I worked for a huge international company in their call centre for a while. I have now left that role for numerous reasons but this post will explain one of those reasons.
So things got crazy busy in our department in autumn last year. We're talking 50+ customers waiting to have their calls answered with wait times of an hour or more. Before this we'd only get maybe 15-20 waiting at the most and that would be classed as a busy day. You could go 3-4 minutes waiting for a call to come through quite often. But that all changed. Now we were busy all of the time with barely a chance to take a breath between calls.
Understandably, after dealing with this day in and day out for weeks on end many of us were getting burned out and worn down by angry customers complaining about long wait times etc. This would be on top of the original complaint they'd called in to make.
So our department heads, in their wisdom, decided to hold mass meetings before Christmas in order to reward us for our fortitude. As there were around 150 agents the meetings were split into 3 separate blocks for 50 agents at a time so the phones would still be answered. We're all working from home so these meetings were virtual and we'd join via Zoom.
In these meetings they decided to play a gameshow like quiz (with a spinning wheel and everything) so we could answer questions and win prizes. These prizes ranged from £5 to £50 in shopping vouchers, a half day holiday etc.
Not bad – not amazing either – and obviously not all of us could play and win (hence the spinning wheel randomly selecting names for people to play).
I actually was the 4th person selected to play. I answered 2 questions before landing on a prize.
What did I win?
A chance to drive to the office and have my photo taken with the executive who heads the department handing me a certificate for a job well done.
And the service delivery manager who told me about this tried to make out this was a great prize – that he'd had to convince this executive to allow his photo to be taken with one of us lowly minions and to personally hand me the certificate.
I had no idea who this executive was before I won the prize (someone really high up so we would never have dealt with him directly). All the managers who attended my meeting applauded like the sycophants they were and congratulated me. My fellow agents looked just as dumbfounded as I did.
Why in the hell would I want a photo taken with a guy I never met, to get a certificate for a job well done that I'm only receiving due to random chance be considered in any way a suitable prize??
I'd have been happier with just £5.
That was the day I started applying elsewhere.