Unusual Perception

When I first moved to wonderful and beautiful Grand Junction, CO, I chose an occupational route which would not put me in charge of a small army of fast food workers: Though I will do those things which are required of me to keep a paycheck coming in, food on my table, and a roof over my head, I knew that there was something better out there for me. Not that the path which my resultant choice was better, but it didn’t require me to smell like fried foods at the end of the day. I took a job in the wireless industry as a receivables management agent in a call center. It was high-stress with high-turnover, but it was technical in nature and I figured that it was something that would tide me over until the next better thing came along.

Throughout training we learned of many a wireless wonder; after a few weeks of classroom training and a few weeks in what was called Academy Bay— that place where new call center agents take their first calls under the supervision of mentors, themselves seasoned call center staff. Soon thereafter we were assigned to floor teams and started our careers as agents. The thing that we each learned was that customers would likely call us if they were past due on their wireless phone accounts—if they called in for customer service and were past due, the voice recognition phone system would direct them to our department. People who don’t pay their bills (and some that do) have a particular behavior pattern, I quickly learned. A generality it might be, but many an experience it was nonetheless: They can be rude, angry, frustrated, mean, panicky, oblivious, and act quite, quite stupidly. I decided quickly that I wanted into a position that was less “on the floor” and more in a support-style role. My vision became to be promoted. And, in my typical style, do so in a distinguished manner.

In the first two weeks of being on JoNi’s “Team 4,” I achieved the second-highest collections in the call center at $176,000. The person that beat me (by only $4,000) for the top spot was a veteran of about 5 years. The next month I hit number one. I had learned the systems like no other and, in my spare time between calls (something that tends to happen on night shifts) I would memorize the details of policies, procedures, and the best practices of my job role. My time on a call averaged about 3 minutes: I was a one-stop shop for the customers that had better things to do than to stay on a phone after being on hold for (often) several minutes or hours and have them on their way to live the rest of their lives.

Yes, my vision was coming to fruition. Soon I was selected to be part of a team of 5 to travel to another call center and “red hat” for them—assist agents in training for their new posts by offering advice and assistance for them as they need it while they were on the phones. This call center was training some 300 agents to go from the old second generation “TDMA” software systems to the newer third generation “GSM” software. While I wasn’t as much of a whiz on the second generation stuff as some of the old timers, I had come to know the Siebel software that drove the GSM phone systems better than most others. Yes, my vision was coming to fruition.

Around this time I had applied for the Resolutions Support Desk, or the Resolutions Department as it was more formally called, “RSD” or “Rez” was the team of individuals that had distinguished themselves as the best of the best call center agents and been promoted to work in an environment where they would advice other call center representatives on procedural, policy, and technical issues and, as necessary, take an escalated call from a customer. Have you ever called someplace and asked for their supervisor? If you called this company, spoke with the receivables management department, and asked for a supervisor there was about a 1 in 100 chance (by my estimation) that you could talk to me.

Yes, my vision saw me through to being a standard floor agent in a call center to becoming a member of the elite, the special forces of the wireless industry.

Vision: Unusual competence in discernment or perception; something that is or has been seen; a person or thing of extraordinary beauty; or to picture in one’s mind.

The first thing to know about vision is that it is derived from the leader: Vision must be leader-initiated. Vision is a key part in shaping an individual. Without vision, we would not have goals. Without vision, we would not be in positions to strategize our ways from point to point, to end up where we would rather be in life and to become the person that we want to become.

While your vision might be humble and it might be grand, it is always shaped by your paradigm in that your principles, standards, ethics, and morals will guide the vision from start to finish. Your ideal goal is representative of your goals, your ideals, and builds on your past and present. Your vision, in short, moves you forward.

Imagine clearly where you want to be and, given healthy doses of action, you can make your vision come to fruition.