Supervisor Snacks

“Hello?  Hello!?  Are you still there?” DEAD AIR on a phone call is, well, just deadly to the caller.  It is so frustrating to ask a question and hear silence.  Even if one asks a question and the response is, “Let me check” and then silence - it can’t go on too long or the caller will think they have been disconnected. Nearly all call centers have some accounts where time is needed to look up information.  In almost every instance we are careful to let the caller know we are looking something up and we let them know fairly frequently that we are still looking.  Occasionally, agents become so involved in the search for information that they forget to let the caller know what they are doing. It is difficult to break your concentration when you are searching and/or reading, but the caller hearing dead air should not be left wondering what is happening for 2 or 3 minutes at a time – even 30 seconds is too long.  When you need time to search for informatio...

Astronaut Scott Kelly spent most of 2015 in space and has just finished his memoir of the 340-day journey. In his book, Endurance – A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery”, he writes, “I’ve learned to better compartmentalize, which doesn’t mean forgetting about feelings but instead means focusing on the things I can control and forgetting what I can’t.” The ability to compartmentalize feelings is one of the most important personal skills we can acquire. To understand what we can change and what we can’t, and to bury that which we can not change, gives us the power to do more and better things in life. When our brain is busy fighting the frustration of negative things, it uses energy that we could be putting to good use for growth. Those conversations we have in our heads, the woulda, coulda, shoulda that are out of our hands should also be out of our heads. Some people imagine a box in their heads where they stuff negative thoughts and lock it with a key. Others use self-discipline t...