Customer service is part of anyone’s role most days. You can be an employee, an entrepreneur with employees or a sole practitioner and you will have customer service issues. When such an issue does happen, it’s important to recognize that it’s already a high stress situation for the customer! Once you keep that in mind, then it’s important to take care of your personal stress releasing needs.
While this guest blog post focuses on people working with often hundreds of calls a day – I can only imagine – the tips are worth keeping in mind even if you have just that one unhappy, or angry or otherwise disgruntled customer.
Want an energy surge? Reduce your stressors!
Stress Releasing Tips in Call Center Employees
With the vehement technological growth, talented workforce mostly works in a hi-tech environment, run by computer technology. Several research efforts have proven that the most stressful area of work, is serving in the customer service area. The time pressure, high volume of calls, poor ergonomics, job insecurity, and lack of proper sleep are the main reasons for stress among call center employees. Work stress at Call Centers affects employees in different ways like low productivity, absenteeism, reduced job satisfaction, chronic fatigue, and insomnia.
Stay calm
Staying calm is very essential to an employee as becoming stressful will only create a negative impact on your work, and reflect as unprofessional behavior. You need to sit back and relax, as you will have to take hundreds of calls each day, from the time you arrive a work until the time you clock-out.
Do not take things personally
It is inevitable that you have to face rude customers and severe customer grudges at AnswerPlus Call Center. But dealing with them by matching their tone will only annoy them further. You should be polite and let them know that you are sorry for the inconvenience caused. Never take things personally, as you will only lose control of the situation and make it worse. Customers who are rude are not upset at the call center representatives but at the problem that they are facing. So it is very important to take the rude comments in relation to your job, and not personally.
Take breaks
Taking breaks at work is very important because sitting at the desk for a continuous stretch of eight hours can cause havoc to your health. Take a minimum of 15 minutes as break, every few hours, and this will refresh your mind and increase your productivity at work. Also, drinking enough water is important to remain hydrated. Try to enjoy your break by listening to music or by taking a walk. Make the most of the break time at AnswerPlus Call Center, because as soon as you are back at your desk, calls will start pouring in.
Personalizing the workspace
Personalizing your desk creates an at-home feeling and makes it fun and better for you to spend eight hours of your day, at your desk. Decorate it in a way that will make you feel like it is your own, like pinning pictures of your family, having personalized mugs, cartoons, stuffed animals or even some fresh flowers. Stress should be avoided to bring in quality in your work at AnswerPlus Call Center.
Also, avoid artificial stress busters like taking numerous coffee breaks, smoking cigarettes, or alcohol. Rather, try to remain stress-free by taking a walk, talking, and practicing yoga or meditation.
About the author
Grace is an expert associated with Answer Plus Inc. Contact a call center specialist at AnswerPlus Inc in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for more information on call centers.
I particularly love the tip about personalizing your workspace. Maybe it’s the introvert in me but somehow it just makes sense that since I totally relish my own space at home, it would be like throwing a blanket over me when away.
My frustrations with call centers is that I am routed to a foreign country and I can barely understand what they are saying. I find the best way to treat a customer as you said, it is not personal. We must all visualize how we would feel in the same situation. When I have a customer who is upset, the first thing I do is to say I understand you are upset, what can we do to make it right. Immediately they calm down and we are able to work it out. Also count to 10 helps.
Love that Arleen! Actually I have to count to 10 before I take any action or open my mouth. If not, sometimes I’ve found I put my foot in my mouth. Thanks.
Arleen and Pat. Read that in a part of Sweden they recently outsourced a service that handicapped pensioners call when they need help to be driven somewhere. God knows why, but a company in Senegal I think it was (it was definitely an African country) was chosen. Catch is the pensioners could not make themselves understood, and neither could the people at the call center.
Anyway, the suggestions for people at call centers to deal with stress apply to all of us.
Sure it’s essential to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes in order to stay calm. But to expect handicapped pensioners to do that when their taxes are being spent on a call center in Africa where they don’t speak Swedish is asking too much:-) And then on top of it no car showed up to pick them up for their appointment. Isn’t it a great example of opting for the lowest price…
Catarina that’s an example of management being out of touch with both customers and in this case, outsource employees. Talk about win-win! Not in the example you gave. In the end, it will cost the company in the like and trust factors. Thanks.
Pat it was a local government who hired the company in Senegal. So it was tax payers money that was used:-)
Having managed a large call center in my past life means I truly get what you’re saying. It is so important to allow the individual create a space they fell at home in. Taking breaks is absolutely necessary. We used to come up with fun activities that would break up the tedium of their jobs and made it fun. Many looked forward to coming to work on that kind of stuff alone. 🙂 When we did that we found the call rep was much more patient and understanding when dealing with an irate customer for a difficult sale. 🙂
I learned a long time ago, if you can’t have fun it may not be worth it. Talk about a stressor – going to work everyday for a job that you don’t like. And talking about taking a break…. THANKS Susan.
These were some good tips. It is hard to stay calm when someone is yelling but as a customer service rep you have to keep your cool. I like the idea of sitting back in the chair. This tells your body you are relaxed and most likely your body will follow.
Yes Hannah indeed our body language does communicate with us as well as people looking at us. Unclenching fists, sitting back, whatever posture you can take to make you feel calmer will help.
I really agree with what you said about not taking things personally. These people that you call don’t know who you are. They are associating you with hundreds of other people who have called in the past and the telemarketing business as a whole. There is no need to be offended or take it personally. Thanks for sharing.
Johnny not taking a customer’s outburst on us personally is critical foundationally to how we respond. It may take some mental shifting but it’s important so that anything else you do allows you to help the customer.
Not taking things personally shouldn’t just be a ti in being in a call center, it should be a mantra of every human being in life. If you don’t take things personally you don’t get distracted with your goals. But the excess can also lead to negative outcomes, such as negligence.
Dolph indeed not taking things personally would help us in many relational situations. In NLP there is a presupposition (something to assume correctly) that everyone does things they do for THEIR reason. In other words, people act as they do because of them, not us.