Employment law bods - is my company taking the wee wee?

[D-Angle]

I work in a call centre position in the sales team for a company. We have recently expanded (in business but not in numbers of personnel) and the number of calls we are taking has skyrocketed. This is particularly the case with the number of calls getting taken by the cusotmer service department.

As a result, we are constantly being told to log on to customer services and take their calls. In the beginning, it was once in a while and we were supposed to just take a message and pass it on for someone to call the customer back. We can't put the customer straight through, if we try to wait in the queue because the customer is kicking off and won't accept a call back, we get a bollocking.

It has progressed from the odd call to about a third of the calls I take now, and it's not just take a message, now it's "well if it's just a simple query can you not deal with it?" They have even gone as far as to give us special forms to fill out if passing a message on, as they are unhappy at us not taking enough information from the customer.

The main problem is, first of all customer services are paid £1500 a year more than us in salary. Secondly the customers they deal with tend to be a lot more irate, as they are calling after things have gone wrong, so we are getting it in the ear instead. And lastly, we are not trained to deal with 90% of the queries that come in for them.

So we are being asked to do the same job for less pay, that we are not trained for, and which we never wanted to do, whilst pissing off the customers even more and being expected to take the abuse. Is there anything that can be done? There are no unions in our office at all, and anyone who has mentioned they are unhappy about it has been taken aside for 'a quiet word'. Is there anyone I could complain to who could take action?

And before anyone asks, no, sales don't get any bonuses to increase their salary to match.

[JustinP1]

D-Angle said:

...And before anyone asks, no, sales don't get any bonuses to increase their salary to match.

This is unfortunately the thing which could have given you some ammo as it could be argued that due to what you are being asked to do you were losing out on money you would otherwise be entitled to.

To be honest it sounds from the other side quite reasonable. During a peak time, or as you have said calls in a particular area have skyrocketed and this demand has been spread to other staff. In most employment contracts there are sections which refer to your job description as 'reasonable requests'. Up to a third of your time in another related area I would personally say is a reasonable request.

Now, for the next course of action you need to decide what YOU want from this:

1) Continue to dislike it and use it as a rant.
2) Move to customer services and get paid more.
3) Not to receive any customer services calls.
4) Get proper training for the customer services calls and
5) Get a pay increase for the percentage of customer services calls you are taking.

[Glassman]

Seek alternative employment.

[mcflurry]

Train your team to do the "other 90%" and then get paid the same