Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
IOvertime Pay Laws Highlights Call Center Employees' Rights
The voices of call center employees have disappeared in the din of discussions about how companies can improve the customer experience through enhanced call center technology and more comprehensive customer care tactics. Fortunately, the Overtime Pay Laws hasn’t forgotten about call center employees. The international website, which is dedicated to providing information that protects wage workers in the US, posted the first infographic about overtime pay in call centers earlier this week.
The different types of call enter employees—customer service reps, customer care specialists, remote at-home agents, technical support, telemarketing specialists—are protected under the same federal labor laws as any other hourly worker, but they aren’t always treated as such. In this case, the focus is failure to compensate call center employees for overtime hours.
Among the most common overtime pay violations cited are booting computers (and basic setup), loading software, connectivity issues (and probably a host of other troubleshooting related problems), downloads for work instructions, long calls that go beyond shifts and preparation of reports. The infographic stresses the importance of paying employees for the time they spend completing or handling said tasks.
And it’s only fair. Apply these concepts to the retail space: not paying a call center employee for long calls that extend beyond a shift—even if only by a few minutes—would be the equivalent of not paying a brick-and-mortar sales associate for the time spent with a customer after his or her scheduled shift ends. It’s in poor taste for an employee in any industry to simply walk out in the middle of a customer interaction. It’s in even poorer taste for the employer not to pay them for the extra time they spent working to provide excellent service.
To prevent these types of violations, the infographic recommends that employees take three essential steps: keep records of time, ask supervisors about overtime pay and speak to a lawyer if denied overtime. On the other end, employers should track employee job requirements, keep detailed records of all employee hours, and pay overtime to avoid wage and hour lawsuits.
One of the best ways for companies to maximize quality of customer service is by ensuring fair treatment of employees manning the lines at call centers. A poorly treated employee is an unhappy employee, and an unhappy employee won’t translate to a good customer service representative. And sure, consumers in their fits of frustration often forget they’re talking to a real person. But call center supervisors know better. At least they should.
But enough from us. Check out Overtime Pay Law’s neat new infographic for yourself.