Using Jargon at Work

When I worked at Convergys we were told in training not to use jargon with customers when they called in. Which makes sense, there are a lot of technical terms that people wouldn't understand. Basically we were to get them on and off the phone as quickly as possible. So why use language that would just lead to more questions and explanations?

However, we were also trained that if the customer asked a question we were supposed to answer it. Sometimes out calls were monitored "for quality control purposes". Which is a way of saying to make sure we are doing our job properly. We would get feed back, through or Team Leader, about any calls of ours that were monitored. There was actually a score given. This is where the bureaucratic bullshit mentality caused problems.

A customer called in and wanted some features added to his phone. No problem, an easy call. As I started the process he asked me what I had to do in order to install the features and start them. So I told him in simple terms.

"All I have to do is click on a few places, buttons on a web page, and then hit go."

Easy to understand right? Should be no problems right?

Well, 5 minutes after I finished the call my Team Leader came to my cubicle to go over my "report card" as he called it. It turns out that Quality Control monitored the call and "penalized" me for using jargon and holding a conversation with a customer. An offence that had to be dealt immediately by my team leader. The jargon? I said button. The conversation? Answering his question. Seriously.

I went through the call with my team leader and asked him what he would have done? He said the same thing I did. So what is the problem and why did I lose points? Because QC said I used jargon. Was it jargon? Not according to my team leader BUT according to QC it is. QC seemed to imply that I should have ignored the question, which of course would have then cost me points.

I asked me team leader if all the Quality Control people were such anal retentive idiots. I also told him I wanted to dispute the report because it was stupid. So I had to waste more time writing my rebuttal, which I worded more diplomatically than what I wrote here. In the end nothing ever came of it and I quit working there. Too much stupidity like that went on.