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A long long time ago, in a town not too far from where I am now, I did quite a turn in a call center for mobile phones. After a couple years, and with the impending smartphone boom, I managed to work my way into a Tier 2 tech support position. Which was awesome: fewer fights about late fees and other miscellaneous crap, I got more buttons I could press–and oh BOY do I like buttons–and a little relief from handle time concerns.
Now, at the time, the dominant smartphone was named after not a fruit, but a berry. For a while EVERYONE thought they needed them for email, and the messaging thing was cool, and they had the little ball thing that moved the cursor around, but unless you had used the damn things from the days of the monochrome predecessors, they were just a pain in the ass to learn. Or teach.
Scene set, call beeps in, and the customer care agent lets me know, this gal just got her new device and wanted to know how it worked, and because of the type of device, they figured they should get her to us. What did she need help with exactly, I ask, looking at my schedule and seeing my looming break time…to which I get a noninformative ‘iunno, can I bring her on through?’
Well, at least you were nice enough to conference the call pal. Sure.
And for the next two and a half hours, I answered every question there was to be answered about this phone. How to email. How to navigate the menus. How to browse the web. How to send messages. Many of these things at least twice. Maybe even the rules to BrickBreaker a couple times. Break time came and went, lunch time came and went, managers were checking to make sure not that I was ok, but that my phone wasn’t messed up. And then, seemingly satisfied, she wanted to let my manager know how well I did.
Blissfully, my manager was out. But I could send her to her voicemail and she could leave a message…and yes, she’d get a call back Monday. Finally, I’m free.
Come Monday. Manager calls back. Gets showered with praise for me. Has more questions. And manager has me call her back to help again. At least on that I got my damn break first.
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