Things are going well at work, I’ve been coming up with a competition for the team (all of which obviously goes in my portfolio) and yesterday did such a sterling job that a customer asked to speak to my manager to say how great I was; my parents now have another bottle of wine.
Not much else has happened recently but I figured knowing that I won another bottle of wine would be informative.
Reddit are hiring and I wondered to myself “If I lived within reach of them would I apply for the job?”. Normally it’d be a yes on the assumption I could complete the puzzle, I meet the qualifications and it’s the sort of job I’d really enjoy. This time I said no. I realised that I’m very much enjoying it at Admiral still (though the sooner I get to spend more time off the phone the better).
Generally things are going pretty good, I was part of the Guardian Angel stuff and Gary/Jade had me doing some extended GA stuff with some of our newer members. I was listening in to them and giving feedback on how they could improve, the stats of any that I gave feedback to have gone up massively which is always a good sign, it’s all good practice for when I apply for an SCR (assistant manager).
I’ve additionally transported my pint mug into work which I then use for cups of tea and hot chocolate, nobody was too surprised to see me with it.
Well I have been neglectful haven’t I? WoA has had the release of a massive system upgrade which somehow brought with it a ton of bugs I’m still fixing. I do however have some stuff about it that I can write about.
Rob (the database) was not applying the costs of certain things correctly and as a result several teams “spent” several times what they were meant to. Thankfully I make database backups and after a few hours of running scripts and poking stuff I’d worked out what the issue was and fixed it. There is still an issue of Rob not working out the correct cost for miltary units but I expect that to be fixed up shortly. For some reason everybody says I’m a huge nerd shortly after Ithey ask “so what do you do for fun?”.
Work-wise we’ve become part of a super team and I’ve been accepted as a Guardian Angel. I’ll be part of a small team helping to train up the new starters we’ve taken on and will probably wear wings (maybe). The new starters on our team are very good nad have hit the ground runnig, they’re selling better than I was when I first started and I think Gary’s pretty happy with their stats so far. I’m now one of the few “old timers” from the origional team as Ross has gone to Australia, Andrew and Dean have both left for other jobs and Sam is now on maternity leave.
For those that come here only for insanity; here is a picture of me sitting on a horse.
I didn’t get into the Guardian Angels thing; it’s a pretty large annoyance as I was really hoping I would. It’s not the end of the world and there will be other opportunities.
It’s been some time since my last blog entry, I was told that some people actually read this so I got a horrible idea that I should start to write stuff onto it again. I’ll start off on a serious note; here is me on a horse. That’s right, I’m still riding horses and clearly it’s showing because somebody asked me if I was gay, the conversation went downhill shortly after I started describing the horses in detail and the best type of shampoo to wash them with.
Work it going well, I’m currently 2nd on the team for selling stuff which is alarming because I’m a rubbish salesperson. I’ve applied for the guardian angel programme, a group of experienced salespeople help the new guys to learn how stuff works and be on hand to answer questions when they start on the phone. I’ve not yet heard if I made it or not but I’m hopeful as ever!
My new iMac arrived and already I’m wondering if 27 inches is big enough for a screen, there’s loads of room on the table for a bigger screen but sadly this was the biggest one I could get. So far I’ve been really happy with it and it’s performing wonderfully, especially now that Steam is out for the Mac and Portal was given away for free! I’ve now completed portal and all the advanced challenges (some were fiendishly hard) and am looking forwards to the release of Starcraft 2. The new computer plays Warcraft 3 pretty well and I’m slowly getting Emma into it too (thus when James comes round too we can have much larger games), though recently she’s gotten distracted by the horses and has wanted to go riding.
World of Arl continues on as ever, nothing amazingly new on it though several managers at work saw that I ran my own game and after Googling me think I am an internet sensation (well I suppose maybe I am).
Things have changed somewhat since the last post. We’ve moved desks, I’ve hit all of Feb’s targets, I took up bareback horse riding and I’m selling stuff somewhat better than before (handy when you consider that I’m a salesperson). As you may recall I was having a hard time last month and was seriously doubting my ability as a salesperson, I was looking at the possibilities of moving department. This has obviously changed and has done so because I was able to listen in to some other people and got told where I was going wrong by Gary.
So obviously I’m doing a bit better, better enough that my APP (the percentage of extra stuff sold) is at 0.93 where’s it used to be at 0.54 or something, a massive improvement. I’m now ahead on all things except IPP where I’m basically keeping up with my target. I’m still a fair distance behind Lucy (who sells very well) but in a position where I should start earning a not too bad amount of commision. New car and/or computer here I come!
The new desks means I’m now sitting right next to Ross which is… mostly bad because we’re both used to somewhat more space. I’m also next to Stuart whom I’ve been competing with since we started, currently I’m in the lead but he’s had some time off so it’s early days yet.
Up the lane are some horses that Cerys has been tasked with breaking in. Apparently my weighing more than Cerys means I’m a perfect candidate to help, oh and until today we didn’t have a saddle. It’s not nearly as bad as I thought, I originally only said yes because I was bored and wanted a break from programming.
So yes my life is getting a bit better, who knows, maybe this month I’ll grow a personality, perfect my “evil genius” laugh and work out how to wiggle my ears.
So I’ve had a bad few days and not a great month as a whole, the result is that halfway through the month I’m now behind on one of my targets and am generally not doing that great on my others. Gary is somewhat understaffed (he’s running a 14 man team on his own) but found time to listen to a call of mine and tell me just where I went wrong. I got some good feedback from it, my customer service is still marvellous but it was simply a “very good” call because I didn’t try hard enough for my optional extras.
Missing target and getting no incentive is quite honestly not a huge deal to me; I would enjoy the extra money but money is not my main motivator. What is worrying is that if I miss target twice in the six months of probation then I won’t pass probation, so I’m trying to work out exactly how to deal with this. I really enjoy working at Admiral but my gut is telling me that I’m not cut out to be a salesperson, I’ve consistently scored highly on my manner on the phone which suggests that maybe I should put in for a transfer to Claims or CS. I looked at the IT department and sadly most of the jobs seem to be in Java which I’m not so fluent in, I’ve emailed them all the same asking a few questions about what they do.
But it’s not all bad, even though I’m doing rubbish I still enjoy going into work, I enjoy being part of the team and I am looking forwards to the party on Friday. Hopefully things will turn out a little better in the future, I’d rather not be on the dole queue again.
So far I’ve had fantastic feedback from Lisa and some good feedback from both the customer services spot monitoring and Gary. It’s a good start but given that I act like I’m constantly high on something (like Opera music or blue smarties) I don’t think it’s enough. Saturday involved me upselling five IPPs (Instalment protection plans), we’re being moderated really heavily on them and can get fined £100 if we get it wrong! Gary listened to all of them but also used the first one as a full on monitoring call as I was due another (and he probably decided he needed a laugh).
He was sniggering and giggling the whole way through the call and at one point broke out into laughter, paused the recording and yelled to the whole team what I’d said. The customer had told me I sounded a bit like a game show host; a bit later I’d had to call them back (their phone was running low on batteries or something) and I opened with “Welcome back to the game-show that is Teifion Insurance”. This call warranted a level of “Fantastic” and a large smile from Gary which was pretty nice.
Today however we were told that two of us had been monitored externally, doing well would mean either a bonus of £25 or £100! Doing badly could be either £25 or £50 out of your incentive for the month. Needless to say that when Andrew was told that he was first he was a bit worried; Paul said it was good and Andrew had a good call 
. There were only two calls that had been monitored in this manner so Paul decided to keep us on tenter-hooks and read through the comments omitting names. I figured that some of the stuff was indicative of myself but for the most part it was saying things such as “good upsell” and leaving out things such as “constant sugar rush” so I figured it must be someone else. It was however me and warrented yet another “Fantastic” and £100 on my incentive for either this month or the next one (I can’t remember which it will be).
Today I got some more feedback from work, I think I’ve now accrued enough to share on here just what things people have thought of me. I’ll start by sharing some choice phrases used in relation to my phone manner: exuberant, enthusiastic, funny, customer focused, overpowering, excitable, friendly and overcooked.
My 1-2-1 with Gary at the end of the first month showed me that I need to focus on the Car Hire and IPP upspells, it focused on a few other things but I seem to be at least moving towards those other targets. My Car hire and IPP scores are somewhat lacking at the moment though and I need to redouble my efforts to ensure I hit the targets.
Gary was particularly happy with my customer service, I was always polite yet at the same time built repore at a good rate each call. This was echoed in my customer services spot monitoring where the moderator said that she had actually laughed at the call because I was so funny, the only fault they could find from that perspective was that I talked too fast at some points, so only nine out of ten. From a technical standpoint my calls are so far all green, that means that I’ve not violated FSA requirements, if I did that then I’d start to lose some of my commission pay.
Today I had my next wad of feedback; despite the best efforts of both Gary and Lisa to unnerve me I was confident. Lisa was the one that’d monitored the call and had found it very funny and of high quality. What was rubbish about it was my ability as a salesperson, she showed me where I went wrong and hopefully it won’t happen again.
Better yet I got some comment forms from customers back, they were pretty happy with the service received and I’ve now taken them home. I’ve since decided that I will be taking them back in and filing them in a file that I’ll look at every time I’m feeling bummed after a bad call. I may also put a picture of the cookie monster on the front of the file, just because I can.
So I’ve been working at Admiral for a month and a bit, I’ve got some thoughts about it and as I’ve nothing better to do would post it up here. You may recall that my last post expressed just how happy I am to work at Admiral. Well I’ve had some time to settle in a bit and it’s much the same, I’m still very happy to work for Admiral and I think they’re happy for me to work for them, something about the way that I’m constantly upbeat and enthusiastic.
It’s not without it’s annoyances, I get very little say in what days I work and so do work some weekends when I’d rather not. At the same time though there are some very cool things about it, today I went home half an hour early! I’ll explain: We had a competition where if you managed to get two extras onto a policy then you’d get a go with a small remote control car, you’d race it around the row of desks as fast as possible and whoever had the fastest time half an hour before closing got to go home early. I got 9.6 something and the 2nd place had 11 point something. You can imagine just how humble I was about this.
The other funny thing is that if I’m at a social gathering and people hear I work for Admiral; then the conversation rapidly swings to them asking questions about how things work. The really funny part of that is however that I’m able to answer almost all their questions and that I enjoy doing it!
Finally, I may enjoy the job but am I any good at it? Yes, I got some high stats yet did no overtime! I’m surprised by this as I’ve never done sales jobs before. I’ll be sure to post here at a later date about the situation with my work but I must say it’s pretty good so far