Just a couple things to help shed some light on this.
Back in the mid 90s, before I went to work retail, I tried my hand (or mouth) at a help desk. I worked for a company that was a professional call center, and had a number of clients. They had won an expansion of their contract for a modem manufacture that had headquarters in the Chicago/Deerfield area of of Il, and our call center was on the east coast. It was only two levels of support - us at the first level, and then the manufacture's HQ. A couple things - we had to get make and model of the modem, the customer's name and info, and then try to trouble shoot the problem all under 10 minutes. A lot of times it was easy, they forgot to plug in the phone jack, or when you mention the CD-ROM try that looks like a coffee cup holder you find out that that is exactly what they think it is and do not know that you put the CD with the drivers in the CD tray, not your coffee cup.
I had one problem that interfered with me being the first level help - I have a speech impairment. I would of been good at the second level where there is not a time limit, yet speaking only 80 words per minute on average verses the 120 to 180 words per minute that most people speak, put me at a big disadvantage. My resolve rate was high, yet I would exceed my ten minute window to often. I just did not get the call transferred to the second level soon enough. And we where competing with two other call centers for customers, so we could take a large percentage of calls and win a larger contract next time.
My sister had it good, bad, bad, and good again. She works for a large bank, and when this story starts, she worked for another large bank. The first bank she was at their call center for a number of years, may not of been the senior call center rep, yet at 10+ years she was not a noob by any stretch of the imagination. The bank merged (really purchased) by another larger bank looking to expand, and the new owners where looking to cut cost. They had new policies - such as the help center had to sell the customer a new item - for example a checking account if they only had a savings account or a CD of deposit if they already had a checking account - 25% of the time (one in four calls). The newly formed larger bank also brought in some young punks to walk up and down the isles screaming at the senior employees about not making sales - it became a hostile environment designed to drive the better paid employees out.
Needless to say my sister left that new mega-bank and went to work for another bank, this time the call center was for loss prevention and recovery. While she did not have to sale any products, and you where still in a call center, the pressure was to have a 100% recovery of any losses reported, not a time clock to compete with. Get a new salesperson who does not understand that they are to hang onto a credit card while calling the merchant for authorization and your 100% recovery just tanked. My sister chose not to go though those headaches, and so she is back on a regular customer help desk now - just with the big time clients who do not understand why their card is not working at the pump while trying to fill up their private jet. While this is the same bank that wants 100% recovery on their losses, they are willing to have people help the customers, even if it takes more than just a couple minutes.
Just trying to provide a little insight into what is going on behind the sense.
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