said by Ascension:
Regarding the training and hiring tactics that companies take on a regular basis is not something to be desired, I must admit, non techs hiring / training techs is something that is an integral part of call centers and will always be because its a business and usually ran by business only oriented people and may not have the specific knowledge.
I agree that not all technical people would make great HR staff however I believe they could have a process whereby a technical person does the first interview and then a business person does the second. They could then follow up on this by using the 'buddy system' after the reps training program and team them up with experienced reps for a few weeks/days and both the experienced and new rep would write up an evaluation on each other at the end of the buddy training....this would, in part, determine whether or not they make it past the probation period.
quote:
Ah well.. i could write a book.. there are 3 types of agents.. the morons, the hands tied behind your back agent, and the few risk takers.
Absolutely agree but the problem is that this is very frustrating for customers as you never know who you're going to get and the moron vs the risk takers have wildly conflicting advice sometimes so it's very taunting to the novices calling in for assistance....who are they supposed to believe. I believe this could be somewhat resolved by technical supervisors taking an active role in the day to day activities of their reps versus sitting on the phone apologizing to customers for the previous failures of aforementioned reps and processes.
On a side rant...I believe the whole area of 'tech support' is somewhat misinterpreted (sometimes with the help of marketing and competition) to mean 'we support anything remotely resembling a computer'. In my opinion it would be much more beneficial to have a very clear line as to what is and is not supported so that the router, hub, etc are unplugged before calling in and waiting on hold only to be told to try bypassing. But of course the marketing people are afraid this would discourage subscribers and give the competition an edge and, unfortunately, in our marketing driven society they are pretty much correct.