Working On-Site During The Quarantine

"If I will not go to work today and wait until it's safe to be outside, when will that day come?" This is the question that I asked myself when I decided to work on-site last April 20. Since I was still on training, getting a work-at-home kit from the company was very unlikely, I may not be even on the list of employees who were eligible to receive one. Fast forward to today, after finishing a week of compressed training, after a week of on-the-job training, and two weeks of doing the actual job, I've learned and realized a lot of things. When I went to work for the first time after being on quarantine in my apartment for a month, a lot of things changed outside. For me to be able to go to the office, I have to walk for about 30 minutes from my apartment to a nearby mall so that the company's shuttle service can pick me up on the way. On my way, it's very obvious how nature has started healing. The trees on the sidewalk just seem to be very healthy and happy without the black smoke coming from private vehicles and delivery trucks that frequent that part of the city before the quarantine. Also, I've been constantly seeing different birds species flying and hopping from branches to branches of those trees. Aside from waiting for the sometimes unresponsive driver for almost one hour, I have to endure standing on the roadside with occasional people passing by who are coming in and out of the mall's nearby supermarket. Though I'm so used to waiting in line when buying things before the quarantine period, waiting in public places these days gives me more anxiety and stress than it should be. Before entering the shuttle service, a personnel gets my body temperature through a hand-held digital thermometer and log it in a manual tracker together with my name, employee number and department, provides alcohol to disinfect my hands, and only that personnel can open and close its door. While inside the shuttle, I am to avoid or at least lessen touching things. Before entering the building, I have to disinfect my shoes on an alcohol rug pad in the doorstep of the building and another personnel gets my body temperature. Both the shuttle service and building personnel do not allow employees without mask and with body temperature higher than 37.6 degrees Celsius to enter the facilities. Another personnel located in the lobby of the building keeps track of my body temperature together with my name, employee number, department, and some Yes-No questions for the symptoms of COVID-19. In the elevator, only four people are allowed, three passengers and the operator, who is the only person allowed to touch the buttons for the floor numbers. These elevator buttons are also covered with a transparent plastic that is being disinfected every three hours. To avoid the long lines for the elevator and being confined in a small box with people who may be asymptomatic of COVID-19, I usually use the stairs. Before I can finally get to my department's work area, another personnel gets my body temperature. Inside, all workstations are at least one meter away from each other. All of us in the department are only allowed to talk to each other if we are to maintain at least one meter distance. Also, at least two admin staff are randomly inspecting each department to enforce the one meter social distancing policy. During breaks, only two employees are allowed to share a table with dividers as if we are on a blind date. When buying cooked food from the concessionaires, only disposable plates and utensils are being used. As for me, I bring my own utensils and just wash them after eating and tuck them away in my locker. For the first two weeks of being back to work, the company gives its employees 20% salary incentive, 200 pesos transportation allowance, meal stubs, and on-site accommodation for those who want to stay in the office and/or just go home on their rest days. Two hours before I go home, I send a text message to the same shuttle service driver so that I can reserve a seat for myself. After being dropped off in the same spot where I waited for it in going to the office, I walk the same path to go home for another 30 minutes.

On my way, I usually pick some pantry essentials so that I don't have to go to the grocery store anymore during the weekends, hence, having lesser contact with other people. For the things that I can't buy in the nearby pop up wet market, I ask one of my friends at work to buy them for me whenever he goes to a supermarket near his residence. Personally, these experiences make me realized that working in the office amidst this health crisis requires a lot of patience while going through all the health check measures, thorough personal hygiene, and smart ways of unloading stresses and anxiety.

Transitioning To Productions

"After your training, you will be exposed to the real environment of taking in live calls from customers. But of course, you will be moved to productions the way a momma bird teaches her little birds how to fly."

You will be assigned to a new team leader, usually called as transition team leader, who will guide you as you go through shifts of taking calls, mentoring, and additional coaching in 20 days. Your transition team leader will be the one representing you in front of operation managers, clients, and other production stakeholders. Your team leader will answer to the stakeholders for any escalation or even misdeeds that you may commit during your transition period.

Since a team leader will not be able to accommodate all the coaching and escalations that your class may get, you will have mentors, tenured agents from productions, who will be facilitating your daily cluster coaching and answer your questions before, during, and after a call. A mentor usually handles at most four agents to effectively and efficiently coach each of you if ever your cluster will have a lot of escalations in a day.

Also, support teams like quality assurance evaluators, communication coaches, and sales coaches will be there to polish your communication lapses, call-handling and process compliance, and sales pitch strategies.

Quality assurance evaluators are responsible for grading your product know-how and call-handling and process compliance. You will have at least one evaluation per day during your transition period. Most of the time, QAs are after process compliance, whether you give the correct sales disclosures, inform your customers with the correct product or service details, give your callers with the right pricing, and other product or service-related information.

From someone who got into the productions because of perfect QA evaluations, I can say that the only way to get high evaluations is to do whatever you learned from your training and execute the feedback of the evaluators properly. In short, do whatever they say. The transition period is not the time for you to do whatever you want that's against the process guidelines if you want to get into productions.

Communication coaches or just comm coaches are the ones who will help you polish your grammar lapses, how you communicate to your customers, and how you think while conversing with them. From what I saw during one of the transitions that I had before, comm coaches will never get tired of helping you polish your communication lapses unless you don’t want to help yourself. Most of the times, you will have at least one session with a coach in a week but if they see that you need more, you can get at most three sessions per week. Comm coaches love an agent with a neutral accent in using English. This is because it is so much easier to speak with someone without an accent.

Sales coaches are the people who will help you improve your sales pitch. Most sales accounts in a contact center have sales coaches to guide their agents to better offer their services or products. They will help you in transitioning an ordinary product or service inquiry into a sales pitch.

Coming from a sales coach, always remember that not all calls that you will receive as a sales agent are sales calls. You must understand that some customers call because they only want to know more about their options. In this case, you must listen to them first. Then, identify their pain-points by asking the right questions. After helping, not making, them realize their needs, you can casually proceed to informing, not selling, them of the products or services that best fit their needs. This way, you will not be hard selling.

So, once you hit the transition period, make sure to exhaust all the help that you can get to improve yourself as an agent so that once you’re in productions, hitting your goals will be easier.