No time to blog

Argggh ! Most of the Customer Service Representatives here at work did not come in so I'm swamped :(

Starting to cool off

As I left my house this morning to go to the office, I was pleasantly greeted by the cool weather when I stepped out of my apartment. I was already anticipating that today would be a pretty HOT day since last week temperatures were off the charts. I thought, would I prefer walking to work in extremely cold or hot weather ? I sweat like a pig and pretty much my whole outfit is drenched in perspiration once I get to work EVERY day during Summer.

I often try and bring an extra shirt so that I would only be humiliated for the first 1 minute from the time I enter the office, to the time I get to my cubicle and to the bathroom to change shirts. If it were winter, I would be wrapped in at least 4 layers of clothing and I immediately head to the coffee machine to get myself a hot cup of joe to defrost myself.

All in all I would say that I would want to have a colder weather as compared to a hotter weather. Getting sweaty isn't pretty and for me, ruins my concentration specially if I know at the start of the day I stink already.

So anyway pretty bizarre call I got in today. This lady called our 1800 number and the first thing she says if we can ship the glasses by today so she can get it by tomorrow. I tell her that normal processing time takes a few days and we don't do over night shipping. She begged me if I could do something about it but I told her it was out of my hands. Her voice started to crack and suddenly she burst into tears. She was sobbing, telling me that she just broke her glasses a few hours ago and that she needed glasses badly. I asked her what was wrong and she told me she was getting married tomorrow! She was afraid she could not read a speech prepared by her family for her to say during the wedding. I told her that usually, she just has to repeat whatever the priest would say but she kept on saying "No I need to read it, golly gee I need to read it" No one in her town could make glasses that fast and she didn't have contacts. I told her to calm down and try going to Walmart and check out the ready made glasses there and see if there would be something that might fit her.

In the end she thanked me profusely for listening to her story and told her she would be ordering glasses from us soon. Awww

Later

Weekend Getaway

So it's the weekend again and we just got paid this week so I'm planning to indulge myself in a swimming expedition at the lake near my place. They built a water park over there and I'm pretty stoked since it's been a while since I had a dip. Some of my friends who I haven't seen for months are flying in from out of town so it should be quite interesting.

So anyway work today is pretty stressful. Not a lot of calls again but what makes me and Baby Jesus cry a little inside is the amount of time our database loads up per query. Honestly this program can't be any slower ! It takes 10-15 minutes just to query customers and more often than not it takes around 2-3 queries per person. It's frustrating because I've had a handful or angry customers who wanted information fast and they could not understand why it takes so long to just double check some details with regards to the status of their order.

Honestly I could burn in hell with all the excuses I've made just to cover up for this slow program.

But look on the bright side, there must be a reason as to why the database is getting bigger. Check out my flow chart !

Bigger Database = Slower Access time

BUT

Bigger Database = More orders

SO

More orders = More $$$

THEREFORE

More $$$ = More Salary ??

... oh yes I went there lol

Later!

Pretty Quiet Day

Today was pretty quiet. Not a lot of calls, but a lot of emails. The weird thing was that the internet at work was pretty busted up as well. Pages kept timing out, and stuff like that. I'm currently writing my blog entry on Word hoping that I can be able to post it later.

Anyway we had a visitor today, the girlfriend of Leo visited our office since she's visiting from the UK. It's pretty cool how her accent just makes everyone glance every time she says a word heavily pronounced in the British accent. One thing I noticed was she and Leo pronounced words the same way like EyeBuyDirect , Aspen , picture, and a lot more.

It's cute how people tend to have an effect on how you speak, there was one day a few weeks ago that I think I got a lot of calls from people from the south, that at the end of the shift, I had a temporary slang which was awesome but quickly faded away the next day. Lol.

Well anyway weekend's coming up again and I think I'm pretty much stoked as I might be apartment hunting since the lease on my place is expiring at the end of September. I'm trying to hook-up with some of my roommates friends from out of town and hopefully we'll be able to get along so I won't be blogging homeless by September :P

Laters

Officially bringing food to work

I've finally given up take-outs and deliveries for my meals taken at the office. Our office is situated in an area that there are not a lot of restaurants available for lunch and dinner as well. We only have a 24-hour Kwik-E mart and some little canteen that serves G R E A S Y Chinese food which shortens your life with every viand taken in.

I took it upon myself to buy a steamer / griller last weekend in order for me too cook my own food going to work. Today I had a lovely lunch of steamed chicken breast topped with curry-powder with vegetable medley ala Gabby. I'm trying this whole new eating healthy craze since I've been eating JUNK for the past 8months of 2007.

Anyway work today was pretty busy and I got a few inbound calls from France. First 2 calls were okay since they knew how to speak English but the call after that was killer. We spent a good 10 minutes trying to understand and explain to each other what the concern was. The lady eventually said something along the lines that she would ask a friend to give us a call to explain the situation better. Friend called 5 minutes later but his English was not that good as well. There was a lot of giggling in the background as the guy struggled to speak in English. A few minutes later a different voice came on with English that would make Baby Jesus cry. The giggling intensified and I couldn't help but laugh as well with the situation. The conversation turned more casual after I just told them to email me the concern as it would be easier to just translate written French.

Call took about 25 minutes total and we just talked about how they found out about our website and how much the French love us Americans. Lol.

Later.

Small World

Today I had one of the most interesting calls during my work tenure here at EyeBuyDirect. A customer called our 1-800 number to double check her prescription from a previous order she had made. Since it was a pretty old order, I had to dig it up from our archives which took a while since our database was going through some maintenance work. We got into quite a bit of a chat, talking mostly about how it was pretty great that company like ours existed to save people literally hundreds of dollars with regards to their eyeglasses.

I found out that she studied in the same school I did and apparently we were classmates in a Major class I took up a few years back. It was so surreal since we chatted about this certain professor who people gossiped a lot about since he had this eccentric attitude which was pretty much offensive to most of the female population in that class. I didn't notice that our chat had lasted around 15 minutes and my manager was already staring at me since he overheard our conversation and was giving me the "evil-eye". I hung up the phone with a smile on my face.

This is one of the things I love about my job. It is so real and human that this is what Customer Service is all about. It's about connecting with people and offering a certain service that you and only you can give. It's just a bonus that we had that conversation but it was so genuine that , that pretty much made my day ( aside from the fact that we got our salary today woohoo! ).

Later

New eyeglass frames coming soon!

We just received a shipment of A LOT of new frame designs which should be out in a few weeks! I'm getting excited since a lot of these frames look really cool and out of the ordinary. I'll probably be able to provide you some updates if you leave a comment with a link to your blog or perhaps send me an email at gabby.ebd [at] gmail [dot] com so that I can include your name in future discounts ( up to 15% ! ) and announcements of frames offered only to valued customers of EyeBuyDirect.

Anyway, today was pretty much a normal day save for the fact that there was a lot of good feedback in our BizRate page

http://www.bizrate.com/ratings_guide/cust_reviews__mid--143709.html

It really warms my heart that we get to help a lot of people save a TON of money just by providing a service that is DUE to everyone. I mean people earning 10000% mark-up is just a heinous crime, it should be up there with murder! Anyway I'm looking forward to this weekend as me and my friends are going to this safari and it should be fun.

Later

Getting sick

Getting sick is absolutely the worse thing that can happen to the working man. It prohibits his ability to function properly and thus making himself a liability to himself as well to his co-workers around him directly or indirectly. It may not always be his fault but what can we do ? Life isn't fair. It should always be our responsibility to keep ourselves healthy.

I'm starting to get sick right now and I don't know why. I have a runny nose and I'm starting to develop a cough. It must be something in the air and I'm sure I just "picked" this up from an unknown source worse/better off than me. Good thing it did not really bother me when talking to the customers today, only the occasional hold button when I needed to sneeze or my nose gets too stuffy.

A few days ago there was this customer who I couldn't understand because she was sneezing and coughing every 5 seconds. I tried explaining to her that it would be best if she wrote me an email but sadly she wanted the concern done and over with. I felt really bad for her since she seemed to be in so much pain and anguish. I just closed our conversation with a "get well soon , you should go see a doctor" remark and for a moment, all the sickness in her voice vanished when she said thank you. Made the 30 minute call worth the while.

Later

When was the first time you got glasses ?

I remember the first time I got my eyeglasses when I was around 10 years old. I remember a lot of my friends teasing me because I had these huge glasses which made me look like Steve Urkel.

Pretty much I suffered through High School with these glasses and only got them replaced with cool Oakley prescription glasses as soon as I hit college. It's actually pretty cool how eyeglass designs have progressed throughout time. Some people still prefer the old traditional styles, but more and more people are being adventurous with certain style just like the Fire frame in our collection. Clicky

I honestly like having glasses more as compared to contacts since you can mix and match the frames you have (specially now that you don't need to pay a ton of money in order for your to have more than one pair of eyeglass frames handy)

Later

Glasses Broken!

Weekend was pretty tiring. There was a construction thingy going on a few apartments down so I couldn't get any decent rest. Didn't get to go out and just watched DVD's for the most part.

I guess the highlight of my weekend was that I broke my glasses. I have the Fire frame from our company and I accidentally left in lying on the chair while I was watching TV. My room-mate sits on it 30 minutes later and my beautiful frames are gone forever. Come to think of it, a few years ago if that happened, I would have been kicking and screaming my friend for ruining a pair of $400 eyeglasses. Luckily due to capitalism and the law that states that opticians are required by law to give their clients a copy of the prescription, even though they aren't having their glasses made there, we can get really good and really cheap eyeglasses online!

I just put in my order for a new set of frames. I'm trying out the Chives frame because I'm trying to cut down on my expenses as I'm trying to save up for something big next month! Stay tuned as to what it is dun dun dun dun ...

Laters

Looking forward to the Weekend ... Not

Well another boring weekend for me. Nothing much to write about except that today was just extra special since I got a few emails thanking us how great our Customer Service is but at the same time I got a really bad phone call earlier this afternoon.

There was this woman who was shouting over the phone lines complaining that her glasses did not transition from clear to dark. I checked her order and she did not order them. She started cursing, saying she "f'n" ordered them transitions and that she could prove it with an email confirmation from us. I tell her to send the email and she says she will send it within the day.

I receive the email 2 hours later and it says nothing about photochromic. I called the lady and she profusely apologized to me saying that her eyes were bad yada yada. I of course just laughed it off and told her it was ok. An hour later some girl calls with the same order number and says I took advantage of her mother and did not process her order correctly. Seriously I laughed a bit and apologized to the girl telling her that me and her mom settled it already. The funny thing was they both sounded the same when they were mad, both high pitched and had that certain slang.

So anyway I'm out, 15 minutes till call time and I'm ready to hit the sack. 4 hours sleep past 2 days is a killer

Sports Fiasco

Pretty much the world of sports as we know right now is in shambles.

- Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen just go bumped off the competition due to suspicious activity by his team (probably they aren't risking him to be tested for doping again)

- Tim Donaghy , NBA referee, is caught gambling on games he had officiated. It pretty much confirms the rumors that the score / outcome of games are determined by an outside force

- Michael Vick , NFL Quarterback Atlanta Falcons, is charged with competitive dogfighting, procuring and training pit bulls for fighting, and conducting the enterprise across state lines.

- Gary Player, PGA golfer, claims that people in golf are juicing (using steroids) as well

Golf, Basketball, American Football and Cycling are pretty much big name sports that host big name players which have an influence over people today. I mean it's just portraying that in order to be a hit in the big leagues, you need that extra edge which more often than not is illegal in nature.

The thing I'm annoyed most about is the inhumane treatment of the dogs by Michael Vick. I was raised in a Christian family who goes to church every Sunday and my sister is a member of Pro-Life and PETA and has a lot of animals back home. When we were still in school, she was active in a lot of Pro-Life programs and she brought me along to events that usually had tie-ups with animal rights activists. I am really angered/saddened by the fact that these animals don't really have a choice to live just like the issues we face in our meetings / demonstrations. It's pretty much murder in the highest form and I hope to God that this guy gets what he deserves and gets incarcerated.

Bappy Hirthday!

Woohoo 1 year older 1 year wiser, it's my birthday today !

Don't have a lot of time to post today since the phones have been ringing off the hook and we're one man short (Leo). Apparently Leo took the day off to be with his girlfriend since he decided it was h.. (ahem) girls before bro's ! I mean who would miss out my birthday !

Biggest thing he missed was my birthday cake care of my boss and peers here at work. We had a little party and I took a snapshot of it. Eyes have been blurred to protect our secret identities! From left to right it's Me , Sina, Roy and PJ. The others were too shy to have their picture taken but we had a lovely Black Forest cake from my favorite bakery. Funny thing was the cake was whipped out during breakfast so everyone was having cake and coffee (heaven).

Anyway I'll write more about the rest of my day tomorrow, I even got into a conversation with a customer who was having her kids birthday party when she called to verify her prescription. I told her to include me in their birthday song and she gladly obliged.

Later

Blue Monday

Blue Monday how I hate Blue Monday
Got to work like a slave all day
Here come Tuesday, oh hard Tuesday
I'm so tired got no time to play

My weekend was pretty much a snooze fest, I got to watch a couple of really cool movies ( Transformers and Die Hard ) and surprisingly I went out with my flat-mates to a pretty decent bar Saturday night. I'm usually tired and sleeping during the weekends because of my hellish schedule on weekdays. Working as a customer service rep is like a Roller Coaster ride. If I get a string of really good calls, praising our products, saying how sexy my voice is ... yada yada yada, I would be able to sleep like a baby at night. If it's one of those days that everyone seems to want to tear you apart, I get a maximum of 3-4 hours sleep :(

The thing I love about having this job, is the ability to become a different person every call. It breaks the repetitious cycle of doing the same thing every single day. Customer Service has a lot to do with appearances, you need to be able to adapt to each customer calling. It is hard to have a monotonous demeanor when talking to people from all over the country. These appearances are what defines a human customer service representative as opposed to the companies that use computerized phone answering thingamajigs. I believe Customer service is an important link between the customer and the company, specially for small-medium sized companies like us, who cater to our customers with a more personal approach. This link establishes the trust between vendor and consumer and it is with this trust that they both benefit from each other.

Anyway it's my birthday tomorrow, I don't really expect much as most of my friends are far and away, another boring birthday for me woohoo

Served by the Customer

Annoying story that happened to me that started around 2 weeks ago and was just resolved yesterday. So pretty much the scenario starts when a customer named John, rings us up and asks for help with regards to a return of a pair of frames that he broke. Usually company policy states that the customer has to pay 50% or half of the total cost of the glasses to have them replaced if it is their fault or responsibility. The customer promised and agreed to help out with half of the responsibility so we started the return process.

That's when things got ugly.

First off, I asked for a picture of the damaged frames and a clear-cut definition of how the frames were broken. I gave him our email address to correspond with but he never sent what I asked for. He replied to a few of my follow up emails, but never really gave what I requested. It all boiled down to 2 weeks of disorganized communication and that really pissed me off, but of course I had to keep up that jolly demeanor I usually have when handling complaints ( I handle hot-tempered customers quite well :) )

So basically what happened was he never gave the pictures/description I asked from him and he called yesterday all mad asking where his replacement was. I tried to explain to him what had happened but he never really listened. He demanded that I supply him the replacements for free! So in other words, we were to shoulder ALL the cost instead of that person helping us with 50% of the work to be done.

I was really having a nice day :(

So in the end, since EyeBuyDirect loves to keep their customers happy, we processed the replacement for free ... I just love it when people get all worked up with some things that are really their fault but abuse their rights as a customer. I mean they think they can just always get away with getting things for free if they act all haughty and superior and ignorant of the situation.

I'm out, later.

Gabby

EyeTry

Our website sports a pretty nifty feature that lets the customer "see" what they look like with our eyeglass frames on. It's called the EyeTry Tool (clicky) You can upload your pictures then drag the eyeglass frame to your face and see how "cool" the eyeglasses look on you.

I've got a few friends who tried them out and I've got a poll up to check who's the prettiest. My $'s on PJ.

Gabby

PS. I love this picture

EyeBuyDirect

So anyway just a quick background on where I work.

I'm basically a customer service representative in an online eyeglass retail company.

I answer phones, check emails, make follow up calls, and check the voice-mail. Pretty exciting ain't it. The one thing I love the most about my job is talking with different people every single day, Young, old, male and female. I love talking to people all across the US, the different accents, different mannerisms and different moods.

I'll be writing a lot about my daily experiences with customers so you guys tune better tune in for some juicy stories.

Gabby

Like a virgin, served for the very first time

So what made me decide to write a blog.

It's basically the fact that my job is all about communication.

Blogging = hottest communication tool in this decade

Am I a little too late ? Maybe, but you're never too late until you're too late.

A brief introduction about myself. I am a Customer Service representative from the United States of America. My job description is basically to assist customers on the 411 of buying glasses online. How to read prescriptions, how reliable we are, where the glasses are made, what is our returns policy are just some of the questions that I answer every single day in this little cubicle of mine. Yes it might seem redundant and boring, but I actually enjoy talking to at least 50 different people every single day I come to work. I love the variety of emotions that I feel every single day; happiness, anger, frustration, tongue-tied, silly, comic, et al.

Formal writing has never been a passion of mine. I often find it tedious and boring, especially if you need to think more about how you want the entry to look like as a while than what the content is altogether. Spelling, grammar and punctuation are golden in my book, but to be honest, outlines and thought processes make me die a little inside. Blogging basically lets you do anything you want, but in order for people to actually read your blog, it must be readable. Coherent, not really, but readable. So bear with me as this is just a preview of things to come

So anyway, so much for my first post, I'm out like a trout.

You've just been Served