You'll also need a food dehydrator.
Think I'm kidding?
It's commonly used in the recording industry to get reel-to-reel tape to "re-adhere" the magnetic coating to the plastic. After about 10 years, and certainly after 20, the tape becomes brittle and the magnetic material just flakes off. I have read several articles (from the early 90's when I was a sound engineer) about how a food dehydrator like this one is perfect for treating the tape, since the reels fit right inside it. I think you leave it in for about 24 hours and the tape comes out like new, and the temperature is low enough not to damage the magnetic layer.
It depends on the size of the group of agents you are measuring. A small call center (200 agents) will see a spike in AHT when a new pool of agents start. Larger call centers (4K agents) won't see that spike since 20 new agents wont put much of a dent in the average. The larger the call center, the more emphasis there is on AHT since any change in AHT can have huge implications on operating costs.
That sucks and is not at all what my former employer was like. And no, I was never an agent but I talked to enough of them to know what it was like. Like I said, the company is a (very large) bank, so no tech support calls, just servicing accounts.
Most people seemed pretty happy with the job and there was always room for advancement; ie. most teams only had 10 people on them so if you stayed on for a few years, it wasn't hard to get a job as a team-leader.
Escalating calls is never a technical challenge (I've done routing scripts hundreds of times that do just that), but simply a business decision.
Most businesses don't encourage it because it's expensive. As you move up the knowledge chain, the cost of the call increases almost exponentially because the expertise you are bogarting isn't cheap.
eg. for a tech-support call, it's incredibly difficult to weed out callers who actually know what they are talking about vs the typical moron who doesn't know what to do with the mouse.
This is why companies that buy corporate support contracts (usually) get better tech support: the guy calling them is probably from a help desk and knows how to intelligently phrase a technical question.
Basically, if you gave someone an option in an IVR, "would you like to talk to a dumb-ass or would you like to talk to someone who actually knows what they're talking about", you're call center costs would increase x10, and if, as a caller, you selected the second option, you'd be in queue for a week.
I get your point, but to management, anything similar to this project would fall under training. And just for the record, most agents (depending on the company) get ongoing training. eg. new products, new procedures, new software. blah blah.
In fact, where I use to work, if a new piece of software was installed on the desktop that the agents had to know how to use, the software couldn't be installed until the agents had taken a class on how to use it.
Most call centers have higher than normal attrition.
Ex. My former employer is a very large bank with a huge number of agents; I worked in the same building that also housed about 1500 agents. (This was one of 15 different call centers for the bank.) The agents were paid very well considering the education/experience requirements for the job, and their working conditions were very good too; flexible hours, a couple of paid breaks during the work day, and a very relaxed dress code for a bank. Despite all this, the call center's attrition was around double compared to the rest of the bank.
My point is, turnover is always an issue for call centers and no piece of software will change that.
For the record, NO, I don't work for Accenture. There are many MANY consulting companies out there that do exactly what you describe. My company does some consulting (and our customers are very happy with both our service and rates) but we mostly do software sales now.
I keep my company life and/. life separate so any rants I make here doesn't reflect on the business, but if you're really interested in learning more about the company I work for, send me an email: eggoeater__nospamplease__@yahhooo.com.
(remove underscores, spam, and correct spelling of yahoo.)
I'm a call center engineer.
It will affect metrics. Without any doubt.
To the call center managers it's all about AHT (average handling time.)
In larger call centers (4000+ agents), shaving 1 second off of AHT will save you $100K a month.
A lot of the products my company sells is all about analysis of call data (MIS) and the ability to better route the call to reduce AHT.
The only way these types of projects/products get sold is to convince the managers that it will help solve the customers problem so they don't need to call back, thus saving money.
It's INCREDIBLY difficult to get a call center manager to spend money on training agents how to better service their customers.
Yup. The conspiracy nuts will love this one.
Although, if you were famous and wanted to "disappear", this seems like the way to do it. The high mountains (~10k ft) prevented his plane from being found right away, and the lack of a body (or parts thereof) is easily dismissed in a wooded, snowy part of the country.
Re:a bunch of questions
on
C# In-Depth
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· Score: 1
Where VB uses the word Begin , C# uses the character {. That's practically no difference whatsoever.
That's a poor example. There are other ways (like events I mentioned above, and static methods/variables) in which they are NOTHING alike, either syntactically or semantically. In these cases functionality was compromised or dropped to fit the VB model and make it "feel" like VB6. ie. The language designers had to compromise to make the transition as easy as possible for all the VB6 programmers out there to move to.net.
Now that developers are use to VB, they've stopped trying to shoe-horn new features into the VB mold. eg The syntax for LINQ is almost identical from VB to C#.
But then I guess C# devs wouldn't feel so superior....
No, I'd still feel superior.:)
Re:a bunch of questions
on
C# In-Depth
·
· Score: 1
I use both C# and VB.Net. It blows my mind how the ignants out there blast VB.Net, while happily code away in C#, a language that at best is slightly syntactically dissimilar.
The difference is readability (and thus debugging). Reading VB gives me a headache. All those Begin..Ends..ugh. I can read c# much faster because it's easier to format. eg. I put open braces on the same line as an if or while statement. Putting a Begin on the same line as a statement looks weird; putting it on the next line takes up space. Don't get me started on assigning/handling events with VB. ugh.
Syntactically they are very far apart. (I believe you meant slightly semantically dissimilar.)
I don't know Delphi but if you think it's a retarded VB, then that's pretty bad because I've always though of VB as a retarded version of Pascal, which I dropped cold after learning c++. VB has that feel that it was designed for 6 year-olds learning to program.
Re:oh goody.
on
C# In-Depth
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· Score: 2, Informative
In Java, it's pretty clear that you are requesting or modifying a property of the object.
Really? The paranthesis after the method name inclines me to think of it as a function, and I prefer using assignments vs a function call; it's easier to read and debug.
eg. blah.Prop = someFunct(); is easier to read than blah.setProp(someFunct());
In C#, you are using assignment to represent that mechanism so you might be accessing a public member variable directly or calling a method to achieve that end.
Which is kind of the point... a property is exposed as if it were a public member. I don't/care/ if I'm assigning to a property or a public member.
To me, the Java method is more explicit and therefore less prone to error.
What? Can you give me an example of how it is less prone to error?
I program in Java too, but I prefer c#. I see c# as an improved version of java. The designers of c# learned from their mistakes.
The largest number of calls to the FCC from Wilmington were from viewers of the NBC affiliate, WECT-TV. That station's analog broadcast covers far more ground than its digital signal, meaning some viewers could watch that channel before the switchover but not afterward. A total of 553 complaints were attributed to that issue.
So it wasn't a problem with the receivers or the tvs, it was the stupid TV station not putting out enough juice.
Yeah. The Twin Towers should have toppled over, but instead, they blew up like a building that was being imploded for demolition.
It figures that today of all days would bring out the conspiracy theories. So you're saying that a building weighing probably millions of tons could topple over a specific and single pivot point?
Also, the melting point of the steel used in the Twin Towers is actually about 400 degrees HOTTER than the temperature at which jet fuel burns.
If the jet fuel is out in the open, where heat can dissipate, that would be true. But this was a whole LOT of fuel in an enclosed space, so as the fuel burnt, the steel could keep getting hotter and hotter. Burning fuel = energy released. If the energy cant escape, it builds up in the form of heat.
The Twin Towers would also be the first example in history of a steel building where the steel failed due to fire.
And the thousands of tons that slammed into it at high velocity had nothing to do with it? (Actually, I'm guessing that had something to do with it, but not sure.) If you're spinning theories here, you need to stick to WTC building 7, the collapse of which was thoroughly studied, and concluded that fire alone was the result of it's collapse.
Agreed. It's a bit of flame-bait mentioning them in the summary when the exchange is being tight-lipped about what the root-cause is (if they even know at this point.) I do a lot of.NET stuff and, like other platforms eg. Java, there's many things that could cause problems, like plain old programming bugs.
Agreed. And the question in the discussion is: where's the appropriate middle ground? I'm betting the Chinese aren't doing an environmental impact study. And if your current residence is where the tracks are going to be, then you just got displaced and good luck finding someone to complain to, much less someone to sue. i.e. We cant build stuff like this at all because of civil rights and they can build stuff like this all too easily because of a lack of civil rights.
Sure, it is not very private, nor can it be considered to be self-cleaning. But they aren't very attractive hideouts for prostitution and drug use either.
Actually, when I was on vacation in Seattle in '04, I had to use the public restrooms at Pike Place. The doors on the stalls were maybe 3 feet high so cops can see you from the torso up to (1) make sure you're alone and (2) not doing drugs. Luckily it was a Sunday morning and there wasn't anyone else in there. Also, it was fairly clean for a public restroom in downtown Seattle.
Who marked parent offtopic?
Unfortunatly they'll probably get away with it. From Wikipedia:
A law may have an ex post facto effect without being technically ex post facto. For example, when a law repeals a previous law, the repealed legislation no longer applies to the situations it once did, even if such situations arose before the law was repealed. The principle of prohibiting the continued application of these kinds of laws is also known as Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali.
The other thing he emphasizes in that book that I really like, is the fact that there's so much in science we don't know about. Most people, esp. kids, think that a lot of science is "done". He makes the case that there's still a lot we don't know, despite how certain some scientists act. His enthusiasm for science and for it's teaching is very evident.
I've read the book multiple times and listened to the audio book. The audio book, although well read by the author, is actually heavily abridged; you lose a lot of the good anecdotes that are in the book. My favorite one that wasn't in the audio book is about an 18th or 19th century astronomer that traveled to India to make accurate measurements of the transit of Venus. His voyage was delayed and was at sea during the transit but decided to stick around (12 years) until the next transit. The big day came and clouds rolled in just in time to obscure his viewing. On the trip back he got sick and had to spend a year in Africa. By the time he limped back home, nothing to show for his trip, he found out his family had had him declared dead, and looted his estate.
That book is great and is chocked full of historical anecdotes like that. It's also very well researched.
"WTFey"
I hadn't seen WTF adjective-ised before, but I love it... there's just so much I can use it with. In fact, I gotta go now and tell my boss how my project is going....
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You'll also need a food dehydrator.
Think I'm kidding?
It's commonly used in the recording industry to get reel-to-reel tape to "re-adhere" the magnetic coating to the plastic.
After about 10 years, and certainly after 20, the tape becomes brittle and the magnetic material just flakes off.
I have read several articles (from the early 90's when I was a sound engineer) about how a food dehydrator like this one is perfect for treating the tape, since the reels fit right inside it.
I think you leave it in for about 24 hours and the tape comes out like new, and the temperature is low enough not to damage the magnetic layer.
It depends on the size of the group of agents you are measuring. A small call center (200 agents) will see a spike in AHT when a new pool of agents start. Larger call centers (4K agents) won't see that spike since 20 new agents wont put much of a dent in the average.
The larger the call center, the more emphasis there is on AHT since any change in AHT can have huge implications on operating costs.
That sucks and is not at all what my former employer was like. And no, I was never an agent but I talked to enough of them to know what it was like. Like I said, the company is a (very large) bank, so no tech support calls, just servicing accounts.
Most people seemed pretty happy with the job and there was always room for advancement; ie. most teams only had 10 people on them so if you stayed on for a few years, it wasn't hard to get a job as a team-leader.
Escalating calls is never a technical challenge (I've done routing scripts hundreds of times that do just that), but simply a business decision.
Most businesses don't encourage it because it's expensive. As you move up the knowledge chain, the cost of the call increases almost exponentially because the expertise you are bogarting isn't cheap.
eg. for a tech-support call, it's incredibly difficult to weed out callers who actually know what they are talking about vs the typical moron who doesn't know what to do with the mouse.
This is why companies that buy corporate support contracts (usually) get better tech support: the guy calling them is probably from a help desk and knows how to intelligently phrase a technical question.
Basically, if you gave someone an option in an IVR, "would you like to talk to a dumb-ass or would you like to talk to someone who actually knows what they're talking about", you're call center costs would increase x10, and if, as a caller, you selected the second option, you'd be in queue for a week.
I get your point, but to management, anything similar to this project would fall under training.
And just for the record, most agents (depending on the company) get ongoing training. eg. new products, new procedures, new software. blah blah.
In fact, where I use to work, if a new piece of software was installed on the desktop that the agents had to know how to use, the software couldn't be installed until the agents had taken a class on how to use it.
Most call centers have higher than normal attrition.
Ex. My former employer is a very large bank with a huge number of agents; I worked in the same building that also housed about 1500 agents. (This was one of 15 different call centers for the bank.) The agents were paid very well considering the education/experience requirements for the job, and their working conditions were very good too; flexible hours, a couple of paid breaks during the work day, and a very relaxed dress code for a bank. Despite all this, the call center's attrition was around double compared to the rest of the bank.
My point is, turnover is always an issue for call centers and no piece of software will change that.
Correct, to avoid spam... but mostly in vain... I've been using that address for years and get tons of spam.
For the record, NO, I don't work for Accenture. There are many MANY consulting companies out there that do exactly what you describe. My company does some consulting (and our customers are very happy with both our service and rates) but we mostly do software sales now.
/. life separate so any rants I make here doesn't reflect on the business, but if you're really interested in learning more about the company I work for, send me an email: eggoeater__nospamplease__@yahhooo.com.
(remove underscores, spam, and correct spelling of yahoo.)
I keep my company life and
I'm a call center engineer.
It will affect metrics. Without any doubt.
To the call center managers it's all about AHT (average handling time.)
In larger call centers (4000+ agents), shaving 1 second off of AHT will save you $100K a month.
A lot of the products my company sells is all about analysis of call data (MIS) and the ability to better route the call to reduce AHT.
The only way these types of projects/products get sold is to convince the managers that it will help solve the customers problem so they don't need to call back, thus saving money.
It's INCREDIBLY difficult to get a call center manager to spend money on training agents how to better service their customers.
But all that aside, I wish you luck.
Yup. The conspiracy nuts will love this one.
Although, if you were famous and wanted to "disappear", this seems like the way to do it. The high mountains (~10k ft) prevented his plane from being found right away, and the lack of a body (or parts thereof) is easily dismissed in a wooded, snowy part of the country.
Where VB uses the word Begin , C# uses the character {. That's practically no difference whatsoever.
That's a poor example. There are other ways (like events I mentioned above, and static methods/variables) in which they are NOTHING alike, either syntactically or semantically. In these cases functionality was compromised or dropped to fit the VB model and make it "feel" like VB6. ie. The language designers had to compromise to make the transition as easy as possible for all the VB6 programmers out there to move to .net.
Now that developers are use to VB, they've stopped trying to shoe-horn new features into the VB mold. eg The syntax for LINQ is almost identical from VB to C#.
But then I guess C# devs wouldn't feel so superior....
No, I'd still feel superior. :)
I use both C# and VB .Net. It blows my mind how the ignants out there blast VB.Net, while happily code away in C#, a language that at best is slightly syntactically dissimilar.
The difference is readability (and thus debugging). Reading VB gives me a headache. All those Begin..Ends..ugh. I can read c# much faster because it's easier to format. eg. I put open braces on the same line as an if or while statement. Putting a Begin on the same line as a statement looks weird; putting it on the next line takes up space. Don't get me started on assigning/handling events with VB. ugh.
Syntactically they are very far apart. (I believe you meant slightly semantically dissimilar.)
I don't know Delphi but if you think it's a retarded VB, then that's pretty bad because I've always though of VB as a retarded version of Pascal, which I dropped cold after learning c++.
VB has that feel that it was designed for 6 year-olds learning to program.
In Java, it's pretty clear that you are requesting or modifying a property of the object.
Really? The paranthesis after the method name inclines me to think of it as a function, and I prefer using assignments vs a function call; it's easier to read and debug.
eg. blah.Prop = someFunct(); is easier to read than blah.setProp(someFunct());
In C#, you are using assignment to represent that mechanism so you might be accessing a public member variable directly or calling a method to achieve that end.
Which is kind of the point... a property is exposed as if it were a public member. I don't /care/ if I'm assigning to a property or a public member.
To me, the Java method is more explicit and therefore less prone to error.
What? Can you give me an example of how it is less prone to error?
I program in Java too, but I prefer c#. I see c# as an improved version of java. The designers of c# learned from their mistakes.
So it wasn't a problem with the receivers or the tvs, it was the stupid TV station not putting out enough juice.
Yeah. The Twin Towers should have toppled over, but instead, they blew up like a building that was being imploded for demolition.
It figures that today of all days would bring out the conspiracy theories. So you're saying that a building weighing probably millions of tons could topple over a specific and single pivot point?
Also, the melting point of the steel used in the Twin Towers is actually about 400 degrees HOTTER than the temperature at which jet fuel burns.
If the jet fuel is out in the open, where heat can dissipate, that would be true. But this was a whole LOT of fuel in an enclosed space, so as the fuel burnt, the steel could keep getting hotter and hotter. Burning fuel = energy released. If the energy cant escape, it builds up in the form of heat.
The Twin Towers would also be the first example in history of a steel building where the steel failed due to fire.
And the thousands of tons that slammed into it at high velocity had nothing to do with it? (Actually, I'm guessing that had something to do with it, but not sure.) If you're spinning theories here, you need to stick to WTC building 7, the collapse of which was thoroughly studied, and concluded that fire alone was the result of it's collapse.
Agreed. It's a bit of flame-bait mentioning them in the summary when the exchange is being tight-lipped about what the root-cause is (if they even know at this point.) I do a lot of .NET stuff and, like other platforms eg. Java, there's many things that could cause problems, like plain old programming bugs.
Yeah. The first thing I thought of were the posters in the movie Brazil. Things like:
"Don't suspect a friend, report him."
Agreed. And the question in the discussion is: where's the appropriate middle ground?
I'm betting the Chinese aren't doing an environmental impact study. And if your current residence is where the tracks are going to be, then you just got displaced and good luck finding someone to complain to, much less someone to sue. i.e. We cant build stuff like this at all because of civil rights and they can build stuff like this all too easily because of a lack of civil rights.
Germany has the largest economy in continental Europe.
Sure, it is not very private, nor can it be considered to be self-cleaning. But they aren't very attractive hideouts for prostitution and drug use either.
Actually, when I was on vacation in Seattle in '04, I had to use the public restrooms at Pike Place. The doors on the stalls were maybe 3 feet high so cops can see you from the torso up to (1) make sure you're alone and (2) not doing drugs. Luckily it was a Sunday morning and there wasn't anyone else in there. Also, it was fairly clean for a public restroom in downtown Seattle.
Unfortunatly they'll probably get away with it. From Wikipedia:
The other thing he emphasizes in that book that I really like, is the fact that there's so much in science we don't know about. Most people, esp. kids, think that a lot of science is "done". He makes the case that there's still a lot we don't know, despite how certain some scientists act. His enthusiasm for science and for it's teaching is very evident.
I've read the book multiple times and listened to the audio book. The audio book, although well read by the author, is actually heavily abridged; you lose a lot of the good anecdotes that are in the book.
My favorite one that wasn't in the audio book is about an 18th or 19th century astronomer that traveled to India to make accurate measurements of the transit of Venus. His voyage was delayed and was at sea during the transit but decided to stick around (12 years) until the next transit. The big day came and clouds rolled in just in time to obscure his viewing. On the trip back he got sick and had to spend a year in Africa. By the time he limped back home, nothing to show for his trip, he found out his family had had him declared dead, and looted his estate.
That book is great and is chocked full of historical anecdotes like that. It's also very well researched.
"WTFey"
I hadn't seen WTF adjective-ised before, but I love it... there's just so much I can use it with. In fact, I gotta go now and tell my boss how my project is going....