Customer Service?

Empathy. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as:

NOUN:

1. Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives.

I, often too easily, feel others' feelings and sense their pain and frustration, happiness and triumphs. I guess my empathy dial is turned up just a little too high. It gets in the way of professional duties and adds to my emotional drainage. At the end of the day, I feel sucked dry.

It has come in handy in some of the professions I have pursued, counseling, working with at risk youth, sharing what I have to bolster them where they hurt. Helping them toward the end of the tunnel when no end seems possible.

My current job is helping people wade through paperwork to be able to receive assistance to go to college. The hope and fear I hear in "older" people going back to school, the frustration of the non-computer generation trying to cope with the demands of our ever-increasing paperless world that seems very hostile and confusing; I am cheerleader, computer tech., hand-holder, and listener. I bite my tongue while being berated by controlling fathers and irate teenagers.

Call times must be brief, but at the same time questions answered. I hear the relief in callers' voices when I walk them through a difficult section that other representatives refused to take the time to do. I've cheered with callers who finally made it through the last part of the process, and consoled those who have to begin again due to some mistake they made.

The question is how do I do my job to best of my ability, while still keeping the calls at the extreme briefest length? I feel guilty ending a call when I know the caller will be having to call back in 5 minutes because they are heading towards a difficult part to navigate, or are obviously lost beyond the one question they initially asked.

We are told to only answer their questions and move on. It's fine if they have to call back a dozen times and only fed small tidbits of information and cut off before they can recall another issue they are having. It changes the meaning of "customer service representative". Of course, as long as they are calling back, there will be a need for representatives, but at a cost to those we are serving.

So, each day I wage a battle with my desire to help the people I speak with and the monitor that times my calls. In the end I am exhausted. I give what I can, in encapsulated form, and move on; haunted by the fear, frustration, and insecurity in the voice of the person I just left hanging as I abruptly end the call.