Title says it all. I wanted to share as it's my first day back from paternity and I'm feeling more empowered than ever before thanks to this sub.
I work for a very large financial institution in B2B customer service. I'm on a group of SMEs (subject matter experts) who are each assigned their own portfolio of companies. The executives/administrators at these companies know us by name as their dedicated point of contact, and reach out with issues and requests. However, we (SMEs) are also used as the overflow for the general customer service calls – basically, once a call goes past 5 minutes waiting, it automatically kicks to a SME. Due to understaffing, this means we are constantly being interrupted by phone calls, dropping everything to help the user, who is not one of our dedicated executives/administrators. As you can imagine, emails and complicated requests from our dedicated companies can quickly become days or even weeks behind as volumes return to pre-pandemic levels. (I believe the client contract states an SLA of two hours for email responses and five minutes for answering phone calls)
Understandably, clients get a little frustrated since they were lead to believe that they are receiving a dedicated point of contact due to their size/volume, but that contact is not timely, etc. If your client gets frustrated that their emails aren't being responded to, they might call you, but you will probably already be in a meeting or on a phone call, so they have no way to get ahold of you. The pressure ultimately falls on those of us who have to directly interact with clients to formulate apologies and promises, find answers for systems where there is minimal training or resources, etc. I've heard managers admit that our excellent service is due to the heroics of individual officers, not the systems/processes which are inadequate.
I got into this line of work when I was 23 (now 30) and I have been trying to prove myself ever since I was hired. At the time, I was so happy to have a desk job which made me feel like I was using my degree (BA, business). I would work through breaks and lunches and overtime, as I believed this was good work ethic. However, paternity gave me the opportunity to step outside my job and reevaluate my relationship with my employer and work in general. Of course, it was during this time I discovered r/antiwork and became a daily lurker.
Coming back to work, it was immediately obvious that things had only gotten worse – turnover had only increased, clients were only more frustrated, and mistakes were being made more than ever. Emails/requests are days and weeks behind, when the contracts mention a target SLA of 2 hours. There's also the mistake someone apparently made – a service person made a mistake (or series of mistakes) during a single interaction that led to a loss of about 1/2 million dollars. That's a huge deal, considering you can lose your job for making a mistake that costs the department a few thousand. The mistake also would have never happened with appropriate training, I guarantee it (but what do I know, I'm just a subject matter expert but not a big manager man LOL) They probably think I would be concerned seeing all this, sitting here with a puckered butthole, ready to work all the OT they're offering me to help pull them back out of the hole they dug themselves into. They're hoping …. waiting….. but in reality I'm sitting here happy as ever, like the joker who wants to watch the world burn. Management put themselves into this shitty position after years of understaffing despite constant frustration being voiced from us, their most senior staff, and even clients, and I'm definitely not going to be the one to “save the day” this time. I've suffered mentally for years, but that ends now – maybe it's middle management's turn to have a sick feeling in their stomach when they drive to work each day.
Of course, there are the same promises that things will get better, that there are things to look forward to (e.g. “we got more new hires who are in training … good times are coming!”) that I've come to see as fluff they give us every few months when tensions run high. I plan to work two hours at a time, giving nothing more than that, and see where this takes me. Of course, I'll be updating my resume and beginning the job search this weekend as well. Six years in this department has taught me they have absolutely no intention of appropriately staffing and creating a comfortable, reasonable work environment that employees can feel successful in. Thanks r/antiwork!