AUX 9



AUX 9 is one of the most useful AUX codes on your phone, but one that the management doesn't want you to use for more than a second, which is what you can do without AUX codes. They would prefer you to seriously f*** up an account before you make extensive use of AUX, even when you desperately need it. The theory is that you can somehow get all the work done over the phone, while talking to the guest. Unfortunately, this leads to incomplete (or no) documentation such as "I talk to gues upset with shpment", leaving you to wonder why $10,000 was refunded for no good reason. (Of course, this might be handy if you promised a $10,000 refund but had no intention of giving it to them.) Also, not all customers are talkative, which leads to a lot of dead air, which also ruins your call scoring. Also, if the customer is a bastard, dead air is unavoidable, and it's actually easier to get your work done and keep the customer happy if you let them hang up and do the work in AUX 9. If only management understood the predicament. For some reason they like having customers hang on the phone while you fill out a long form comparable to a 1090, and somehow simultaneously hold a conversation designed to keep the customer blabbering away while you try hard to do your job. Usage of the HOLD button is one idea, but it can still kill your ratings and cause the customer to hang up. So you're screwed in ten different ways.

Example:

Order 1 required a UPS "calltag", (so UPS can pick up their furniture at their house) which requires a complicated form. It also required a replacement AND documentation about why I did a replacement. Caller 2 comes in, wanting a dropship cancel (to cancel a shipment after it's already being processed at a warehouse), and soon I've got ten windows open from letting the next caller and the caller after that come in without AUX, and then I'm forgetting the first person's name and why I'm doing a calltag. And then I'm forgetting to meet all the requirements for calls because I'm busy trying to wrap the last one so I don't forget what to type. And then a customer will call in and say, "What's going on? That last rep, I think his name was Chris, told me he was taking care of it!"

I've been told to do your work while putting them on hold, or while they're using up their cel phone minutes. Don't you get it, management people? Customers don't like being put on hold. And you expect us to wrap up all our bullshit while they're listening to our awful excuse for hold music? Have you guys ever had to call a call center to get business done? No, you managerial types are too detached from what we call reality for that. Why else would they think it acceptable to force a paying customer to wait while a phone representative takes care of work that they could just as easily do off the phone and save your phone bill? I guess there's more than one way to make a customer pay.