Getting Your Own Back on Call Centres |
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 Customers are getting their own back on call centres, new research has revealed.
Some callers chat to the call worker for more than three minutes - meaning they miss their productivity target.
Others don't bother to listen to all the options available to them and press zero for the operator instead, effectively making the system obsolete.
Other callers ask the call centre to call back and consequently don't pay for the call.
Some people even put the attendant on hold - giving them a taste of their own medicine.
Wily customers are asking to speak to the sales team, no matter what the inquiry, as new business calls are prioritised.
When held in a queue or put on hold, they call head office and ask to be transferred instead.
In a report from the Citizen's Advice Bureau, 97% of people found dealing with call centres stressful.
Call centres first opened in the mid-1980s with financial service companies like Direct Line among the forerunners.
There are more than 4,500 call centres in the UK which handle inquiries for organisations such as banks, energy suppliers, phone companies and the NHS, with an estimated workforce of 860,000, according to Incomes Data Services figures.
In 2003, the Communication Workers Union warned that up to 200,000 jobs in UK call centres could be "shipped abroad" over the next five to 10 years, hitting deprived areas of the country where call centres are based.
Workers in Indian call centres were paid just 80p an hour compared with £6 an hour in this country and they often had to answer the phone using English names such as Molly so that they "interacted" with British callers, the CWU claimed.
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