Ma Bell: Phones and Bowling Pins

Bowling Duck Pins

I don't want anyone to think that the training we were going through was all fun and games.  Because it wasn't.  It was tough.  Every aspect of the training was shared with the entire class.  If you were a dummy, everyone in the room would know it.  It  wasn't like just reading procedures and then plopping us down at a desk with a phone on it and saying, "go to it, you've been trained."  It was detailed, in-depth, precise teaching and learning.  It was the most thorough and efficient training of any company by any company. I never experienced any training that could come anywhere close to it throughout my working career.  Ma Bell knew her stuff, and she made sure that we knew it too.

I mentioned that we would read the material, and then we would practice what we learned, not just in the classroom but very quickly in training. We were sent up to the business office and took calls from real customers.  We only handled what we were being trained on.  If the caller needed something we couldn't do, we turned it over to our referral rep, a seasoned, experienced rep.  We only had one person assigned to each of us who was dedicated to helping us.  If you were lucky, your supervisor picked a competent person who excelled at their job to be your referral rep.  Mostly that was the case.  And I was lucky; I had a young lady by the name of Barbra assigned to me, and she was an Ace.
My opinion is that your referral rep was the key to your success or failure in class, and when you came out of class as a new rep.

Our first journey to taking calls from real live customers allowed us to handle simple calls regarding how much the customer owed on their bill.  Every call that we answered had to be recorded on a specific form—every call.  And way before the use of computers, we had to handwrite everything that we did.
To do that, we had our own written language.  Everyone and anyone had to be able to read and understand what we wrote.  It was impossible to write everything word for word, so we used our own "Bell System" version of shorthand.  It wasn't exact; it wasn't structured, but it was something like this in a designated area of the form;  ? amt owe, or ? amt o?.  Of course, these examples are driving my spell check nuts, but that is what we did.  If they had a question about their bill, it would look something like this; ? on bill.  If their phone was turned off for non-payment, it might look like this; ? why T x-off, (why is my phone cut off).  If they had a call on their bill that they didn't think belonged to them, it might look like this;  ? ld call 2 Houston. (I have a question about a long-distance call to Houston)  So, you guys, my readers are pretty smart; I'm sure you have this figured out now.

For every call we received, we had to get the name of the caller. If they had one, the phone number and the nature of their problem, or the N.O.P., as we called it.  We had to restate the problem and assure them that we could help them—every call.  We were required to ask certain questions in a specific order.  If the customer was overzealous, we had to bring the call back under control and ask for information in a certain order.  We did NOT follow a script, we were not robots, but we did have a certain pattern that we used that ensured that we would get the information that we needed.  Every person sitting at a desk answering customer calls sounded very professional.  I never, ever, heard anyone speaking like they just got off the hip hop train or just arrived from slang city.  There was no gum popping, no sounds of eating, no personal cell phones ringing, no side conversations, and no sounding like you didn't know what the heck was going on.  We were all great at what we did.  We were the best.  If you don't believe me, call a big company customer service department and judge whether or not they sound like they really give a patootie about you and if they even understand what your need is.  And while you are calling, see if you can find many businesses with employees you can understand linguistically.  Now, that is a challenge.

Before we were ever turned loose on real customers, we had proven our skill of handling the calls in class.  In class, we all heard each other. When we went to take real calls, the instructor would be listening to us remotely.  And the supervisor or manager might be listening in on the call from their monitoring equipment on their phone.  And every office had an anonymous official observer that monitored calls every day randomly.  Everybody and their brother had the capability of listening to us.  It was a little nerve-racking.  And when you were newbies like us, the fear of who might be listening was overwhelming.  We couldn't have felt more anxious if we had been sitting at our desks with all of our clothes off.  That's how stressful it was.

We might be on the phones all day long.  Those were long days.  Or if we were screwing up, we might not be on them long at all.  But my class did a good job.  The next day we would discuss the phone calls that Jim had listened to.  He would critique us, and then we would do the same for our peers.  Once Jim thought that we were proficient with that skill, we would take a test and move on to learning a new piece of the customer service puzzle.

When the idea of bowling on our lunch hour came up, it seemed like a good way to ditch some of the stress we were encountering.  So Jim, Lenny, Jan and I went bowling.  During the day, it was cheap to bowl.  I believe it was like 35 cents a game.  We would order lunch as soon as we got there, eat and bowl 2 games and go back to work.  Lenny and Jim were both very proficient bowlers.  Jan and I were not.  We just laughed at ourselves.  Gutterball after gutterball.  And occasionally, we would accidentally hit a few pins and be shocked.   My bowling experience had been limited to Duck Pin bowling in Virginia.  If you don't know what that is, the pins are very short and squatty.  The ball is tiny, maybe about the size of a shot-put ball.  You could really throw the ball in the air down the lanes if you were inclined to do it.  That is how small the bowling balls were.   Rolling that big old bowling ball down the lane was quite different for me.

Jan and I would ride over to the alley in my car.  We would leave when we thought that we would have enough time to get back to class.  It didn't matter if Jim and Lenny were still bowling.  We left.  We were not going to be late getting back to class.  We would never run the risk of being late.  The Big Lie had taught us to trust only ourselves.  If Jim and Lenny came back late, that was fine because they were together.  But Jan and I were not going to chance it.  We would get back a little early, and poor little Ching would be sitting all alone waiting for class to start.  Just her and her tissues.  I think she stayed in the classroom and called her husband at lunch and talked to him for almost an hour.  Gee, isn't love grand?