Think about the future of their profession, a profession that is not always easy because they are the ones you have on the other end of the phone for cold calling or when you call for a dispute with your energy or energy supplier. ‘Internet access. More than 300 call center employees have gathered since Tuesday, November 19 at the Saint-Avertin union center for an international conference.
One of these centers in Indre-et-Loire is located in Tauxigny. Armatis Touraine has 460 employees. He manages customer service for companies such as Fortuneo, Matmut and EDF. The first quality in this profession? “We must learn to be zen”, explains Pascale, who has worked for the company for six years. Because on the other end of the line, she has people unhappy with bills that are too high or power outages that last. “We should definitely not take what people say for ourselves. It helps us respond better to customers and cope better with our days, because when we get yelled at from morning to night, it’s not always easy” explains Pascale. And it’s getting worse and worse. “I had a call that really stuck with me because I received death threats. People are becoming more and more irascible, more and more disrespectful. Six years ago, it wasn’t as much.”
Employees insulted and under pressure
Employees under pressure too since everything is timed here. “A call where we just have to answer questions about an invoice, we have to be under nine minutes,” explains Céline, a call center employee for 13 years, to always answer more calls, between 30 and 40 per day. “It’s a hunt for contracts. With EDF, we have a client who is extremely demanding. If we don’t meet the charge, it hurts the company”. And we must also accept to be continuously evaluatedrated from 1 to 10, which explains, with low salaries (barely more than the minimum wage), the high turnover in call centers.
The Senate on Thursday, November 14, severely strengthened the arsenal to combat telephone canvassing by making the consumer’s “consent” a prerequisite for any unannounced commercial proposal. The bill from Senator Horizons Pierre-Jean Verzelen, adopted by the senators and now transmitted to the National Assembly, proposes “to reverse the principle” of telephone canvassing, by forcing professionals to obtain prior “consent” from all consumers.
Swiss
