i think anyone in a call centre will be exposed to this - i left my previous job because it got beyond ridiculous. if you didn't work your sales pitch in a certain way, you failed the call (quality wise). you could get all the information in the call, in a way that was appropriate for the customer, but if you didn't word it the way they wanted you to word it, you failed. i had the official training on a thurs/fri - by friday night i had told DH i was leaving and getting a new job. took less than 8 weeks for me to get the job i now have

in my current role, there is a degree of scripting - but you still have a fair degree of freedom. i guess if you weren't meeting other requirements of the role, they may get a bit more picky about the scripting, but as it stands at the moment i don't notice it at all.

we do have very VERY strict guidelines in regards to time management. average handling time, percentage of time dealing direct with customers vs time doing work after the calls - and the biggest one is how long we are on breaks etc. they are timed to the second. a LOT of people find this ridiculous and frustrating, but having done some training in the setting up and running of a call centre, i know how much this can make a difference. at the moment, we are flat out. constantly people waiting for help. so any time we're not dealing with customers is time that isn't well spent. our average handling time for customers is about 8 minutes - if we're 30 seconds late back from each of our breaks (we have 2*15min, lunch, and five minute breaks every hour) each person would deal with, on average, one less customer a day. in our centre alone that's around 250 customers that don't get answered. australia wide, with 25 call centres, that's a huge number of people not helped each day.... so yes, it seems to be serious overkill when you're looking at it, but when you get the why of it, it makes sense

and meh i'm not too phased - i get paid to do a job, i do it. obviously not everyone feels like that - but i think my own background in this sort of field means i'm much less antsy about it all. it is what it is kwim?