Australian urban planning, public transport, politics, retrocomputing, and tech nerd. Recovering journo. Cat parent. Part-time miserable grump.

Cities for people, not cars! Tech for people, not investors!

  • 101 Posts
  • 388 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: November 5th, 2022
  • AJ Sadauskas@aus.socialtoMelbourne@aussie.zone•Daily discussion thread: 👾 Tuesday, May 14, 2024
    6·
    6 days ago

    @Nath @StudChud Nath, it’s great you had a good job experience.

    But not all call centre jobs are like that.

    Many call centres are micro-micromanaged.

    Adherence to work hours. Conformance to schedule. Call handling time. Calls per worked hour.

    There’s often caller feedback forms, and those irrational or malicious customers basically decide if you keep your job.

    The calls are recorded, and your team leader or dedicated contact centre staff listen in randomly.

    In many commercial organisations, there’s a mandate to upsell or cross-sell, even if it’s an angry customer who wants to close their accounts.

    In those cases, you also get judged on the average value of products you sell, and the percentage of calls you upsell on.

    You have already angry people who have just been on hold for up to an hour, and have been transferred across different departments and teams.

    And there are some men who are either creepy or misogynistic when dealing with women over the phone. And yes, clearly it’s a small minority of men. But that small minority exists, and they’re shitty.

  • AJ Sadauskas@aus.socialtoMelbourne@aussie.zone•Daily discussion thread: 👾 Tuesday, May 14, 2024
    4·
    6 days ago

    @tombruzzo @SituationCake The other thing is to keep in mind is that it’s not necessarily IT that is the “business owner” of the website.

    Sure, IT might be responsible for keeping it online. But the main decisions about it, and the responsibility for maintaining the content, belong to a different person/team/department.

    Depending on where I’ve worked, that’s been operations, content, comms/PR, and marketing.

    Even in small orgs, it’s often the CEO rather than IT who has the final say.

    And sometimes different parts of the website are managed by different people/teams/departments.

    The second thing to be mindful of is it’s not just about whether you have the WordPress skills.

    There’s often a lot of office politics in many organisations.

    People quite rightly don’t enjoy feeling like their jobs or responsibilities are being undermined.

    And they don’t want changes made in an area they’re ultimately responsible for without them knowing.

    That’s where business processes and procedures come into play.

    It might be as simple as emailing a particular person to get their sign off on you making a particular update, or notifying them afterwards.

    You also need to think about what the benefits to them are of granting you this access. Perhaps it frees up their resources for more meaningful tasks?

    And the third thing to be prepared for is if you get the admin privileges you want, suddenly other people might ask you to make changes as a shortcut around IT. You might want to push back against that.

    If I were in your position, I’d plan out the case for:

    * What the problem you want to solve is.
    * Your proposed solution. That’s not just gaining access, but also the approvals or notifications around it.
    * Restrictions and safeguards. You are only to have this level of privileges and make updates in situations x, y, and z. This helps you push back if someone else wants you to make other changes — I’m not authorised to do that.
    * The benefits to the business, including improved productivity, or customer experience.

    I’d have a chat with your boss to get them on board.

    I’d find out who the business owner(s) of the website are.

    I’d organise either an informal chat (maybe buy them coffee one day?) or a meeting to talk through the case with them.

    And finally, I’d be prepared for the answer to be a no. That’s ultimately their call. If that’s the case, your decision is whether you stick with your current job, or find a different one that makes better use of your skills.