My New Blog

Yes, folks I got a new blog. See what's exciting about it. Just click the link below. See you there! 😀

https://jollyprincesscom.blog/

Back to Business

I am glad after years of inactivity due to pandemic we are slowly doing back to business. Pandemic taught resilient Filipinos to go on, move forward. Valentines Day is not only a celebration of relationship. Rather more on the business side for those whose income depends on selling flowers and keepsakes related to the occasion.

Aside from flower shops, inside the malls where those who can afford the price go. There is a place in the City of Manila, Dangwa located in Santa Cruz, frequented by buyers looking for much cheaper price. Stores in the area sell bunch of flowers, bouquets, and flower arrangements for all occasions.

I am watching news on tv everyday. I see videos and photos of innovative vendors creating flower bouquets inserted with, onions, peppers, paper money bills and other items. The increasing prices of commodities not only in Metropolis but the whole Philippines gave these vendors the idea. They say this is the most practical way instead of giving plain bouquet of flowers on Valentines Day.

The bouquet of vegetables is more expensive of course, compared to buying vegetables in supermarkets and groceries. But, the bouquet is Instagramable, after all. Prices of vegetables especially onions are very expensive in the Philippines. So, why not, coconut? 😀

Happy Valentines Day! ❤️

Plants Decor

Ever thought of something to decorate your space? Why not add greens on the spot of your house where there is space?

Plants make us relax a bit after a long day at work. Plants are effective stress reliever.  Aside from their aesthetic vibe, plants help get rid of some toxins inside our home.

You do not have to add plenty of them right away. To start, you may have a handful you are able to take care of. 

There are plenty of indoor plants to spruce up your living space. 

Try bringing them in. You will love them. 

I am Back for Real

             

I am back. Thank you for visiting my blog. 

Lunch

When I am  tired to cook coming home from work, yet I have to eat. Thanks to this quick cooking noodles.   I added egg and cucumber for good taste and nutrients. It is alright to be lazy as long as we do not make it a habit. More so, not to compromise our healthy eating. Bon appetit! 

How to Trouble Shoot No Dial Tone

If phone has no dial tone, before calling your service provider. Try these simple trouble shooting steps.

1. Check phone cord if properly connected to cradle or base where the phone handset resides. 

2. Make sure the other end of the cord  is connected to phone jack.

3. For corded phone handset. Make sure spiral cord, and cord from the jack are clip in properly. 

4. For cordless type of handset. Check If the base of the phone is connected to power source.

5.Check battery or change battery of cordless handset if needed. 

6. Unplug phone from jack, plug in after two minutes. If you have fax machine, unplug as well.

7. If you have cordless phone unplug also from power source.

8. If you have more than one handsets unplug them all from the jack. After two minutes, plug in one by one. Check for dial tone as you plug one after the other.  This is to isolate the possibility of one handset causing the no dial tone issue.  Unplug that handset causing the no dial tone permanently. If you have one handset and you have several jacks. Try plugging in the handset to the other jacks to isolate a jack trouble. 

9. If phone and internet modem are using same jack separated only by splitter. Try to use a new splitter.

10. Call your home phone. If you hear a not in service recording. Check if bills have been paid. If busy signal, check if handset rests properly on the cradle. 

After doing these trouble shooting, and still will not fix the no dial tone issue. Call your service provider.

Latest Update

Year 2018 has not been bad it is just that I have been busy about work and attending to my small space. I started this blog way back in January of 2008 when I was just renting a room for myself. Soon after my niece, my sis daughter, an only child graduated in college. My sister and I decided to let her come to Manila for better opportunity. My sis and my brother in law live in the province, an eight hour drive from Manila.

Living room

Likewise at the time, my sis in law, wife of my brother advised to let me also take in with me my nephew. My nephew and my niece get along too well as they have been best friends way back when they were kids. My brother would take my nephew to the house of my sister during school vacation. The first apartment I found where the three of us started sharing was not very conducive to live with. The landlord used to asked for cash advances. There were times he failed to pay the electricity and water bills. It was a not a good experience.

Dining and kitchen

After three months of enduring the situation I decided to move to another apartment. It was better than the first one. It was an old building though. We stayed for two years. I did not renew the contract anymore on the second apartment after two years. Reason, we were on the second level of the building. The roof began to leak on rainy days. Fearing that my hard earned appliances would be damaged. I decided to move again.

I searched online. Determined to look for a much better place. I got lucky for the third time. The place was small space. A condo where I feel safer due to twenty four hours security guards and CCTVs. It was a bit expensive compared to the previous apartments but safer and convenient to rides twenty four seven. My nephew finally married his girlfriend. Now it is myself and my niece who share the rent and utilities.

Hello

This blog is still active folks. 

Thank you for visiting continuously. Just been too  busy really. I will soon post to update this blog. 

Christmas is Fast Approaching

As the Christmas season is fast approaching City of Manila is again on heavy traffic during rush hours and weekends.  Oh, well some may disagree with me as everyday it is always traffic jam.  I am thankful I am work early morning. I am not affected. 

I am lucky to be working in a BPO company? Not really. There are still pros and cons. I got work on Christmas and New Year. There were few allotted slots for the whole chat tech support team to file for vacation leave this Christmas.  There are three teams with at least 20 to 25 people. First come, first come first serve. I was on vacation leave at the start of filing for vacation leave for the whole month of December. Although we can log in to the website where to file our vacation leave, my computer acted up. I had to frantically work on filing using my smart phone.  I am not a great typist on my laptop, but better that pressing the keypad on my smart phone.

Last year I got lucky. It is okay. I am used working on occasions like this.  My family knew, I will be absent again from Noche Buena table. 

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY PHILIPPINES!

After 300 years being under authoritarian Spanish regime. Philippines gained independence 12th of June 1898. On June 5, 1898, Gen. Emelio Aguinaldo issued a decree setting June 12, 1898 as the day of the proclamation of independence. Led by Aguinaldo, this event took place at the Aguinaldo house located in what was then known as Cavite El Viejo, in Kawit Cavite City.

Source  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(Philippines).

Blogging Again

I has been a while folks. I hope everyone is doing great. To all mommies, Happy Mother’s Day!

Year 2017 has been alright. I would not say not perfect but all creases have been ironed-out. Mostly work related issues.  To those you have been following my blog, I mentioned I have transferred to chat from being a voice tech support agent. There was a bit of struggle at the beginning of the year, 2017. It was all about my monthly score.

To call center representatives also known as call center agents, like me.  They know what I am saying here. Passing our annual score is a must, if we want a salary increase. It also helps management to know if the agent is performing. Or, the agent needs help. Worst, if they agent needs to leave the company. I had a bit of struggle for six months, getting not a passing customer survey. Luckily, I made it towards the middle of the year until year end.  Why did I not aim for promotion? Not worth it for a lot of pressure. I would rather retire looking young and healthy.

Family and love life is great I have no complain. They are very supportive. Busy at home on my day off and vacation from work.  It is normal for me to mind my organizing my small space.  I do not want to arrive from work to a topsy turvy home.  I am not a traveller, other than team building activities at work. I do not want to spend money when not needed. I would rather spend money in buying appliances and home maintenance.  I live frugally and in the most practical way. Please do not get me wrong. I am not against travelling.  Go ahead if you need to. I am speaking for myself.

Here I am back to blogging again. Just like saying hello to my blogging buddies and readers.  This blog is still alive. I may not be consistent with my post but  I can assure everyone this blog will stay until such time I can no longer type and run out of ideas.  I will be in touch with more stories.   My pillows are now waiting for me in my bed. 

Thank you 2017! Welcome 2018!

This early let me wish all my blogger  friends and readers. -

A PROSPEROUS 2018! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We got work early morning of New Year. My home buddy niece treated me to this sumptuous lunch. The salad alone made me felt so full. 

Some left over chicken and mashed potatoes will be our dinner tonight. Get some sleep in the middle of the celebration. Wake up, head to work. 

Same thing happen last Christmas. I was also at work. To save on cooking effort. We likewise ordered food.  

Manila Philippines is around 8 to 15 hours ahead of other countries. Today is the 31st of December here. So yes, New Year here is just few hours away. 

Few Days to Christmas Day

Christmas is few days away. I decorated my small space in preparation for the joyful occasion. Just simple decors I could get my hands on. I do not want to spend anymore for Christmas decors.

This is my living room. My two seater couch are now stuffed with Christmas throw pillow.  I found some old Christmas cards I was supposed to mail to friends but they changed addresses. I got them stuck on the door and cut out stars out of metallic paper.

My little Christmas tree occupies a corner on top of my shoe drawer The two teddy bears are my favorite stuffed toys. They are gifts from youngest bro from his trip to Ireland and Oregon U.S. years back. Partly hidden beside my old television are some Christmas presents I started wrapping for my family members.

I am not saying do not spend for decors. Go ahead if you have budget.  I am simply sharing how to enjoy the Holiday Season. That is without giving away your precious earnings if budget is tight. 

Customer Survey

You waited on the phone. It took you around forty five minutes before you finally spoke with someone.  By the time someone came to answer you. You were not in good mood anymore.

The person on the other end of the line tried to pacify you. Asked how he can be of help to you. But you kept ranting how long you waited on the phone. Reiterating the company has very poor service. With emphasis it, is not about the person on the phone but the poor service of the company.

Finally the agent was successful in attending to your concern. Issue was fixed. You received survey on your email. Your frustration for waiting on the line was still at the back of your mind. Time to get even, you answered the survey. The following day, the agent was coached by the team captain for the poor survey.

If you are a customer, be objective in answering survey.  You are not happy with the company. Fine, bombard the company with your comments that goes with the survey. But never put a poor  survey unless the person on the other end did not help you at all. Your survey goes to the person you spoke with, not to the company. 

Star and Pound Keys on a Phone Handset

Star (*)and pound keys (# ) on a phone handset are used to activate and deactivate phone calling features. These calling features could be voice mail, call forwarding, call blocking and others.  Star and pounds keys followed by numeric code are use to activate and deactivate these calling features depending on your service provider. Example, to activate voice mail you have to press *98 or #98.

Star and pound keys would work only on tone dials not on pulse dial.  What is tone dial? For easy understanding, when you press a number on the key pad of your phone handset, you will hear a long “toooot” sound.  What is pulse dial? For pulse dial you will hear clicks or sound similar to that of the old rotary dial.  I tried to search online on the difference of these two but the definition on there, confused me.

You may argue you have a push button phone handset not a rotary type of handset. That is good. For some reason it might have gotten switched to rotary dial. No worries you can switch back to tone dial by looking for a tiny slide switch at the bottom or side of your phone. The slide switch indicates a letter T and P.  T for tone and P for pulse, simply slide the switch to letter T for star and pound keys to work.

 Some push button handset phone may not have the slide switch. If you are to use star key, press 11 followed by the numeric code. Using my example *98 for voice mail, you can press 1198. If you are to use pound key, press 12 followed by the numeric code, example 1298 for #98.  If this does not work, you can refer to the user guide or manual of the manufacture of the phone handset.

 If you do not have the user guide you can download online. If you cannot follow the instruction, feel free to call the manufacturer of your phone handset. Do not call your service provider or the store where you bought the phone.  The trouble is out of their scope of support. It will only be the tech from the manufacturer of the phone handset who can help you.  So, make note of it.  If you have phone calling features, make sure star (*) and pound (#) keys work on your handset.

Your Home Phone has No Dial Tone

 It is your day off from work. You want to rest, watch tv and avoiding cooking.  You want pizza delivered right at your doorstep. You feel frustrated picking up your phone and there is silence.  You frantically dialed your service provider from your pay as you go cell phone, only to hear recording saying all calls will be attended to shortly as they are getting volumes of calls.

Do try these simple trouble shooting steps and see it you can fix your phone. Unplug phone from phone jack. Plug in back after one minute. If your phone handset is wordless, unplug the base from the power source as well. If you have, fax machine and internet modem, unplug them too. If there is a phone cord plug in at the back of a satellite receiver unplug the phone cord at the back of the receiver. Soon as one minute is up, plug back in. If you are lucky, dial tone will kick in after you plug back in phone handset.

If you have several phone handsets, plug in first the basic non cordless handset. Every time you plug in a handset to the jack listen for dial tone.  If one has dial tone, and you plug in another phone handset and lose dial tone. Unplug again the last phone you plugged in. That particular phone handset is causing the trouble. If you only have one phone handset and there is spare jack. Try plugging in the phone handset to the spare jack. If it works on the spare jack, it means it is the first jack causing the trouble.  Normally service provider charges replacement of phone jack, you can do it yourself. Or ask a friend who can fix it for you.

When you get dial tone and soon as you plug in your fax machine, and lose dial tone. It is your fax machine causing the trouble. Call then the manufacturer of the fax machine. If you plug in modem, and lose dial tone. Call your internet service provider. Same thing if you have satellite tv and you plug in back the phone cord at the back of the satellite receiver. Call your satellite service provider. Satellite service provider must replace the satellite receiver.

Before you do the trouble shooting, try calling your home phone first. If recording says not in service at this time, no need to trouble shoot. Call your service provider, check with them if bills have been paid. If paid, chances are someone must have installed phone service in your area. The installed tech might have inadvertently disconnected your phone service.  

Welcome Me Back World Wide Web

The days are passing by too fast. It is July now, half of 2017. Few more months, everybody will busy again shopping for Christmas presents.  So what have I been up to?

There are so many things that happened in the month of June. My brain is too busy to think of one topic to write. I have yet to mention, I was on training again last end of March as chat tech support.  I thought I know how to communicate though chat, having chatted before with some online friends. But I was wrong. Casual conversation is different from business conversation. One of my struggles is how to pacify an irate customer through chat. At least if I am speaking with customer through voice call. The customer on the other end of the line can hear the tone of my voice.

From April to May I struggled with dissatisfied, surveys.  Oh no, I did not make my customers upset. There are many ways customers would give dissatisfied ratings on a survey. One is they would wait on the queue for so long. Their time is precious like anyone else.  Sometimes some company procedures and policies they are not aware of. Services outage is another one.  Who would want to lose phone or internet connection just when the service is needed most. They would take the survey, not knowing the survey would fall on the agent they chatted  or spoke with.  Hopefully soon as June scores will be tallied. I hope to pass.

Yes, we do have monthly scores. In some call centers, if agent is not passing the monthly scores repeatedly.  The agent could be transferred to another department. Worst scenario the agent could be terminated from the job. In the company I am working. If we do not pass the yearly average we will not get salary increase. I am hoping for the best to pass this 2017 for another salary increase.  Some people may say working in a call center is easy. Call center companies do not require four year college degree. Not really. Try to apply and see for yourself. This is the kind of job where you will be technically and analytically challenged. 

Emergency Alert

This was an emergency earthquake alert on my cell phone that woke me up. It came in three times. 

English translation “Magnitude 5.4 earthquake hit San Marcelino Zambales at 10:27pm, 25th May 2017. Aftershocks are expected. Be prepared, ensure your safety and your family as well. “

San Marcelino Zambales is located along the northern coast of Subic Bay in the Philippines. Earthquake was felt in some areas in Manila, but not where I live.

Although you woke me up, thank you PHIVOLCS (Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology) for the alert. You are much improved now. Keep up the great job!

Thank you to the inventor of smart phones. Thank you to my office for giving me the smart phone. A gift I received for being a loyal employee for ten years of service. Emergency situations are disseminated to the public instantly through this powerful gadget. 

Colorful Plates

Being healthy is a must when you work in a call center.  Although we are entitled to hospitalization benefits, being absent from work caused discomfort to our team mates.  They may be required to take overtime to cover the board hours.

Aside from taking my regular food supplement. I make sure I take care of my diet too. Despite being tired and sleepy getting home from work, I take time I cook lunch. Lunch during working days, are rice, vegetables and fish. I eat meat at least twice a week for protein.  Fruits and juices for me work as alternative to coffee.  I make sure also I have time for exercise.  I constantly do a walking exercise.  Let me share with you my colorful plates. 

Fried rice and pan fried kamote tops and lady finger,
with tuna flakes.

Tofu and cabage

Assorted vegetables

Calamasi juice 

BPO and Call Centers

You probably heard or read about Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Call Centers but you need insight on what kind of business they have and how they do business.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is contracting of certain business activities to third party service providers. The third party service providers are responsible for hiring the needed manpower. They also make sure job assigned to them are carried out to the best of the satisfaction of the outsourcing company.

Outsourcing of business could be offshore or onshore. Offshore outsourcing is relocating the business process from one country to another country. Onshore is simply domestic contracting. These service providers are responsible for their employees’ compensations and benefits. Rate of salaries and compensations is base on the currency of the country where service providers are located. 

In the Philippines some businesses like telecommunications, banks, travel agencies, opt to outsource their marketing department. I for one upgraded my internet service through a telemarketer.  I made sure though they are legitimate. I checked with my internet service provider before I signed up with them.

A Call Center is the third party service provider that handles calls assigned by outsourcing companies. Call handling could be inbound or outbound. Inbound is accepting calls from the customers of the outsourcing company.  Outbound is calling out to the customers of the outsourcing company. One example of outbound Call Center, are telemarketers selling products and services to customers. Likewise there are, non-voice Call Centers. They communicate by chatting to the customers of the outsourcing company.

In outbound call center, after calls are made by a call center representative. Another department processed the orders through the back end. The back end people are responsible for shipping, sending communications to customers, correcting orders, all other functions that cannot be done by a front line call center representative. Call center representatives are also known as call center agents.

For inbound call centers, a frontline call center representative assist calling in customer. Do the best to resolve the issue, customer is calling about during the call. If issue cannot be resolved on the call, frontline agent would pass the issue to the back end for resolution. Inbound call center agent has to provide customer with estimated time frame as to when the issue will be resolved. Back end representatives may not be located in the same country where call centers are outsourced. For telecommunication outsourcing companies, resolution of the issue could mean dispatching their local technician.

Depending on the urgency of the issue, a customer may become irate if he wants to get the issue resolved during the call. There are some issues that resolution is beyond the control of the representative. This is where some calls become difficult to handle. If customer asks for a supervisor or manger, the call will be transferred to an escalation agent. If an escalation agent is not available the team lead or team captain can take the call. How do you handle irate callers? I will have separate discussion on that on the next blog post.

Why do call center center representatives work at night? It depends on the outsourcing company. In the Philippines most outsourcing companies are from Canada, United Kingdom and United States. We have to follow the working hours of these countries. Why are these companies outsourcing? I could think of two main reasons. One, to outsource is cost efficient, secondly more manpower is needed. 

Some of my readers may be working in the same industry where I am. Possibly in your urgency of getting a job you have not asked what kind of business industry you are in. I hope I have given you some bits of information, to answer some inquiries of those getting curious why you work at night. Now, you have bits of knowledge about Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Call Center business.