Why I Will Never Make A Good Call Center Agent

So, it’s easy to be a call center employee? Any half-baked moron with a

clipped accent, first grade typing skills and zero ambition could become one–at

least, that’s what I was told. Often, I thought so too but was not sure. I

decided to find out by stepping over to the other side of the fence–just for

sometime–from the hack to the call center employee wannabe. That took me to

the offices of MeritTrac–a Bangalore-based company that tests and screens call

center consultants.

The first thing I saw on entering the lobby of their office was a

pin-drop-silent crowd of about 10 people in their mid and late 20s. As many

journalists in the room and it would have sounded like a fish market, I thought

wryly.

After some time, the heavy stillness and the inertia of the situation got to

me. I got up and behaved like a true scribe–passed my visiting card to a peon

and requested a meeting with Mohan Kannegal, the director for technology and

content at MeritTrac, and a co-founder. Thirty year old Kannegal is a graduate

from the SP Jain Institute of Management. After mutual exchange of pleasantries

and shoptalk, I got to the point.

"Look, I have an unusual request. I would like to take the test you

offer to prospective call center employees. Is that okay by you?" I asked.

"Sure! Just give me a couple of minutes to set things up." With that

he left.

Old Horrors



I was taken to the test floor–a brightly-lit room with a dozen PCs

attached to headsets and mouthpieces –a miniature call center floor. The gang

in the lobby had, by then, graduated from the lobby to the test floor. But

silence still prevailed. Mohan then gave a quick run-up of the six tests I had

to clear to become an ideal call center employee.

The first three tests would come without a break–verbal ability, numerical

ability and ITeS mental ability. I had always prided myself on my sang froid—the

unusual ability to maintain coolness in trying circumstances. Bit of a

stiff-upper-lip Brit I thought I was. But the mention of my schooldays’

nemesis–‘numerical ability’ or maths as I used to know it–left me with

sweaty palms and a fear of the unknown. I loudly questioned the need for

mathematical ability for chaps who would spend the next year or so talking into

phones and typing e-mails for client’s seven seas away.

But Mohan dismissed it. "You know, people handling BPO, especially

financial BPO would need some of knowledge of maths. Anyhow, don’t worry–its

just class 10th level stuff like percentages, fractions etc," he quipped.

That was precisely my problem. Class 10th was the last time I had done

mathematics and that was a good decade ago. With that Mohan left me at the mercy

of my guide–Shalini, petite 20 something woman with a clipped

"hello" and a very effusive smile- she seemed the very epitome of

customer care and patience.

Bogie Man



It began. Verbal ability was a breeze. Finding synonyms and reading

comprehension was child’s play for any man who could quote passages of Julius

Caesar like a nursery rhyme. Humility or patience was never one of my virtues

and I finished the test five minutes ahead of the stipulated twenty minutes and

moved on to the next section. And that is when the trouble started. After a

couple of questions about profit and loss and about the same old ‘A’ and ‘B’

running a mile in different directions only to land up in the same place - bogie

man surfaced. A question about ratios followed by one on compound interest took

the wind out of my sails. And as I was busy cracking what was the compounded

interest for a man who had borrowed a hefty sum at 12% interest or so, the rest

of my batchmates in the test floor started babbling in unison. I was startled

out of my wits. And then amused to hear the civil engineer sitting next to me

talk about his school days into the mouthpiece. The mathematics ‘honors’

graduate preferred to speak about ‘her favorite sportsperson.’ (They hadn’t

gone mad. They’d just begun their Speaking Ability Test).

And then I became angry. Somewhere during my brief stint at eavesdropping, I

had forgotten about the man and his compounded interest. Five minutes of

intensive number crunching effort was lost. And then the screen turned yellow

— warning me that only about two minutes were left for this section. I still

had to crack about 12 questions and the options were to either take wild guesses

or do what I could honestly. The fear of negative marking for wrong answers won

and I chose the latter. As the time ran out, I left eight questions unanswered.

Anger Management



The last frontier in round 1 was something called — ITeS mental ability.

It’s a polite way of describing what in psychometric terms is called clerical

ability. That is, the ability to do the same thing again and again. That is

something, I believe, that call center employees needed aplenty. After all,

these guys had to spend a good chunk of their working days following the same

script, making the same calls and sending pre-scripted emails. It is believed

that geniuses and very creative people do not fare well in this area.

To say that I performed poorly in this area is an understatement. By that, I

do not stake my claim to genius or stupendous creativity but rather put it on

the questions asked in the test. Imagine trying to answer a dozen questions

asking you to find the odd one out among a set of numbers like — ‘1190876549875645’,

‘1190876549875445’, ‘1190876549875645’, ‘1190876549875645’. Or for

that matter, trying to identify the third number to the left of the center of

this set of numbers — ‘6858756758754568757685765864’. And these were the

tamer questions among the lot. The result was simple — I was bristling with

resentment by the time I was through with question number 10. A couple of deep

breaths later and counting backwards from 10 to 1 — I was still quaking with

righteous fury. I was not sure who the fury was directed at. Myself — for not

being able to do this, or at the absurdity of the entire exercise.

And then the time ran out. It was time for the second round.

Hello, Hello!



My guide, Shalini explained that this was a round designed to check out my

keyboard skills, communication skills and listening comprehension. In other

words, would I sound good on the phone? Would I say the "peoples of

America" instead of "people of America"? Would every word that I

speak be followed by an "ummm" or an "aaaah"? Would I listen

carefully to a customer or would I be thinking of my next coffee break? Would I

type at a snail’s pace or would I be called nimble fingers?

Well, I got the answer sooner than expected. If I were to work at any call

center, I would be nicknamed Mr Wooden Fingers. I had about five minutes to look

at the prescription of a woman with breast cancer and enter her case history and

prescribed medication as quickly and accurately (including upper and lower case)

as possible, into a database with about 20 fields. I managed to fill up about 10

fields. Also, I got fresh insights into the meaning of the expression —

"doctor’s handwriting".

Okay. So big deal. Maybe I wasn’t a great typist. Maybe my voice sounded

better. Communication Skills was up next. After strapping on a gigantic headset,

I was given about two minutes to prepare for my allotted topic — "My

college days." Those days are ancient history and it was a struggle to

remember what had happened when I was a couple of pounds lighter and much

happier. So when the timer started, I spoke unconvincingly about beer, Marina

beach and the paucity of pretty women in our college. That was for the first

three and a half minutes. And then I ran out of steam. I couldn’t think of a

single damn thing to say! Struck me much later that I hadn’t said a word about

what I had gone to college for — my education.

Anyway, I improvised. "Blah, Blah, Blah…..Blah" Those were the

insightful words of wisdom that I spoke for about 10 seconds before throwing in

the towel and the headset.

It was now time for the last one — listening ability. This should be easy,

I thought. It’s the first thing they taught us in Journalism school — be a

good listener. And I prided myself on being one. Even when what I had to listen

to was a boring dialogue between two people about "claud seedin’ as a

means to stap faurest faiers in Flauriduh." For the perplexed, that is the

North American way of saying "cloud seeding as a means to stop forest fires

in Florida". But I had no problems. Abundant exposure to visiting CEOs from

the land of the free and Larry King Live helped my cause.

Not Too Bad



Shalini listened to my bacchanalian college days’ confessions with a smile.
And ranked me not too badly on grammar and fluency. I thought she was being

kind. My Palakkad Iyer accent also passed. As Shalini put it, " You don’t

use too many umms and aahs and also do not say peoples instead of people."

My mathematical ability, despite my reservations, was okay for a call center

job. I felt smug as she rated me high on listening ability. But the one big

worry area - clerical ability needed an overhaul. I had passed but with scores

somewhere so low in the tub that it was unlikely call centers would be jumping

up and down to hire me.

So much for the skills. The next step was to get a psychometric profile done

which would reveal whether I was psychologically the right man for the job. For

example, how would I react if an irate customer would start yelling his top off?

Would I take let him have a dose of his/ her own medicine or would I smile and

say "Please call again. It’s been a pleasure knowing you." Not that

I needed a test to know what I would do but nevertheless I decided to go all the

way.

So, I made it to the office of Team Value Profiling Services (TVPS) that

offers an internationally acclaimed psychometric profiling service called Thomas

Profiling. The test was rather simple. All I had to do was to choose from

several sets of words - the words I most identified with and the ones I least

identified with. And the choice had to be made in less than five seconds. For

example, a set of words could be - aggressive, understanding, negotiable and

adamant. There were about 40 such sets to choose from. In all, it took me about

five minutes to finish the test. Even as I took the test, I wondered whether

somebody with an excellent vocabulary and a sharp mind or who has taken the test

before may be able to beat the test. Maybe I was wrong!

Summum Bonum



My responses were fed into a system and voila! the results were out in a

minute - a 10 page report. The first part of the report, something called a

personal profile analysis, delved into my self-image, behavioral patterns at

work and behavior under pressure among other things. The report was, much to my

pleasure, sprinkled with adjectives like "self-starter",

"competitive but forceful" and "versatile and positive",

"eager and active." But the report was not just a paean written to

extol my virtues. "There may be a tendency to try and override others on

occasions," ...likely to be somewhat self-critical", "may not

follow through as one may wish".

The report even had a description about my ideal boss. "Should Mr

Mahalingam have a boss.. "advocated the report" .. then "ideally

that person will be direct but democratic in approach and have the ability to

communicate facts and information in a logical manner." But the most

interesting part was yet to come. It was about my purported behavior under

pressure. I was most likely to emphasize my "natural forceful and assertive

manner" and turn "very aggressive."

The second part of the report - a call center audit - examined whether I

would fit into a call center job. The summary of the report was that despite a

"persuasive, outgoing and sociable style", my "preferred high

activity rate, relative intolerance and impatience" did not make me an

ideal call center employee. "In addition, his highly competitive nature and

driving style would not be consistent with the attributes considered necessary

for inbound call center agents," said the report.

The bottom-line - I was most likely to ask an irate customer to jump off from

the nearest open window rather than try to pacify him. So, there I was at the

end of the experiment. My hypothesis was repudiated. It definitely takes more

than just a clipped accent and top-notch typing skills to become a good call

center employee. Among other things, it requires unending patience and the

ability to do the same thing again and again — what the tests called

"clerical ability." I didn’t have it in me. Not that I am cribbing,

but the fact remains - I ain’t no call center employee.

T V MAHALINGAM in Bangalore