secretary-duel
text in german
This is part of the 3. hotlines-leaflet on the sense of work (March 2001):
Every day, again and again, it gets fought out a million times. A bloody duel, one that can only be finished through getting fired, going to a psychiatrist or calling in sick. A duel between woman and woman, secretary and outbound-agent. The secretary has to protect her boss from the agent's bombardment of questions. The agent has to conquer new sources of money for her boss. All weapons are allowed in this fight. But the secretary can employ some weapons the agent is not allowed to use due to the "call center convention", for instance "wild abuse" and "slamming the phone". The agent on the other side has the advantage of ambushing the secretary without warning, the famous element of surprise: "Hello, my name is... calling from..., please connect me with your manager!" If the secretary is not alert here, it can happen that she puts the call through because she is used to follow orders instantly. In that case she risks to get into serious problems with her boss. One point for the agent. But it's rarely that easy. Sometimes the lady on the switchboard transfers to the by far bigger enemy, the manager's secretary... But most of the time the secretary is taking on the duel herself: "We are not interested". Now it the agent's turn. In case she has no experience she accepts the statement and wishes the secretary a nice day. But she will find out that her boss won't like it at all if she accepts the secretaries attitude. After all, this is warfare about market shares! So the agent has to call again the next day. And she knows that now it can get pretty loud. The consequence: she has to come up with new tricks, like intimidation of the person opposite through very complicated phrasing, questioning of her authority or the simple claim that the boss would expect the call. Sooner of later the secretary will know all the tricks and the duel goes into the next round...
Not always the duels turn out as ugly. If the secretary claims that the boss is in a meeting or on holiday there is a truce and you can see the person on the other side of the line as a human being. And you ask yourself what all the stress is about. If the other person had not chosen the wrong profession she would be quite nice after all...
Many might have listened carefully and gotten envious. Envious of the exciting and useful activity. How do you say? Sensible hours on the job. In this case that means: the agent dedicates about two hours a day to the duel with secretaries, so ten hours a week. Taking 10.000 agents that means about 100.000 hours a week. A secretary fights about 0.25 hours a day with wild agents, taking 10.000 secretaries that means about 12.500 hours. So the duel with the secretaries produces 112.500 working hours on the hot line. If that does not make sense!
Sorry, I have not introduced myself: I am an outbound-agent and do not allow secretaries to shake me off. I will call again and again till they put me through to the boss, so in the end I can tell him that our company can help him reduce his telephone bill...
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