Introduction

Clive sat opposite me in the call centre where we sold home, motor and a few other insurance-type things. As a look of panic spread across his weary face, I thought I’d best prick up my ears and listen to what was happening. He had a customer on the line who he would never forget.

Clive: Hi there, how can I help today?

Customer: Well, I thought I’d best ring you about my insurance. I’m eighty-two years old, you see.

Clive: Okay… and what can I do for you?

Customer: Well, I didn’t know if I had to inform you or not, but my doctor sent me up to the hospital for an eye test, and I’ve just been registered blind.

Clive: So are you wanting to cancel your car insurance?

Customer: Oh no, sonny. I just thought I had to tell you if I had any medical conditions in case it affected my insurance.

Clive: So you’re blind, and still driving your car?

Customer: Yes, but it’s not a problem.

Clive: This might sound like a silly question, but why is it not a problem that you’re driving when you can’t see?

Customer: Well I’ve always got Harold with me.

Clive: Is that your husband?

Customer: No, my guide dog.

Clive (stunned for a second): So let me get this straight, you’re still driving the car even though you’re blind, but it’s okay because you have your guide dog Harold in the car with you?

Customer: That’s right. He sits in the front seat and barks out instructions to help me with my driving.

Clive: It sounds awfully dangerous to me, I’m not sure if we can provide motor insurance for blind people. Let me just check through some other details on your policy first and we’ll go from there. So it says here that you’ve held your licence for thirty-seven years, is that right?

Customer: What, a driving licence?

Clive: Yeah.

Customer: Oh no, I don’t have my own, I use my husband’s.

Clive: You don’t have your own driving licence?

Customer: No, I’m a good driver, I’ve never needed to take my test. My husband said I was really good behind the wheel and that I was okay to share his licence.

Clive: So you’re blind and your guide dog directs you through traffic, and you’ve never had a driving licence?

Customer: That’s right.

Clive: Oh dear.

Welcome to the world of the Phone Monkey; a poor group of individuals who toil away in call centres across the world for very little money, usually to pay off their student debt or to earn just enough to be able to move out of their parents’ house.

After three years of going through the poverty of self-employment, I decided to dive headfirst into the world of the call centre, and this book covers my first 18 months of this long, but never boring, journey.

Day One

I’d decided to err on the side of caution and make sure I was on a bus which gave me plenty of time to get to work, which I suppose in a way it did. I was there over an hour early, and the building wasn’t even open. But still, at least it wasn’t the middle of winter and I wasn’t stood around shivering my nads off. Oh wait, yes I was.

Thankfully the receptionist turned up a few minutes later and I finally got inside, and was told where the coffee machine was… but that’s not the extent of it. It was free. All the hot drinks were free! I know to most of you this will sound like something completely normal for an office environment, but to me this was new. And VERY exciting. I was very easily pleased. So over the next forty or so minutes I trundled backwards and forwards to the coffee machine, trying a variety of different hot drinks (white tea, black tea, lattes, decaffeinated cappuccinos, a selection of soups), before the rest of my fellow Phone Monkeys arrived.

Four of us had met before, at a welcome evening which we came to the previous week, where we had discussed our hours and what the job was going to entail. The most interesting and enlightening aspect of this welcome evening was that we got to sit with actual Phone Monkeys while they did their job, and listen in to their calls. My personal Phone Monkey was Shahid, who explained the bonus scheme to me. “Basically, we can offer up to a 40% discount on most of our insurance policies, but we offer as little as possible, let’s say 5%. For each percentage point that you don’t give to the customer, you get one point on your bonus, with each point equaling roughly 5p. So if they want to renew their insurance with us then great, we know we’re getting this bonus, but if they definitely want to cancel, don’t bother trying to persuade them otherwise, just cancel it and move on to the next customer as soon as possible. Be polite but brief with them and get onto your next call, ‘cause we’re all only here for the money, it’s not a labour of love, and the next call could have a bonus attached to it.”

This opened my eyes to this strange new world. First of all, I had no idea that bonuses could be such a large amount of money; I was happy with the salary on its own, without a bonus attached to it. I worked out that I could probably earn around £100 per week just in bonuses, and suddenly my initial reservations about joining the ranks of the Phone Monkey were put to one side, in favour of me one day becoming a millionaire. I had clearly entered a whole new plane of existence where your merits as a seller would actually be reflected in your pay. More importantly, we were in Retentions, but none of the Phone Monkeys had any intention of putting any real effort into retaining their fleeing customers as there would always be another customer, with a potentially higher bonus, on the next call.

After doing the usual meet-and-greet with my five fellow New Monkeys, we were informed that our trainer was running half an hour late. Two months ago, when I passed my job interview and they sent out all the information packs, I distinctly remember there been something in there about how punctuality was their main focus, because if we were late, calls wouldn’t be answered and the business would lose money. Half an hour turned into an hour but eventually our teacher/trainer/life guru, Leanne, sauntered over and with no hint of an apology for her tardiness, threw us all into a room and began what would become the long and arduous process of training us Regular Human Beings into Phone Monkeys.

The first day was actually not too bad after that. It was a dedicated HR-day, which basically meant we sat chatting to each other from 10am to 5pm, interrupted only by coffee and meal breaks, of which there were many. Apparently this was ‘Team-Building Time’, but I didn’t understand the merits of knowing how many tattoos Laura had on her bum, or whether Jack preferred Burger King to McDonalds. I wondered if we’d be tested on this trivia in the final exam?

Roadworks began right outside work that afternoon, meaning that the bus (which would usually take 5-10 minutes from work to town) actually took an hour. So I was stuck there listening to some weird goth playing System Of A Down WAY too loud in her headphones, watching a sophisticated-looking gent pick his nose and wipe it on his seat, and wondering to myself, has that sweet old lady with her eyes closed been on this bus so long that she’s died?

Still, this was just day one. It surely couldn’t get any worse than this over the next five weeks of training, could it?

(Phone Monkey will continue every day, so please keep dropping by to catch up on all the latest goings-on.)

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