What does everyone else in the call center understand but the tech on the phone?  That often times you’re not troubleshooting the technical issue with the service or product your company is providing.  You are troubleshooting the customers themselves.  The last thing any geek wants to be is a customer service representative.  But without those soft skills they will never advance in the company.

The irony of this is that they used those soft skills with the human resources department in the initial interview.  Ditto for the immediate management.  But when it comes to someone coming at you in what you perceive to be wrong your first response is to shut down.  That nice polite, quiet smart guy is often at a loss.  This is why you walk in a call center and it seems as though the techs are “ghetto”.  They know how to handle confrontation on a daily basis.  You on the other hand have a rather quiet, sanguine life and aren’t accustomed to that type of drama.

So where do you come in?  Because the first thing a tech thinks is “wtf” because he thinks he knows the answer to the question before the customer has ever had the words leave their lips.  Granted there is always some other information, always something else.  Something a customer will tell you down the line if you ask leading questions.

Techs that aren’t hands on will inevitably leave the company and move onto quiet, engineering type positions if are truly as introverted as they are comfortable being.  Yet in the interim those same skills can apply to life’s lessons in a variety of ways.  Determine when that soft sell is appropriate and when to move on.  Realize when you need to use a bit of force and aggression.  Know when to move forward and move on to the next call and find a civil way to do so.  Do not pass off your responsibilities to anyone else because someone will always check to see if you did everything you could have if that call is escalated.

It’s no different in real life.  Too many of us have a mentality of what someone else can do for us.  We’re too ignorant to realize that we aren’t going to run into someone who can’t do something for us and is without a message that we need to take heed to.  If you missed it here it is again.  There are no mistakes, no happenstance.  This means you have to be on your game at all times and can’t go in and out of the zone based on your educated guess of what is at stake.

This is what everyone else realizes that you are missing.  We’re no longer talking about techs working long hours but the introverted who can’t see past the bubble.  Some people hate used car salesmen as they don’t like the pressure.  An introvert feels as if he is being sold to all hours throughout the day regardless of that other persons intent.  In a lot of ways he is right.

What he needs to understand is that until there is closure with those loose ends being sold to will continue to be the case, and he will continue to fight those same battles in insanity until he can see clearly.  Keep going out for the same jobs and you continue to find yourself in the same place and someone less educated than you are is working there then you have to see what it is about yourself that makes that employer more comfortable and confident in their skills than they are in yours.

Keep talking to that same boy or girl and you continue to get played in the same way it is the same difference.  It isn’t that all of the black girls are ghetto or they’re ugly, it’s a problem with you.  It isn’t that no one can dress or do this or that, it’s that you don’t know how to position yourself around people who do.  You are in your same station in life because you haven’t told that station where to go; it doesn’t think you are serious about leaving so in a spiritual sense, you have no right to go anywhere else.  You haven’t earned it, and you haven’t done anything about it that’s new so nothing will change. 

When are we going to stop begging and asking for jobs and creating real work for ourselves with the few talents that we have?  When will we stop blaming women, black women in particular, for our lack of masculinity and stop looking and dressing better than the women and actually be the man that we are called to be? 

Women can stop talking to thugs, a lot of them have.  But they didn’t talk to you, they found some preppy guy or someone else of a different race or culture who was taking case of business.  Not sure where that leaves you, other than alone again talking to the one girl who feels bad enough about herself not to wise up and leave you alone like those others did. 

If we don’t know what we have, who we are, then we aren’t solving any problems for anyone.  In fact everyone else tries to solve those problems for us, on their terms which we never like.  Women of all races have been doing this for centuries.  Then we get a little bit of confidence about ourselves and we’re ready to move on.  Are you really serious?

Thomas Friedman has it right when he suggests that Americas real problem isn’t the price of gas but their reliance on gas.  His analogy to someone addicted to crack cocaine is amusing.  But it’s real talk, because we are the ones running around looking stupid, no stoopid, because we don’t know how we’ll get to the salon to get our hair and nails done.  You know we can’t shop at that boutique out in the suburbs anymore; never should have to begin with.  Why not take the bus or the train for a change; oh no then we’d have to worry about getting mugged.

No other country has to worry about this.  Think about it, really, what other country is really complaining and moaning about gas prices?  Gasoline over there is like what, $5 a gallon, $10 a gallon or more.  Is it because they really need it, or because it is a luxury to drive and not a necessity, think about it.

If we can get over ourselves we can all get the bankers hours and we can all be supervisors.  Often times the job isn’t really that hard, just taxing mentally and emotionally.  To expand that, if you want to live a certain lifestyle then you have to take ownership over the one that you have.  Stop complaining about the price, stop avoiding the difficult people on the Coast or in the big city or the ivory tower and just do it already.  Let people know that you’re here, that you won’t be ignored and that they should get used to your presence and that this is exactly what they should learn to expect.

Most customers are more than grateful anyway …