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Now we can solve every problem just with one call ...
...no need to go outside any more.
But what about the owner of these voices welcoming us ...
... when we make that phone call?
Ozde Afacan is one of the people who saves our day ů
My name is Ozde Afacan. I was borned on the 14th July 1986 in Uskudar.
I am living with my family in Uskudar.
We have been in Uskudar since I was borned.
We are from Sile, we are from Istanbul indeed.
I have been working in call center sector for approximatly 4 years.
Now I am working as a team leader in a big call center company.
I am living with my mother sister and brother...
... 4 of us are living together.
We have lost our father.
My mother is a housewife, my sister is working as a store manager.
And my brother is going to school right now.
At first they didn't know my job clearly.
Actually I didn't know either, when I had started working.
It had been hard for them to accept ...
... because the job was not known by to many people.
My mother still does not know too much about what I am doing.
There is a situation like that.
But right now this job is known by more people because it spreads ...
... to everywhere so she hears from others who do this job.
In spite of that she is much relax about that now.
Actually I have been graduated from ...
Sakarya Technical Collage Public Relations.
And I wanted to do my real job at the beginning...
... but because of the lack of experience I couldn't find a job.
At that time I had a friend who was working in call center sector ...
... she told me that they were searching for a new employee.
I had thought that I have to start from somewhere.
In spite of sitting at home, I'd rather work in a job and try.
So I have started like that and then it continued.
Fatih Arslan who is the deputy manager of the firm which Ms. Afacan
...has the team leader responsibility as an experienced call center ...
... operator explained us the steps of a call center operator ...
... and Ms. Afacan's career.
Ms. Afacan has been working with us for a long time ...
... approximately 3 and a half year.
She started to work as an operator.
But she was involved invery important projects in a short time.
She provided quality service.
After a while she promoted.
And then she promoted again and ...
... started to work as a team leader who manages 15 employees.
When we look it as a call center operation...
...we can see that lots of firms have the same process.
Basically there are operators who we call "agent".
These friends take the direct calls.
One step up to these friends there are team leaders ...
... who manage 10 or 15 employees beyond them.
These team leaders work to manage the team's high motivation.
Accordingly the team works better, conducts the working process...
...welcomes the calls in a right way.
We have other friends who we call supervisor...
...they manage 250-300 workers.
And there are call center managers at the uppermost situation.
Call center operators work for two different unit ...
the inbound unit who take the calls from outside vand the outbound unit
... who take calls from inside directly.
The customer representatives answer the calls ...
... which come from outside in inbound.
Actually they do not do anything if there are not any calls.
But that is not possible of course.
The custumers always call the call center ...
... and the costumer representatives take the call ...
... keep a record and, if there is something to deliver they deliver it.
These are the things that they do in a day.
I mean it is jus taking calls.
That can be 50 calls in a day or 150-200 calls in a day.
Just like that.
Selling is different.
I mean it is more different and difficult then taking a call.
So the costumer representatives who will do the selling ...
... have to be stress-free and in a good mood.
But there are some quotas that they have to reach ...
... so that makes them more stressful.
Accordingly we try to find some ways to get the employee motivation ...
... such as dancing the halay, the belly dance or some ...
... games like TABU and etc.
These are the things that we do for improve the motivation.
Call center operations are stressful and contain a heavy working order.
Mr. Arslan and his company configured every detail ...
... in the working areafor Ms. Afacan and her co-workers.
At first, the environment is very important.
There are too many people who work together ...
... talk with the phones side by side.
Accordingly we have to design the environment in a right way.
Among these the walls, the head phone sets the ground and the ceiling ...
... have to be designed through the voice isolation.
These are about the environment.
Beside environment we face with the technological improvements ...
... such as redirecting of the calls proficiency of the workers ...
... redirecting the calls to the right person and etc .
People can call because of so many different reasons ...
The menu which says push the first button and etc ...
... is a kind of technologic structure.
The main reason of this technological structure is redirect ...
... the person to the one that he or she requires.
There is a complicated technological structure.
This complicated technology foresees the management of the people ...
... who are totally in different locations in rush hours.
For a call center employer to work productively and ...
... to take precaution against health problems ...
... there should be some requirements should be met.
Two of them are these; ergonomic seats and functional headphones.
Uncomfortable seats make all the call center ...
... stuff have back and lumbar pain ...
... also working with functionless and breakable headphones prevents ...
... them from functional working.
The other detail attracking our attention is the tables that ...
... operators decorated according to their own taste ...
... and the mirrors on these tables.
We try to give a desk to every customer ...
... representative to his or her own.
We call it one's cabin.
We let them design their cabin through their own willing ...
what they like what they want to see that can be awkward dialogues ...
... the mirrors which can make them smile always ...
... especially the women's.
The customer representatives ...
... take assessment score through their calls.
So these scores shouldn't be low.
There are some words which should not be told to take a high score.
But these words could be something that ...
... everyone usually uses like "hi hi".
I mean, while you are talking with ...
... your friend you can easily say "hi hi" ...
... this shouldn't be while you are on a call.
But they are taking too much calls, they do too much talk ...
... so it can be told without willing.
They write their desk these words which they can't get rid of.
The call centers not only satisfy the company's customer ...
... representative service but also create an important increase ...
... at employment rate and economic movement in the town or city.
One of the interesting points of call centers is wherever you call a ...
... call center it can be replaced by somewhere totally different ...
... from the place you call, it can be any place in Turkey ...
...or all around the world.
This situation gives a big elasticity to the job.
Because of that the call center number in ...
... Anatolia is increasing every new day.
We really care about that.
The smallest call center company starts with 100-200 people ...
... but then it can be one of the important businesses and ...
... can change the situation of the city totally ...
... that is why we care about the call centers.
Also the majority of the employees of call centers is women.
And the "home agent" concept that we named the one who ...
... works from home is very useful on this job field ...
... because of the technological supplements.
By reason of all of these call center can be an important advantage ...
... especially for the people who have obstacles or ...
... women and also young workers.
Because all of these, call center is very valuable.
Actually the call centers centered in Istanbul ...
... and worked for a long time here.
But in time because of the high costs and economic incentives ...
which have been paid to the companies which establish a corporation at ...
... east villages the corporations have been occupied east villages.
At first the companies occupied some east villages ...
... like Erzurum and Diyarbakir.
Immediately after these villages, the call centers ...
... have been started to establish in east villages ...
...and especially in Central Anatolia and Ege an areas.
For a ballpark figure we can say that the call centers ...
... were formed in cities such as Samsun, Rize, Artvin, Erzurum ...
... Gumushane, Erzincan, Sivas, Yozgat ...
... Kayseri, Malatya, Elazig, Diyarbakir.
In addition Bingol and Bitlis have call centers too.
When we look at the west ...
... Ankara is naturally has a call center structure.
In addition Eskisehir, Afyon, Usak, Denizli, Izmir ...
... Antalya and Karaman have call centers too.
Some new investments are still being planned.
New call centers will be opened in different villages.
I guess, after a while we will have call centers in ...
... almost 70-80% of the Anatolian villages.
Because of growing call centers' network every new day ...
... some new security rules have to be determined ...
... for supplying the inspection that is needed.
One of these security rules is the obligation of recording the calls.
In spite of all of these cautions the operators ...
... can be abused by some bad faith people.
There are some reasons for recording the calls.
First these calls are being listened and investigated for the trueness ...
... of the information that the operator ...
... gave to the customer and the interview with the customer.
And these things constitute the performance and ...
...the score of the customer representative.
Except those things when the customer informs us about the information ...
...that he or she is given in a wrong way and he or she has a problem.
If the customer tells us that he or she has been informed wrongly ...
... we always listen to the recordings and ...
... if there is really false information ...
... we apologise for it and provide to fix it immediately.
After that we both pick up the workers and customers information ...
... and apologise which needed to be done and inform the customer in ...
... order to supply the customer satisfaction.
Generally I can say that the number of the people who ...
... call and just use abusive language is very few.
But there was one customer, yes
He was a daredevil.
He was calling, and saying "My name is this this" and ...
... after that he was starting to abuse and finishing the call.
He didn't even let us to finish the call.
After one of our friends, he calls again this time an ...
... other friend takes the call,
and he abuses again.
And it goes on like that.
There is a few people who call and ...
... abuse to the customer representatives.
This kind of people has some obsessions like that ...
Yes we are doing this job but there are some rules some procedures ...
... so everybody should know that if a customer representative ...
... can not do a job this is not because ...
... he or she does not have the capability of doing it.
... they may not be aware of what they are actually doing.
They may not know this but unfortunately ...
... there can be some customers who talk like that.
There is another reason for the fast improvement of the call centers ...
... The Call Center Association.
The president of this association is Bahadir Pekkan ...
... who is known by so many people in this sector.
Mr. Pekkan calls attention to education, while ...
... and all around the world.
The call center sector development in the world is ...
... a little older then Turkey.
We can see some call center applications in the end of ...
... 60s and the 70s.
In Turkey, call centers arose in the end of 90s professionally.
The call center's point of departure is customer services firstly.
After that people started to call for their complaints or ...
... some wishes from the companies.
There is a similar course of action in Turkey like the world.
The call centers' portfolio is extended with the sales ...
... persuasion,revenues which we call value added services.
Almost all of the sectors use the call center.
Our sector is growing up 20% every year.
We can see these numbers in last 5 years too.
This proves that there is still a starvation and ...
demand on this area clearly.
We can look at the place of call center ...
... sector of Turkey in the world.
We are predicting that our call center sector...
... has a potential of growth like 4 or 6 times more.
If we consider that there are approximately 55000 employees ...
... on this sector, we can say that there can be 100000 employees ...
... on the next 3-4 years easily.
Another point is exportation.
Because this sector can be exported
But the only obstacle on this is language.
Because Turkey is very close to the Europe both in culturally ...
... and geographically, and also the technological background ...
... is quite developed.
So Turkey has the potential of being the center of region.
But we can not make move on this field, why?
Because, except for German language ...
... we have a strong foreign language field because ...
... of the immigration of the generation ...
... who grew up in Germany for years.
But finding an employer who knows the other European languages ...
... especially Western European languages in such level so as to ...
... work in a call center , who is capable of those languages.
Accordingly one other object that paves the way for the improvement ...
and foreign languages exportation of call centers in Turkey is to ...
... make known by more youth people and export our call center ...
... service firstly to Europe then all around the world.
One of the important qualifications which a call center operator ...
... should have is the capability of talking smoothly and straight.
But this is not enough by itself.
A call center operator has to have the capability ...
... of right listening and patience.
For a call center operator the right using of diction ...
... to understand what the customer wants ...
... and also to be disposed to help is very important.
I mean, we want to see that ambition in the eyes of our new employers ...
... which is necessary.
They should love this job.
If they don't, if they don't love to communicate ...
... with people, they can't go on.
Accordingly the people who will do this job have to love speaking ...
... and have a strength communication skill.
We have to addresso to the customer with ...
... his or her name when we first answer to the call.
For example: "Have a nice day! I am Ozde, how can i help you?"
After that we talk through the type of the customer.
Sometimes the customer is so angry and explains everything directly ...
... if he or she is not that angry he or she beats around the bush ...
... and we wait for it and try to understand the problem ...
... of the customer.
Because there are different types of customer.
After that through the course of events we say ...
... "I will try to help you now immediately" ...
... and try to do everything we can.
But we do not talk with the customer in daily language ...
... there are some standard answers we use.
We do if there is something we can.
If we can not do anything about they want ...
... we try to explain this in appropriate language.
The call center sector which has been developed in ...
... short time is very young such as its workers.
And these young people answer millions of calls which ...
... come from all around the country
... and help them to solve their problems.
We reach the phone and call the call centers when we have a problem.
Sometimes I imitate them to the doctors ironically.
People call if they have a problem.
There is not a talk like "How are you" or ...
... "what a good job you did".
There is always a problem, a point that has to be solved.
And these friends answer approximately 100 calls ...
... and solve their problems quickly.
And also they are trying to use their little time for understanding ...
... the customer's problem truely and answer them in that time ...
... so they please the customers and send off them.
Try to think like that; these people are too young ...
... they are educated well, and they are enthusiastic ...
... about their job, and doing their best.
The thing that we should do as the ones who is opposite of the ...
...call is to develop empathy between the call center operators and us.
Because I believe if we develop empathy and show them ...
... the same positive intent , they will serve us ...
... more efficiently, and faster.
This sector has a great importance, and it is growing on the shoulders...
... of these friends rapidly.
Although many people suppose the call center operators ...
... as robots or answering machines ...
... they are actually one of us, inside of usů
These young people who are close to us as a phone and ...
... far away from us so much expect two things clearly ...
... insights and empathyů
The call center operators aren't seen by anyone ...
... while they are talking with people.
I mean people are talking with each other but ...
... nobody sees who they are talking with ...
... what they are capable of or which operations they can do or not.
Our expectation from the customer ...
... is just to have a little bit insight.
I mean if there is something to do, we do it.
But the call center operator has a limit for operation.
Accordingly I think we shouldn't push it too much.
The customers sometimes say that "Are you robot?
You are saying the same thing always.
Am I talking with an answering machine?
Isn't there anyone else who I can talk with?
I mean there are real people over against them and ...
... they are actually doing this job.