work

Life as an enrollment and service support representative at Powerspeak is a nice conglomerate of frustration and amusement. Each day presents some similar scenarios with some unusual ones thrown in here and there.

First is the parent calling in about a URL error message that they get when the student tries to access their course. This error message is related to an enrollment issue that we have no control of because we don't do the enrollments for these schools. But every day at least one customer will call in and say that they called their school. But instead of resolving the problem, the school sends them to us--the people who can NOT resolve the problem. Even more frustrating (mostly for the parent who is getting tossed back and forth like. . . umm. . . a hot potato?) is when the customer contacts the teacher about an enrollment issue, who then refers them to us; we refer them to their school's enrollment officer, but then often the school refers them right back to us. Uh, hello?!

Second is the student with a recording issue. I hate these because the problems are so various and there is no one solution. The problem can be related to the web browser they are using (Internet Explorer 8 is just bad news), the microphone or headset (is it plugged in to the right port? is the volume turned up? Is it functional?), a firewall blocking port 1935, the time of the day they are trying to do the recording (are 500 other students trying to do a recording at the same time?), their operating system (why was Windows Vista ever created?), and their computer (if it's a Mac then you want to use Safari for recordings and Mozilla Firefox for all other activities; if it's a very very old computer then you probably should throw it out and get a new one).

Third is the parent or student calling in and saying that all of their work has tragically disappeared. This tragedy can be related to the operating system on their computer; but too often it is a fancy tale the student is telling the parent--a tale that they have done all this work in the course when they really haven't. I've learned that parents are often very defensive of their child's integrity--after all, their child is very bright and diligent and would never think of telling a lie! Well, student's do tell lies and cheat. (One student even took screen shots of her course, cropped those images, and modified them in Photoshop so it appeared that she had done the work.)

The nice part of my work? When a teacher calls up with a very confusing task that they want you to help them out with and then after a few minutes on the phone, they resolve the problem themselves. Or when a student needs a password reset--it's such a simple and easy problem to resolve and most of the time the recipient is extremely gracious and thankful. Or when you hear from a parent who wants to tell you how great Powerspeak is and how their child just can't get enough of "that avatar thing." Or when you get to transfer the call to someone else either directly (pressing their extension) or indirectly (not answering your phone so it automatically get's passed on to them--it's a good way to get your coworkers annoyed at you if you try this tactic too often).

Oh, and the best part is working with Joan!