[Job-Discussions] working in customer service

[ajharmon26]

Hello
I had a temp job working for a grocery company's local processing center.
The biggest problem was the primary server was a remote access server
hand-built by some prior worker using Lynex. I doubt you'll run into such a
situation, so here's the best advice I can give regarding screenshots and
computer accessibility:

Have an in-depth conversation with the local IT about what tech is being
used and how to get around it using non-visual techniques like
JAWS/NVDA/Windows Eyes or other screen reader of choice. If the screen
reader does not have an OCR program built in or other OCR programs are not
working well with the screenshot - I use Kurzweil 1000 for this - ask the
sender what was in the screenshot, and if it's a image of a program they're
working within like Excel or Access or some other database, ask them to
export the file to you instead. 9 times out of 10 the person is patient or
understanding enough to work out a quick fix to answer whatever need the
screenshot was generated to answer. In my case, everyone in the pricing
department had to have a fellow co-worker review and sign off before
submitting information to clients or submitting for supervisor approval, and
we worked out a way to shoot an attachment of the Excel workbook the primary
information was in via their internal version of AIM/FB messenger.

Finally, I cannot stress enough that you should learn wwhatever database the
company uses as fast as possible, and then work out an alt-tab series to
work between the database and whatever your preferred method of capturing
data for after-call logs you're using. I shadowed a 211 operator for a day,
and they used an online database for the info, but also had to be able to
input people's information into their own database; I figured out by holding
down ALT and tabbing to certain programs I could set up a series of quick
switches to be able to alt-tab from program 1 to program 3 and in-between in
about 1-4 seconds. This helped cut down the time needed to log after-call
information, as every single call needed to be processed properly for both
purposes of training and supervisor review.

I hope this helped; if IT isn't willing to have a discussion with you about
accessibility, ask who you can talk to, and don't stop till you get someone
who will. I lost my temp job purely because I couldn't access info and I had
forgotten that there were outside orgs I could have talked to to get the
help I needed because of the damn phonebook's worth of arbitration
agreements. Don't let that happen to you!

Thanks for reading my rant/novella and good luck!

Sincerely

Andrew Harmon

-----Original Message-----
From: Job-Discussions [mailto:job-discussions-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Rachel Becker via Job-Discussions
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2020 3:46 PM
To: job-discussions at nfbnet.org
Cc: Rachel Becker
Subject: [Job-Discussions] working in customer service

Hi All,
I got a job working in customer service for a publishing company. I
would like to hear from others working in this field. What
accessibility challenges have you run into? What did you do if the
training uses screenshots or other visual information?
Rachel

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