Maintaining Public Health


The Longest call

It’s always the weird ones people remember.

For our call centre staff, it’s the callers with the wacky obsessions that stand out from the thousands upon thousands calls they handle each month that really stay with them.

NEA’s 24-hour Call Centre is an increasing rarity in an era of computer-minded touchtone switchboards. The human emotion and angst its personnel witness run the gamut, from unimaginable fury and icy complaining, to (admittedly less) praise or constructive suggestions for improvement. It even has its share of “regulars” – lonely hearts and suicidal souls who ring the centre just to be heard by another human being.

“One old lady in Bedok Reservoir who speaks Mandarin rings sometimes, and wants to discuss shares – like which to buy, which to sell, do you play, that sort of thing,” said Alias Onn, Call Centre Manager. “She has a few favourites she wants to speak to, the ones with whom she has built up a relationship over the years. She talks for a long time.”

He also remembers another repeat caller who was obsessed with Indian incense wafting into her flat from a neighbour’s house, a man who was so fixated on graffiti on the walls of MRT toilets that he provided a detailed list of all such affected toilets, and one who would call saying he had no reason to live.

But the Call Centre, which is manned by experienced Environmental Health Officers, mainly deals with serious callers, most of whom are concerned or upset, mainly about mosquitoes (more specifically, getting bitten by them).

At the peak of the hot season, from January to March, the number of calls handled by the Call Centre shot up to 980 a day. That’s because mosquitoes breed fastest in hot weather. A typical day would see 400 to 500 calls managed. That number also increases with a rise in NEA-related publicity, acting as a kind of public sentiment barometer.

Apart from mozzies, the most popular reasons for calling are choked drains and illegal hawking.

The longest calls tend to last 35 to 45 minutes. Some people begin their calls by letting off steam, launching full-pelt into a shouting fit in place of a greeting.

That’s why Onn believes the best call centre personnel are gifted with extraordinary patience – and more.

“They need to be slow to anger and not lose their cool, to have a finely-tuned ability to deal with and express empathy for difficult people, and also to have a good understanding of the limitations of any one situation, and be able to convey these clearly and amicably to the caller,” he explained.

“That’s not an easily attainable combination of traits in a fast-paced city where people are usually not very patient,” he added.