As I sat down to write this morning it occurred to me that I’ve been blogging for a year now. Wow. Two years ago the idea of having my own web site was non existent and so was the idea of blogging. I didn’t launch my own site until I was ready to start blogging and keep at it. Because I like to write, I took to it like that proverbial fish in water, blogging not only here, but on No Jitter and UC-Strategies.com as well. I can’t say it’s always easy as I have to slot it in with everything else, but I still like it.
So, on my one year anniversary, am I going to blog about something earth shattering? How about a big announcement? No. I’m just going to write about an observation I made this week. I know that I’m not alone in being a contact center analyst that often queries agents as to where their contact center is, how many agents are at their site, or what equipment they are using – it is just professional curiosity. Sometimes I end up in the most interesting conversations with agents. Most of the time I end up telling them that I appreciate what they are doing, even if they are trying to get money from me, because I know they have tough jobs. Working at home I get a lot of outbound calls from agents too, which gives me plenty of brain fodder to work with.
This week I got a number of calls including a few where agents asked me if I wanted to renew magazine subscriptions. At the end of these calls the agents inevitably ask for some identifying piece of information so that they can appease their auditors that the calls were legit. Typically these questions are simple ones, such as what color are your eyes, what is your mother’s maiden name, or what city were you born in. This week it was different. For the first time and in two separate calls they asked me how many siblings I have.
Oops. Out popped a comment from me about how this question was one that I hadn’t heard before but had now heard it twice in a week, which elicited an interesting response from the agent. He said that he has to ask it, of course, but that sometimes they have to ask questions that make him uncomfortable. He said that it makes him really uncomfortable to have to ask another guy what color are his eyes. In fact, he said that on days that he logs in and sees that question he knows its going to be a long day.
I have no idea who decides on the questions that agents have to use, but I’m just wondering if those supervisors or auditors ever consider that what seems to them to be an innocuous question, just might make an agent feel uncomfortable. It’s something to think about.