Role-Playing Trainwreck

One common thing that happens in call-center training classes is role-playing. While many of the trainees have probably had some call center experience in the past, there are always those who have not, and they're usually quite terrified of the idea of answering a phone call after a brief couple of weeks nodding off while listening to trainers and near-illiterate trainees read aloud from a manual. And for those of us with prior experience, it's always a good idea to get a feel for how system navigation will work while you're on a real call.

Today was role-playing day at SBLB.

Karen partnered us up and gave us each a real account number that we were supposed to pretend was ours and think of an interesting and vaguely challenging question to ask.

Before I go on, I want to make it clear that I do not harbor any ill will toward immigrants or people whose first language is not English. I do, however, think that if I were a recent immigrant whose English skills were not too great, that I would try to find employment in an area that did not require eight hours of constant telephone conversations and script-reading, at least until I was more confident in my fluency of the country's primary language.

This guy is going to be cussed out on a regular basis. Abrafo's partner, Donald, asked very simple questions ("What is my balance in my checking? What is my balance in my savings? Do I have any kind of overdraft protection?")

It took Abrafo over 20 minutes to answer these questions. He placed his "customer" on hold 5 different times. Donald had to repeat each of his account numbers 2-3 times for Abrafo.

Most everyone else's role-playing went fine, really. Of course each of us had minor issues navigating the unfamiliar system while trying to remember proper scripting and whatnot, but overall, it went fairly smoothly. It was clear, however, that, with the exception of Jeanette and I, not many of us are comfortable enough with banking terminology and strict regulations to start taking calls as soon as tomorrow.

Which, unfortunately, is exactly what's going to be happening.

This seems a very ludicrous, if not outright insane, idea. We will be taking these calls on speakerphone, using the projector screen to see the account we are to be servicing.

SPEAKERPHONE.

This means that everyone in the room, all 9 of the other people, will not be allowed to so much as sneeze during any calls. I asked how this could possibly be a good idea when almost everyone knows when they're put on speakerphone and hates it. What happens when the already angry caller asks, "Am I on speakerphone?!" The answer to that is, according to Karen, lie to the customer. Say that you are having phone problems, apologize, and continue servicing the call. What happens when someone is about to make a blatant and disastrous error and half the class says, "No! Click the OTHER button!!"

"Oh... that won't happen."

Er... okay. Sure. Because I really trust my gutter-minded, lack of internal censorship, constantly chattering fellow trainees to STFU during other people's calls. I'm sure I'll have all sorts of great stories about the impending disaster tomorrow.