Ma Bell: This Is How We Do It
The official training rooms were downstairs in the basement of the building. There were 2 of them. Our class occupied one and the other one would have a new class starting in the other room in a week or two. There would be a total of 8 newly trained reps in the near future.
Our instructor's name was Jim. By all appearances, he was a straight laced, no nonsense kind of guy. He had a crew cut, he was a short haired guy in a long haired world. Nobody wore their hair like that unless they were in the military and he wasn't. He was a youngish guy, but it was hard to tell how old he was because the lack of hair made him look older. In reality, he was just a few years older than any of us. He was very conservative, he dressed like a Ross Perot clone. He wore white shirts, a suit and tie and black lace-up shoes. Everyday. He never had a casual day. Casual for him was when he took his suit jacket off and roughed it in his white shirt.
On the first day, you know, you kind of check each other out. We were all doing it and forming our first impressions. Of course, we had to do the "let's just go around the room and tell us a little about yourself." There were 4 of us, Jan, who worked in Final Accounts, we called her Final Accounts Jan, that was how she answered the phone in her office. I had been working with her on bad people who didn't pay their bill so they let it get disconnected and tried to have new service put in. She had the Final Account Scoop. Lenny, the only guy in class, a minority, according to Bell standards. He had worked in Operator Services. Margaret, nickname Ching, you will learn why later, who had come from Operator Services, a different office than Lenny had worked in. We all appeared to like each other. And then there was Jim, the instructor. He was married, had a child, had worked for "the Company", (the Company was the term phone company employees used to refer to Southwestern Bell, if you didn't work for "the Company", you were from "off the street".) for a couple of years and had been promoted to his current job.
Next thing on the agenda was the rules of the classroom. Nobody wants to hear that stuff, but it has to be done. We all looked like savvy phone people. None of us were brand new, we all knew the 2 most unforgivable sins; calling in sick and being tardy, that's right, die on the job and don't be late doing it. Got it, again.
Now it was time for an overview of how the training worked. We would read a chapter, discuss it and ask and answer questions. There would be role playing and simulated customer contacts. After we had completed all of those steps we would take the mastery test. The objective was to pass it on the first try. If you failed it, you would continue to take it over and over until you got a perfect score. The people passing it on the first try would generally be sent to file in the business office if one of the students failed the test. We would have to work upstairs until the other person or person's passed the tests. There would be times when the unit manager would come to observe us while we trained, the supervisors would also come down and sometimes Jim's boss would sit in to see how all of us, including Jim, were doing. You had to have nerves of steel for this training and this job.
Ma Bell had very specific ways that she wanted our jobs done and that is why the training was so fierce. But it was excellent because it meant that we all did the same thing. It didn't matter who a customer talked to or how many times they called they would all be treated the same and get the same answers no matter who they talked to. Ma Bell was very, very, smart. Nobody trains their employees as thoroughly as the old Bell System, not even the spin-off companies like AT&T, Verizon, Bell Labs, or Lucent. Those were the days my friends.
Now, I know this has been a boring post, but I had to set up the training scenario for you. I had to
be assured that you knew how serious and by the book, this training was going to be, how hard it was. I had to make sure that you understood that before I tell you how it turned out to be. We expected it to be boring and dreadful but it was quite the opposite as you will see. In the next blog, I promise.
Comments
Post a Comment