Firstly, I would commend you on the way you have approached the question. The majority of people in a similar situation would consider this issue to be “someone else’s” fault. You have clearly taken personal ownership of the situation. While it’s difficult to give you specific advice without knowing how this role fits into your life today and your future plans, I feel that it’s important that you ask yourself a series of questions:

The first question would be whether or not you are in the right job. A major dilemma for many call centres is that they recruit staff who are highly motivated self-starters and then put them into a position and environment where this type of person becomes bored and frustrated. This is particularly true in directory inquiry positions where the nature of the work is highly repetitive by its ever nature. There are plenty of other call centres where the type of work is less repetitive and you may want to consider them. When we give career guidance to people in the call centre industry, we always go through a series of questions with each candidate and we always find that the candidate has the answers within themselves. You’ve taken the first step of asking the first question and now it’s time to ask yourself the follow up questions. Why are you frustrated? What can you do to change this? What resources do you have that can change this?

The second thing to ask yourself is whether there is anything you can do to make the work less repetitive. You may not fully appreciate the importance of your role. With so many calls which appear to be very similar, it’s often very easy to view the role as a type of production line but this simply isn’t true. It’s always worthwhile remembering that the days of free directory service have long gone and that anyone who’s calling you is doing so because they urgently need assistance. If it wasn’t urgent, then they would have searched the internet for the number for free. If you look at the role from this perspective, I’m sure there is plenty for you to do to enhance the experience for the caller and you will be amazed at how rewarding this can be.

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The third thing I would ask yourself is what you can to develop yourself within your current role. Within all of us, there is a burning desire to learn and in this role, it may seem that you’re not learning anything. If we’re not learning and constantly challenging ourselves, it is very easy to get frustrated. I have been into so many call-centres full of agents with a similar situation to yourself and asked them what they can do to expand their own skills. Most people will normally remain silent but the few who do speak are generally the people with negative opinions. They feel that it’s the company’s responsibility to provide them with opportunities to learn. Whilst it’s true that successful companies actively encourage their staff to develop new skills, the ultimate responsibility for your own success is within yourself. Based on the way you asked your initial question, it seems to me that you already recognise this and so you’re already one step ahead of everyone else. Of course, the skeptics might say that there are no opportunities to develop due to the way the company operates. A few years ago, I did some consultancy work in Manila with what I would describe as one of the worst call centre operations I have ever seen.

On the day I started, the Telecoms Manager (Paolo) quit to go and work at a job in America where he his salary would be $60,000 a year which was $54,000 more than he was earning in Manila. I sat down and asked him why he was leaving but obviously I had a hunch that money would be behind it. What struck me was not his reasons for leaving but how he’d managed to put himself in such a position of opportunity. He had previously been an agent in the call centre and realised he wanted more. Paolo’s shift finished at 6am and would always spend 2 hours with the previous telecommunications manager in his spare time learning how the system worked. When the previous telecommunications manager left, he became the only person with any knowledge of the phone system and so assumed the job. The company owner didn’t increase his salary for his new responsibilities but Paolo was not too concerned as he was still learning and knew what his life plan was. Sceptics might say that this is an extreme situation for someone to have a 1500% pay rise and indeed it is. However, I can guarantee that anyone who can find enough powerful reasons to take control of their own development will do so. I can also guarantee that there are always opportunities to develop yourself in any call centre position. It’s just a matter of where you look for them.

The fourth and final question I would ask is “What can you do to assist your team-leader or others in making the job less mundane?” At CallCentrePeople.com, we are one of the largest recruiters of call centre team-leaders in the country. We never cease to be amazed by the amount of team-leaders who believe their job is limited to sending emails, dealing with supervisor calls and doing paperwork. From your question, I assume that your team-leader may well be one of these people. A good team-leader spends so much of their time coaching their staff that they would understand your frustrations and would have guided you to develop a plan to improve this. Whilst it would be very easy to blame the team-leader, it’s worthwhile appreciating that they probably learnt their approach from their line manager who failed to coach them effectively too.

It’s therefore worth thinking about how you could manage your team-leader to get them to help you to overcome these frustrations. A team-leader who fails to coach effectively generally works in a reactive state dealing with issues as they come along and since they would not see your frustrations as urgent, then they will probably put a low priority on understanding them and working with you to overcome them. In 2004, I was in a meeting in a call centre that I was outsourcing some work to. While I was waiting for my meeting, I overheard a conversation through the paper-thin partitions.

An aspiring agent was telling her overly-stressed team-leader what she was going to do to support him after he had lost the faith of his team. As the dominant agent in the team, she felt that she could encourage the team to work hard for him but in return, she wanted the team-leader to spend his entire time at work sharing his knowledge with the team. He wouldn’t be allowed to spend any of his time on his computer. She even offered to do any reports he had to do in her spare time and would therefore have no reason to be on his computer. He agreed. I watched as the two walked out on to the operations floor with the girl looking very pleased with herself. The following week, I had another meeting at the same call-centre. As I was being shown round the floor, I was told by the operations manager that one particular team (which turned out to be the team the two people I had seen previously were in) had improved dramatically in one week in all areas from absenteeism and conversion rates. The team looked far happier and even the team leader seemed far more content.

I fully appreciate that many team-leaders will not be easy to manipulate in this way but with the right approach, you can get your whole team to act in such a way that your job feels less mundane. The next time I visited that particular call centre was 5 months later. The team-leader was still in the same position but his team had been the 2nd best performing team for the previous 3 months and had come up with some novel ways to empower his employees and he’d also created some great ideas for making the working environment more fun. The only reason his team wasn’t the highest performing was because the agent who had laid down the ultimatum for him had been promoted to team-leader and her team beat his every month. However your call centre is run, everyone has the ability to develop and implement ideas which can make the day more fun.

Now that you’ve asked yourself all of these questions, go back to the first question and ask yourself again “Am I in the right job?” Many people will now be far more positive about this question having asked themselves the other questions.