Hi friends! Here is to share with you experiences with taking up full time customer service job in Nigeria.
After my mandatory one year youth service, I went home to spend some time with my parents. I then took a part time teaching job while I continued applying for good paying jobs anywhere in Nigeria.
My first interview invite was for a personal assistant role at a security agency but the boss there was trying to take advantage of me. So I ended up ignoring the offer.
I was in and out of a few jobs before I finally got an offer in to join the customer service team of a bank. I had prior experience in this field because of a job I did earlier for just two months, so I thought it could only get better. But I was wrong. You can never get use to the stress in that job.
Fun fact: Customer service representatives have phobia for picking calls. If you know any customer service representative, please check on the person weekly. If you're within close distance please avoid calling on phone. Just visit in person and give him or her lots of hugs.
Back to my experience. The first week I resumed my new job I found it less tasking because contrary to the company I left, I could take drinks or snacks to my work table here. I could split my one hour break into two and observe them at any time of the day If I so choose. Also there was refrigerator, microwave, kettle heater, television and a whole lot of other things to make work less stressful here. I especially liked the fact that the convenience here was way cleaner and better. To top it, my salary was no longer commission based, where I hardly make up to $100 in a month before. My salary was now a fixed amount of $140 in a month with HMO and 'thirteenth month'. Sweet you say?
Well, this was in the expensive city of Lagos. I couldn't afford my own place so I squatted with my friend before I got married and eventually moved out.
It was so stressful because, I would work from Monday to Friday logging in 7:30am and closing 5:30pm.
I'd wake up 5am to prepare and join the early bus to avoid getting caught up in the every crazy Lagos morning traffic only to return home by 9pm because aside facing the evening traffic which was unavoidable, I had to stay back immediately after 5:30pm to submit my report, have it checked and approved. There were days it was it was my turn to do the overall team report and that meant extra time waiting for colleagues to drop their own reports. I'd be lucky I'd each and every one of them dropped correct reports and I did have to advise the person to look through for corrections.
In almost a year of leaving home for the city, I has lost so much weight. I couldn't cook my own meal so I was eating food from restaurants and that meant eating so little and spend from my peanut salary for food and water. Not to mention cost of transportation.
I spent some more months there because I knew I was there for the experience and not the money. As much as I am happy I got the experience, I'm kind of sad I didn't make out time for an alternative source of income. Though time was tight but I could have started my YouTube channel earlier than now or even blog here if I knew about these two things then much earlier. Non the less, it OK to start where you are and that was exactly what I did.
My entrepreneurial journey from June 2020 when I resigned from the 7:30am to 5:30pm world till now is a discussion for another. However, I can proudly say so far, so good!
Oh! I forgot to mention that I don't like to hear the sound of ringing phone again because customer service work spoiled it for me. I practically hear the sound of a ringing phone on my head after work. Such was the effect of putting on headset for most hours of the day. A young and vibrant colleague of mine actually slumped and died because of the stressful nature of our work.
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