Your Call Is Not That Important To Us

Download or read book Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us written by Emily Yellin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bring up the subject of customer service phone calls and the blood pressure of everyone within earshot rises exponentially. Otherwise calm, rational, and intelligent people go into extended rants about an industry that seems to grow more inhuman and unhelpful with every phone call we make. And Americans make more than 43 billion customer service calls each year. Whether it's the interminable hold times, the outsourced agents who can't speak English, or the multitude of buttons to press and automated voices to listen to before reaching someone with a measurable pulse -- who hasn't felt exasperated at the abuse, neglect, and wasted time we experience when all we want is help, and maybe a little human kindness? Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us is journalist Emily Yellin's engaging, funny, and far-reaching exploration of the multibillion-dollar customer service industry and its surprising inner-workings. Yellin reveals the real human beings and often surreal corporate policies lurking behind its aggravating façade. After reading this first-ever investigation of the customer service world, you'll never view your call-center encounters in quite the same way. Since customer service has a role in just about every industry on earth, Yellin travels the country and the world, meeting a wide range of customer service reps, corporate decision makers, industry watchers, and Internet-based consumer activists. She spends time at outsourced call centers for Office Depot in Argentina and Microsoft in Egypt. She gets to know the Mormon wives who answer JetBlue's customer service calls from their homes in Salt Lake City, and listens in on calls from around the globe at a FedEx customer service center in Memphis. She meets with the creators of the yearly Customer Rage Study, customer experience specialists at Credit Suisse in Zurich, the founder and CEO of FedEx, and the CEO of the rising Internet retailer Zappos.com. Yellin finds out which country complains about service the most (Sweden), interviews an actress who provides the voice for automated answering systems at many big corporations, and talks to the people who run a website (GetHuman.com that posts codes for bypassing automated voices and getting to an actual human being at more than five hundred major companies. Yellin weaves her vast reporting into an entertaining narrative that sheds light on the complex forces that create our infuriating experiences. She chronicles how the Internet and global competition are forcing businesses to take their customers' needs more seriously and offers hope from people inside and outside the globalized corporate world fighting to make customer service better for us all. Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us cuts through corporate jargon and consumer distress to provide an eye-opening and animated account of the way companies treat their customers, how customers treat the people who serve them, and how technology, globalization, class, race, gender, and culture influence these interactions. Frustrated customers, smart executives, and dedicated customer service reps alike will find this lively examination of the crossroads of world commerce -- the point where businesses and their customers meet -- illuminating and essential.

Download or read book Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us written by Emily Yellin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-03-24 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journalist Emily Yellin pens a lively narrative exploring the very human stories behind the often-inhuman face of call-center customer service. Whether it’s the interminable hold times, the multitude of buttons to press, or the automated voices before reaching someone with a measurable pulse—who hasn’t felt exasperated at the abuse, neglect, and wasted time when all we want is help, and maybe a little human kindness? Your Call Is (not that) Important to Us is journalist Emily Yellin’s highly entertaining and far-reaching exploration of the multibillion-dollar customer service industry and its surprising inner-workings. Since customer service has a role in just about every industry on earth, Yellin travels the country and the world, meeting a wide range of customer service reps, corporate decision makers, industry watchers, and Internet-based consumer activists. She shows the myriad forces that converge to create these aggravating experiences and the people inside and outside the globalized corporate world crusading to make customer service better for us all. For the first time, Yellin gets reveals the heart behind the never-seen faces of call-center customer service—and why customer service doesn’t have to be this bad.

Download or read book Your Call Is Important To Us written by Laura Penny and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2009-03-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever been left spluttering over some fatuous fib trying to pass itself off as information, even as fact? Of course you have. We all have. It's bullshit, and as Laura Penny sees it, we're drowning in the stuff. Your Call Is Important to Us is Penny's brilliant take on the "all-you-can-eat buffet of phoniness" that is our lives today. "We live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production," Penny says. While bullshit is not new, more money, more media, and more people at mics have led to a bullshit pandemic. Today, we are so used to exaggeration and obfuscation we rarely notice them any more.Thank goodness we have Penny as our witty, smart-aleck guide through the phoniness of advertising and public relations, the claptrap of big pharma, the gobbledygook of the media, and the poppycock of the service industry. Along the way, Penny takes direct aim at the major culprits and the insidious ways they distort reality. As scathing as Michael Moore, as incisive as Naomi Klein, and as funny as Al Franken, Penny's take on the bullshit factor in modern life is a page-turner. Penny has a cheeky riff on that revealing question: "If my call is so important," she asks, "why doesn't anyone answer the damn phone?"

Download or read book Discover Your Calling written by Soo-Inn Tan and published by Graceworks. This book was released on 2020-10-03 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All of us have a yearning to understand where we belong in this world. As Christians, most of us understand from Scripture that God has a purpose for each of us and has gifted us differently. But discovering our unique giftedness and where God calls us to use those gifts eludes so many. In his new book, Discover Your Calling: The ABC of Vocational Discernment, Soo-Inn Tan provides biblical and down-to-earth support for those who seek to better understand how God is shaping their lives. Whether you’re a student, entering the workforce, a homemaker, a mid-career worker, or a retiree, discover how God may be preparing you for the continuing challenge and joy of a lifelong walk with Jesus Christ across all aspects of vocation.

Download or read book Our Mothers' War written by Emily Yellin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Mothers' War is a stunning and unprecedented portrait of women during World War II, a war that forever transformed the way women participate in American society. Never before has the vast range of women's experiences during this pivotal era been brought together in one book. Now, Our Mothers' War re-creates what American women from all walks of life were doing and thinking, on the home front and abroad. These heartwarming and sometimes heartbreaking accounts of the women we have known as mothers, aunts, and grandmothers reveal facets of their lives that have usually remained unmentioned and unappreciated. Our Mothers' War gives center stage to one of WWII's most essential fighting forces: the women of America, whose extraordinary bravery, strength, and humanity shine through on every page.

Download or read book Heed Your Call written by David M. Howitt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heed Your Call is about embracing the power of and. It is for the person who has come to a place in life where toiling away at work in pursuit of the American dream just isn’t worth the punishment anymore. It is for the professional who wants to feel more connected and fulfilled, the spiritual seeker who believes gaining wealth diminishes the sacred, the innovator being stifled creatively, and the people who want to become the heroes of their own stories. This book is about following your path, creating a life of abundance and joy, and doing your part to repair the world. Through telling his own story, along with those of other modern-day entrepreneurial heroes, David M. Howitt shares the principles behind his and others’ successes in eleven real-world lessons on how we can apply sim­ple principles that help us weave business into our spiritual narratives and pour our souls into our professions. By uniting artistry and analytics and integrating intuition with intel­lect, we positively affect the way we live and the world around us. Through the activation of creative principles, living authentically, and absorbing new experiences, we evolve from the radical integration of so-called disparate worlds. We birth a new reality and build a road map for our future.

Download or read book Live Your Calling written by Kevin Brennfleck and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An action-plan for self-fulfillment that helps people find their true calling in life This practical and inspirational guide helps Christian men and women of all ages identify and use their God-given gifts to find purpose, direction, and joy in their life and work. Based on their years of counseling and experience, Kevin and Kay Marie Brennfleck offer action-oriented tools and a proven methodology to help readers develop the decision-making skills they need to discover and live the life that God intended, maximizing the synergies between ministry, work, and spiritual gifts. Kevin and Kay Marie Brennfleck (Pasadena, CA) are nationally recognized experts in career counseling, work satisfaction, and productivity. Their Web site, www.ChristianCareerCenter.com, is the most visited Christian career site on the Internet.