just to go to the toilet. Plus this agent who just joined a week after me keeps asking this and that without trying to look at the KB (knowledge base) first gets me fucking overstimulated. Our team has everything prepared from written patterns to explanations to each case category and we're allowed to use AI but she keeps asking me how to reply, arranging every. single. word. She doesn't even try to try anything herself that sometimes I have to take her over her computer and look for her. We work here for a month now, people can be unbeliable lazy

Seems like I always have everything to complain about huh

that's it. i have moved from calls to sales chat, and whew i am so much happier!! but customers are still customers LMAOO.
if i say
"can you confirm you 1)name 2) address and 3) account pin"
why only provide 1/3 of the pieces of information oh my god. i shouldn't have to ask for the same information in 6 different ways to get it out of someone 😭 like huh??? i even numbered it??? how do you miss that!!!!
wild

Sometimes I feel tempted to reach out to our new recruits and tell them "these next few months are going to hurt", "don't believe the corporate slop", "the talks about being supported are nonsense".

But for obvious reasons, I don't. We also need more people, so it would be counterintuitive.

The funniest is when the recruits quit on the first few days/barely make it to the last week of training.

Also the week/month after new recruits start taking calls, can be very testing. The trainers never drill them properly on what they actual experience will be like and they'll be learning on the fly like my training partners and I did. There will be a lot of mistakes and customers coming for our throats.

The trainers hide a lot from the new recruits because if they truly showed even what half of the experience would be like, there would be no one to train.

It's a weird feeling seeing the trainees and just thinking "if only they knew"

How many calls do you receive per day?

Whats the most calls you ever received in one day?

And do you do inbound or outbound calls?

Are you required to tell callers to take a survey?

Assuming everyone’s shift is 8 hours if not please say how long

Have you ever worked as an OP in this industry? Have you been pushed into selling? Any tips on starting? I should start at 1. June but lowkey stressing about what to expect.