Frantic work day

Today we have discovered yet one more way in which my work day can be crazy. The most basic work day for me is handling follow up calls-mostly large billing research/rerate issues. The most normal work day for me is handling follow up calls while coordinating the assignment of follow up calls to all my teammates. Recently announced and hotly begrudged (there was talk of striking) is a recent announcement that our team will also handle the "I want to talk to your manager" calls (you didn't really think you were talking to a manager did you?). I've protested my concern that I do not want to be doing the previous 3 items at once. But today we added another piece to the pie. I am now part of a special group that any agent on the floor can send a message to if they have a question about anything.

So relive this moment with me from earlier today. I am trying to work on my own follow up, calling a customer to politely raise some concerns I had about assertions in a billing dispute they called us for. Then, in the follow up team's chat room 2 people ask me for more work at about the same time. I tell them please wait I'm on a call, but I have to keep an eye on the chat or I'll lose track of the crowd that were waiting to ask but didn't want to be the first to do so. Then I get two chat requests from different agents asking me to help them with their calls and since the answers are ones that I think will be quick I try to answer them at the same time I am on the call. So I am keeping track of 5 people trying to ask me to do something at the same time and actively responding to 3 of them.

Now that was borderline insanity multitasking overload for me. And this was a polite call I was having, not the crazy I'm-going-to-yell-at-you-for-an-hour-because-you-shut-my- phone-off-for-nonpay-the-same-month-my-grandfather-died.

So lets hope I won't get manager escalations, have to handle my own callbacks, manage the workflow for the team, and answer random questions all at once. My team leader may think I'm a superb multi-tasker. I may have been well known for being on a call and people would walk up behind me and ask me a question and I'd type the answers on screen so I wouldn't have to stop talking making me approachable anytime no matter what, but this is insane already and could get a lot worse.