WHAT PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT
BEING A CALL CENTER AGENT
I am a former employee of a BPO Company (Sykes Asia) and I’m Technical Support Representative for
an IT company specializing in software - Natural Language Processing & Understanding (NLP/NLU)
which develops speech recognition technology. We usually troubleshoot and INSTALL the program via
phone by giving instructions (not via team viewer/remote access). I would like to share to you things that
may not be familiar to you regarding working in a Call Center.
1. BPO Companies provide great benefits (Even if you’re an entry level applicant)



Exciting discounts to the company’s partner establishments by just presenting your ID. You may
get discounts, freebies and other great deals in various restaurants, coffee shops (most BPO
agents love coffee!), wellness center (Gym!) and other establishments.
Government Benefits: Pag-IBIG, 13th Month Pay, Magna Carta, Paternity Leave, Philhealth
Insurance, SSS, Employee Compensation
Company granted benefits: Vacation Leave, Sick Leave, Birthday Leave, Hazard Pay, Study
Assistance,

Allowance: Meal, Transportation, Overtime, Language, Certification, Tenure, Technical,
Performance
In Sykes, they have Sykes CAFE - You may design your own flexible program about what type of benefit
you want depending in your lifestyle.
2. Meet SLAs
SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a contract between the BPO and the client and a service provider. We
always make sure we met our SLAs every day.

ACW (After Call Work) - we have max of 2 minutes to write down all the notes and necessary
details of the transaction, After the 2 min ACW, We need to take the next call.
3. Queuing and “IDLE”
We value every minute of our time. Those queuing moments during the shift makes me think “Get ready
to the war!” (Especially those days in December wherein we got a lot of customers - Christmas Season…
gift-giving?). Idle moments make me think “I hope to be with you till the end of my shift” but of course it’s
impossible
4. Be nice to customer and earn their respect and attention.
We need to win over a difficult customer. I always accept my responsibility once I already got a call. We
need to care about getting the issue fix. We’re trained to show empathy to every customer which is very
important - and at the same time we still stick to the business process. I wouldn’t like to end a call having
unsatisfied customer or with unsolved issue.
5. We ONLY speak the ‘language’ with the ‘tone’ during work hours (usually).
6. Limited access to the Internet
No social media sites. (We’ll I’m fine reading the news, blogs and Pinterest too!)
7. Taking Customer data and reading it back? - Especially NAMES
I always DECIPHER or spell the names in phonetics. Even phonetic spelling of a difficult-to-pronounce
name doesn’t always fix this issue. It seemed to be a tongue twister for me
- It usually consumes my handling time for short inquiry calls.
8. Feel at home and enjoy your break
BPO companies are not like your average companies. During break time, we can spend lunch inside the
pantry and watch movies, sit on those comfy sofas, unlimited coffee, sleeping quarter,
9. Appreciate how important those last minutes of your shift
Those last minutes of your shift will tell you if you’ll have overtime or not. I experienced before I got an
incoming call during my last minute of shift. The call took more than 30 minutes.
My official entry for Sykes E-Recruitment Site