Lazy Olembe meets lazy Susan
This is not really about call centres, but it's close enough.

A friend of mine used to work for a small but respected software company which wrote professional sound-editing software. They offered 24-hour tech support via a phone line which was routed through to a mobile, which was always in the hands of one product expert or another.

One evening I got invited along to a meal with a bunch of the company bigwigs, who happened to be at a show in Amsterdam at the same time my friend and I were in that city. We were in a Chinese restaurant, sitting round a large circular table with a huge revolving lazy Susan in the middle. The MD pulled the mobile out of his pocket, plopped it on the lazy Susan and announced that whenever a tech support call came through that evening, whoever was next to the phone when it rang had to deal with the problem.

Sure enough, every single time the phone rang it was next to me - the one person at the table who knew bugger all about their products. EVERY TIME. Still, as they were standing me a free meal the least I could do was have a go at solving their customers' problems. Apparently turning Windows computers off then on again really does solve a lot of problems...
( Olembe Refuses to write in this space, Thu 3 Sep 2009, 16:53, Reply)