Why we should all spend some time working in a call centre

What a wicked world that we live in. Fistfights at political rallies, death threats on social media, plenty of public shamings to go around… Things have gotten so bad now that you can be branded as a traitor just for talking to the other side.

What people seem to be forgetting is that there are real-life human beings on the other side of that divide, actual people sitting behind those computer screens, who may not share your opinions, but still have feelings — they live, breathe, and hurt just like we do. In a society where we’re shooting cops and chanting “Lock her up,” where many believe that if you’re not with us, you’re wrong, it often seems that empathy falls by the wayside. We’re mad as hell, and woe to anyone who stands in our way — even if that person has their own valid reason to see things differently than we do.

Our biggest problem is that we can’t put ourselves in other people’s shoes

Pretty much every major news story these days has people screaming for someone to be arrested — if not worse — on social media. Perhaps the one that scared me the most was when that family from Nebraska lost their two-year-old son to an alligator attack at Walt Disney World. Many people — not everybody, but a sizable, vicious mob — were calling for the parents to be charged with negligence, to have their (other) kids taken away, because they let their young son out of their sight long enough for disaster to strike.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. You just lost your child in a terrible, unlikely, freak accident, and now you’re faced with a screaming horde on social media, people who have no idea what you’re going through, but are pretty sure it’s your own damn fault. How would that make YOU feel? Instead of jumping on the bandwagon and playing the blame game, it would be helpful to put yourself in these parents’ shoes, and use empathy to temper your reactions accordingly.

My crash course in empathy came at a call centre

Now, to the point of this article. I sometimes feel like I must have superpowers when it comes to delaying judgement and displaying empathy to people — at least when I compare myself to the chanting hordes online or at a political convention. It’s taken some time for me to realize why I tend to see things differently, but it’s probably because I started my career in a call centre. While it’s been a few years since I was answering phones, many lessons from that first job have remained with me today:

Lesson 1: Don’t dig your own hole; help them out of theirs

Like I said, my first job out of school was at a call centre. I also had a summer job at a call centre when I was still in school. In both cases, we were given pretty extensive training before they let anybody on the phones to take calls — not just training on how to use the computer systems, but how to deal with people. Some of this stuff, they don’t teach in school…but they really should.

One of our first lessons was on showing empathy, and the difference between empathy and sympathy. We were told to imagine that someone had fallen in a deep hole, and instead of putting ourselves in the hole with them (which would be sympathy), we should recognize and realize how much it must suck to be in that hole — and then do our best to help them get out of it. This kind of thinking comes in handy when you spend your days dealing with people who’ve been in car accidents, are dealing with break-ins, or had their homes damaged by a storm.

Lesson 2: The first thing you ask is “Are you OK?”

When you’re taking calls from people in miserable situations all day — or simply scrolling through the sordid stories on your Facebook news feed — all this tragedy can start to become routine. For you, it might be just another call, just another shooting, or just another case of someone misusing their privilege. But for that person, in that moment, this is probably one of, if not the worst thing that has ever happened to them. And if you don’t treat this situation and this person with the understanding and the empathy they deserve, you might end up making a bad situation worse. Suffice to say, you won’t last long at any call centre if you can’t be kind and caring towards other people…unless, of course, you’re working in a boiler room for Jordan Belfort. (I highly doubt empathy was in his training manual.)

Lesson 3: Yes, people will be nasty sometimes. You still need to stay calm.

This faceless nastiness didn’t start with social media — although there’s no doubt that it’s been amplified by Facebook and Twitter. I can still remember some really nasty calls from 10 years ago, where I was just being torn apart by a complete stranger on the other end of the line. In those days, about the worst they could do was threaten to go to the newspapers. (Oh, how times have changed…)

When you work at a call centre, you start every call by collecting the caller’s personal information, so you can find them in your system. I was always amazed when someone would rip into me right after giving me their name, address, phone number and vehicle information. This person is no longer anonymous to me; in fact, I could potentially do a lot of damage to them with the information they just gave me. But that still didn’t stop them from treating me like a piece of shit.

Any fantasies of me shipping a bag of shit to them as revenge would usually die down by the next call — or by the time my supervisor took over that one. But it goes without saying that taking any kind of vindictive measures against a nasty customer would only make an unpleasant situation much worse for both of us.

Lesson 4: They’re not mad at you, they’re mad at your organization

Occasionally, a more conscientious complainant would say something like “I know it’s not your fault, but (insert grievance here).” These people tended to be somewhat more pleasant to deal with than the threatening ones. They also usually wanted to speak with a supervisor.

But while you might not have a supervisor to help you out on Twitter, I think it’s important to keep that line in mind. This stranger hating on you online probably doesn’t hate you personally — they just hate that Donald Trump is running for president, or that there’s a Ghostbusters remake where they’re all women. (Even if they won’t admit it, there’s likely an underlying cause to their anger.)

Of course, personal attacks are always uncalled for — and at one call centre where I worked, you were allowed to hang up if they crossed the line. Mind you, things didn’t usually get that nasty; this is 2007 we’re talking about.

Lesson 5: You’re going to have to take a lot of shit. Suck it up and soldier on!

Don’t get me wrong, some people aren’t cut out for call centre work. One guy in my training class got so scared that he quit the day he was supposed to start taking calls. And I think every call-centre veteran has at least one dramatic resignation story that they’ve witnessed in their office. But those of us who stuck it out and took the crap usually came out smelling better at the end of the day.

Speaking for myself, I know that my early-career call-centre experience made me stronger, thicker-skinned and more mindful of others. It’s also planted the seeds of empathy deeply in me; rarely do I look at a stressful situation without thinking about what the other person might be going through. That doesn’t mean I always cater to their whims — there are some truly nasty people out there who can be awfully hard to empathise with — but if I understand what’s driving them, it can help me steer things in the right direction.

Do you have any call centre stories you’d like to share? Feel free to leave me a comment and recommend this post!