Absolutely NO ONE answering phones for 1 and a half hours

At Sears we had an answering machine. Sometimes management wouldn't listen to the messages for half the day.
 
Yeah when they say log into phones I never do. I don't make phone calls on my own time and I have way too much freight to deal with as it is. Rather get chewed out over phones than freight.
 
idkwhattodo said:
Guest service has been so busy lately that the our calls just ring and ring and ring. I’ve been answering calls for GS while picking in flex/ opus or doing cash office because even if I’m not directly at the desk at least I know what I’m talking about and the guest eventually gets to talk to a person.
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Same I will pick up a phone at guest services when they are slammed, at least I can answer if we have the covid basics, TP, hand sanitizer and what not. I transfer off what I can't.
 
Captain Orca said:
I'd imagine most retailers have dedicated phone folks, don't they? Expecting a TM up to their elbows in freight working with time constraints has no time to deal with phones.
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Not sure about most retailers but I’ve been at the fitting room at Walmart and heard their employee answering the phones. Of course the times I’ve been at the fitting room in Walmart there is always an employee working there the entire time unlike us.
 
There's always someone there because they actually think that preventing theft is a worthwhile task. The volume and price of the cases and tags I found in the fitting rooms at Target, it'd have paid for two FROs on guard at the fitting room at all times. But the image of making "guests" feel welcome and not being the slightest accusatory by hovering is so much more important than shrinkage.

Walmart has it right when it comes to manning the fitting room non-stop.
 
flow4areasonuno said:
Yeah when they say log into phones I never do. I don't make phone calls on my own time and I have way too much freight to deal with as it is. Rather get chewed out over phones than freight.
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Such an accurate statement. Only you are responsible for your freight. Supposedly, everyone is responsible for the phones.
 
JAShands said:
If I keep getting calls forwarded to my office I’ll see what departments are signed in to the phones. Any that have 0 signed in get called out on the walkie. I’m looking at you GM and Style..
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Call me out on walkie all day long...I don't give a shit....I don't want to be a telephone operator and won't be one. I work my ass off my whole shift but I'm not going to answer the phone.
 
Truly they need someone to answer phones. The Store Operator idea is perfection. At least 1 dedicated person per shift (2 on weekends) and then those of us on the sales floor as a back up if necessary. The last two weeks I've been up on the lanes more than I've been able to be on the sales floor. When I'm up there I can't answer the phone so it just rings forever because no one else is signed in to General Merch. When I answer it (9 times out of 10 it's never for Beauty where I'm at - or even remotely near my section) I transfer and no one ever picks it up after I walkie. It rang so much the other day while I was with a guest I went on the walkie and said "if anyone out there is signed into General Merch can you please answer this call? I'm with a guest and can't get this one". Guess what? No one answered that call or the 500 after.

With that being said I have learned that it's quicker for me if I just walkie what the caller needs. Bikes in stock? Walkie the ask and they're fast AF with the answer. Walkie for them to get the phone? Dead silence.
 
Ceeyaaa said:
Call me out on walkie all day long...I don't give a shit....I don't want to be a telephone operator and won't be one. I work my ass off my whole shift but I'm not going to answer the phone.
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Then why did you apply for a position that involves answering the phone?


I don't get y'all. Everyone acts like answering the phone is the hardest thing ever done. You don't believe in customer service? You don't think you should be assisting guests who are wanting to spend money and making sure you won't be a waste of their time before spending money? What the fuck is the super hard mental anguish of answering the phones?

For those who plan on leaving Target someday, what the hell are you going to do when you have a multi-line phone at your elbow and it is ringing while you are engaged in other work and job description is do both at the same time?

Answering phones is easy. Yeah, it takes a couple of minutes and yeah, everyone is overworked, but it's an easy task. The only hard part of the task is getting someone in the right area to take the call, and if everyone is doing their damned primary job of helping guests, then getting someone in the area on the phone should be easy. Everything else about a phone call isn't all that of a problem.
 
Yeah, so, uh...when I took the job it didn't involve answering phones.

I believe in customer service--but I already get in trouble for taking the time to help guests in-store. Phone guests always take longer than that. I would rather get in trouble for not answering phones than not getting my freight done. My ass has been chewed out a million times because I was helping guests and they say I shouldn't be taking too long with them. I will not jeopardize getting my freight done because Karen wants to know if we have a fryer, and what they look like, and how big this shirt is because she doesn't believe the label for a second, and go over there to MAKE SURE what the handheld says is right...no. No, no, no.

I don't use a multi-line phone, never have, and will never work anywhere it's required.
 
I know this has been discussed ad nauseum here, but let's do it again:

The current phone system is 1000x better than the old one that was in place when I was first hired, which was that Style (then Softlines) was the only one who had to answer phone calls for the entire store - so basically an operator, but an operator who also had to push freight, help in -store guests, collect and sort reshop, monitor the fitting rooms, etc etc etc. We had a handheld cordless phone to carry, as well as the phone console at the fitting room desk. Terrible system that never made any sense to me. Sure there were a very few glorious days when the phone didn't ring all that much - but there were more times when it rang constantly: for HR when we were hiring, for the LOD when there were callouts, for Guest Services about SFS or OPU orders, for Toys or Electronics when a hot new item dropped, for Seasonal during heat waves or cold snaps, and on and on.

The current system, if properly executed, should cut way down on the amount of calls any one person would have to answer, because at least one person from each area should be logged in to the phone, and when a guest selects that area, only their zebra will ring. If no one answers, then it will bounce to the console at Guest Services, but in a perfect world where everyone does what they are supposed to, that shouldn't happen all that much.

But as we all know, the world is not perfect, and most TMs are not signed in to the phone. Also, guests will of course select the wrong area, which is mainly why I rarely sign in - every single time I have, I get a call within minutes asking for something from another department. And I learned very quickly back when I was the "operator" how fast one question from a guest could turn into a convoluted conversation, so no, I don't ask questions over the radio - I transfer to the correct department and let them sort it out.

Regardless, if everyone was signed in, the amount of calls received by one TM would not be nearly as much as they were when Style had to answer every single call for the entire store. And since I was one of those battle-scarred pseudo-operators taking calls for mostly everything BUT Style, I now have zero fucks to give about the phones and who answers them, as long as it ain't me.
 
Look, for my experience, it was only a couple of months of being at Target that every single shift for two or three months would be FRO, then I'd get a single non FRO shift, and then I was back to exclusive FRO. Got a new ETL a few months before I left, my schedule was crazy for about a month, and then more often than not I was carrying the phone. I guess they liked my phone skills, it certainly wasn't my fitting room organization skills.

So I've been there. I've been in the trenches. I carried the phone more in those 2 1/2 years than most people in the old softlines.

And it ain't a big fucking deal. They have a million questions, transfer. They have a million questions and the other person is busy, tell them to call back. They have simple return questions, just answer them. They want a high demand item, no we don't have it/yeah we have a couple but we can't hold it, I suggest you come in quickly before they are gone.

Not that hard. And again personal experience, I preferred it to when I had to handle a call while simultaneously typing a 50 page legal contract. That last is a brain twister and hope attention to detail and multi-tasking prevents errors. Talking about a toaster while having a non-verbal exchange through smiles with a physical guest waiting for help is nothing. And there's a lovely little button called "hold". Whether you genuinely need them to hold, whether you are just tired of the blah blah for a second and want to bang the phone hard before picking the line back up with a smile, they aren't going to know. You can put them on hold until you can get the need met (whether theirs or yours). You can put them on hold while you help the guest in your face.

Phones are not a big deal. They are nowhere near as big of a deal as people make them out to be. I have some hearing loss, I struggle to hear people on the phone, and even with that, it's not a big deal.
 

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