What Working At My School's Call Center Has Taught Me About People

DePaul University
Mon, 28 May 2018 15:36:11 +0000

No job is a glamorous as that of a call center employee; At least when it means working for DePaul University, that is. Apparently, the position is actually pretty competitive. I guess when you factor in just how laid back and low stress it is (No quota, lax atmosphere, flexible hours, etc.) it makes a lot more sense why people seem to love this position and tend to stick with it in their time at DePaul, despite the general stigma attached to call center jobs. In between calls, my coworkers and I often find ourselves discussing deep philosophical questions like religion, politics, and other drama. It keeps our minds off the monotony of the day-to-day. This type of monotony is occasionally interrupted by an interesting individual we call, who sometimes strikes up a fun conversation that ends up making the day a little bit more exciting. You see, at the DePaul Telefund, we call alumni of DePaul, with the initial premise of updating them about events on campus, and the main goal of asking for donations towards the school.

Of course, like any job, it has its ups and its downs. These ups and downs mainly come from the individuals we speak to over the phone, who vary tremendously in terms of personality, disposition towards the school, and willingness to talk on the phone (this one usually skews negative, if you catch my drift). There is one thing I could definitely say this experience has taught me.

People will be people, no matter what.

I feel like the whole concept of this job and sales jobs in general (being forced to reach out to people in a robotic fashion to drone the same script over and over until success is achieved) seems very robotic in nature. If it could have the same effect on people, I have no doubt that we’d have robots programmed to do this job ages ago. Of course, robots do not have the same persuasion that humans have, and that’s why this job even exists. It’s interesting though, when you put humans in this robotic role, they interact with the job in a very human fashion, that is to say, they need to let a bit of steam off to break from the monotony and the “fakeness” of it all. This leads them to try to distract them from the task at hand as much as possible, playing games, taking long breaks, talk as much as possible about how they feel, and try to stimulate their brains.

Another aspect of this is, that the people you talk to on the other end of the phone behave very much like people, that is to say, unpredictable at best, predictable at worst. After working the job long enough, you eventually get so used to your script that you blurt it out literally out of second nature, and it generally tends to sound pretty fast and like you’ve repeated it a thousand times.

Surely, this would set off alarm bells in most people’s mind so fast, but a lot of people stay. In fact, many people are quite intrigued by the idea of donating money to the school. A lot are just glad to have a good old-fashioned conversation. Of course, there’s also the opposite end, very rude people who want nothing more than to shut you down, but as I said before, any job has its ups and downs.

I think no matter what molds we try to fit people in, whether it be that of “caller”, a robotic role we’ve practiced and recited a thousand times in our head to achieve certain outcomes, or that of “the one being called” who is trying to be led down our script toward the desired outcome, people will always let their personalities shine through the monotony, somehow. It’s part of what makes us human, and part of what keeps retail jobs, call center jobs, and other repetitive “people oriented” jobs so interesting, and so damn punishing at times.