Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

It's so easy for the customer to get caught in the middle. "That's handled by another department." "But they told me to call you." "That's something that the other company needs to solve." "I'm getting the runaround. They insisted it was your problem."

So several of us at my first call center job became very skilled at dealing with other companies. We put ourselves in the middle, with the customer.

Because we were committed as a call center to solving problems no matter what (that center is now defunct), we developed a cottage industry in explaining to other companies why they needed to fix the problem and stop blaming us.

Since we were a phone company, most of the companies we had to negotiate with were other phone companies. We tried to use their own particular jargon, even their acronyms. We learned how their VRUs worked ("press 4, then 2, then wait on hold").

We learned how to explain telecommunications theory to other telecommunications workers. ("But if the customer has the same problem when they're not using our service, don't you think that maybe we're not causing  the problem?") 

We deliberately used technical jargon to keep other companies on their toes. Sometimes the other agent, in essence, would transfer us to a supervisor or a technician simply because they didn't understand what we were saying.

We learned which technical challenges could force the other company to take action. We learned all the technical tests to determine where telephone problems might be, and insisted that they do them.

It was a lot of fun. Very rewarding. It didn't decrease our talk time or increase our calls per hour. But then, maybe that's why that call center is out of business now. 

Still, I firmly agree that great service principles are great life principles.