Virtual Thoughts

One thing that really exasperate me at times is the demands the clients make. One client wanted complete silence when the agent answers the phone. But he has to understand that even if you called up customer support of various companies, you can hear background voices of people talking. this is unavoidable, unless the virtual person you hire is working alone. But like I have four people working simultaneously, background voice and typing sounds is unavoidable. So for several days I was busy out looking for cubicles, getting quotes for having one made just so I can serve his demands. Finally, I found a company who can built a three person cubicle for me like what they’re using in the call center at a reasonable price. But guess what? after a week, the client inform me that he doesn’t need more call center agents, because his business is slow so he is canceling our contract! If I have known he would cancel the account, I wouldn’t bother having to commission a company to build the cubicle! My other clients aren’t complaining.

This incident reminded me of a customer of a client of mine who called. Before, I was the only one doing the call center work, so when I answered the phone everything was very quite. You think the customer would appreciate the fact the it is a very quite office? No she is not!. She told me ” are you in an office? you don’t sound like an office”. Well hey, sorry about that. It is just so hard to please all people!

Last night, a two week old client informed the agent that is working with him that he will not pay for days that he doesn’t have work for her. WHAT???…I assigned one agent to work with him and the agent has to be present everyday and I have to pay her daily and now this client is not going to pay me for days that he doesn’t have work for her? So who is going to shoulder the cost then? If he doesn’t have work for her for two weeks, what then? Is she just going to sit around tweedling her thumbs?

Ok, so I have part time clients who only pays when there is work and that is fine, cause I handle more than three clients’ tasks daily. But the thing is, this call center agent works with him exclusively. If he has told me from the beginning that he doesn’t want anyone full time, then I would have gotten another part time job for the agent. He told me there will always be work, and now this bombshell!

But this is the most exasperating tale, one prospect I talked to several weeks wanted to have a full time agent calling his clients and prospects. The thing is, he wants to try out the agent for a month! my goodness! This is not a varsity try out! So during the one month try out, he will not be paying anything cause he is just trying out! No wonder he couldn’t get anyone to work for him

Oh well, everyday’s experiences has its’ purpose I guess. I just sure hope it won’t be an expensive experience.

I recently got several new long term projects for my staff, which is supposed to be a happy thing and a cause for celebration. But then, instead of being happy, I am up to my head with problems.

One thing client should understand that it may take a little while for the online employee to adjust to your policies and idiosyncrasies. An example would be, a simple excel file sent to us. But instead of receiving the information in an excel file, we received it in a notepad. Thus everything ran in a continuous form instead of breaking into bullet form. So I told my staff to just copy and paste it on Word Document and sort everything out before entering them into excel form. It turned out when the client knew of this, he was unhappy about it, because his rule is “Do Not Make Any Assumption”. If you receive something other than what I have specify in my email, then ask me first.

But the thing is, in our previous experience, there were clients whom if you ask them or  have to confirm everything before getting to work, they get pissed off. They will say, ” please think before you ask me something, if there is something wrong with the file I sent, then feel free to work on it immediately instead of trying to contact me and ask, it is a waste of time. I want you to work with minimum supervision, and that includes thinking and taking charge.” Whew! sometimes orders like that can leave you trembling, because once a mistake will be made, then you will hear them saying ” why didn’t you ask me or talk to me first?”. Really, sometimes, you just don’t know how to please them.

I have always been a thinker, anything you want me to do, I always think first, and my personality is outspoken, inquisitive and tenacious.  So one experience I had with a client was, he told me to stop thinking and asking questions and instead do exactly as how he instructed me. The thing is, he asked me to research something so I did, and it turned out along my research, there were scope and limitations to the research, which he tells me everytime I submit the research file. So instead of a week or two of research work, it turned out to be several weeks, because there’s always something to weed from the research. If  I was allowed to think and ask questions, then things would have gone smoother.

Anther client wants total silence when my agents answers his phone calls. He told me that his clients get irritated when they can hear background noise like typing or people talking and just about any sounds. Based on my experience, one time a client of another client calls up and at that time everything was quite because I was the only one working, and then the person on the other line asked me if I am working in an office, I said yes I am, and she said, but you don’t sound like an office. I guess what she was expecting were sounds of printing, typing, talking and buzzling sounds of a busy office.

There are a lot more things that I could tell, but the bottom line is, people need to understand that everybody has their own idiosyncrasies, and that adjustment takes time. A client should be patient in guiding and molding the online worker to fit his needs, policies and protocols. You have to think that before working for you, the online worker has worked for somebody else that has different rules and protocols from you.

One last example is one client may want you to place dates like 3-07-2008, another may want you to place dates like 2008-03-07 and still another may want you to do 2008-07-03.

What can I say? Different folks, really different strokes, it just rang so true.

I have one part time job accepting phone calls for a company from 4:30 pm to 9 pm PST. One of the calls I took was really really weird and showed not only how diverse American culture has become, but it also depict the extremeness of American personalities. Usually people are nice enough to leave their name and phone number so that my employer can call them back the next day.

This guy that called was as usual looking for my employer. I told him that he has already left the office and “May I take a message and ask him to call you back tomorrow?”

He answered “Don’t you have a caller ID there so you can see my number?”

I said “I’m sorry sir, but the phone I’m using do not have a caller ID”

Ok, he said and gave me his number. Next question-

I said “And may I have your complete name sir?”

He said “There’s only one person in this house and that’s me, why are you making things difficult for me?”

I wanted to say “My deepest apology for not looking at your house first or checking your records at the government office to see if there is more than one person living in your house or is it just you.”

My employer has more than 400 clients, I just hope he is smart enough to memorize all phone numbers with the corresponding owners.