COVID Patients Abuse Call Centre Executives

When a person tests positive for Covid19, it is not just physically draining, but also emotionally. Many time these people who are in-home quarantine, become irritable. They tend to take out their frustration on the first person they talk to. The majority of the times, it is the care centre caller that becomes the target of this.

Call centres were set up at different zones across every state as Covid helpdesk for affected people. Those sitting on duty are in charge of helping people with any assistance that they need and also taking information from patients under home isolation. It happens that when the callers get in touch with the patients to inquire about their health, the patients end up abusing them. They take out all their frustration on the callers.

The job of these callers is to get in touch with the home quarantined patients and get information regarding their health. Now even the callers are becoming frustrated as they have to hear the abuses. It is their duty to call and get an update on the patient’s health, but they are getting slack for that. The staff is not able to take it anymore.

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Certain questions like how the patient is feeling, symptoms, temperature is important to ask. Other details are to ensure others’ safety. They ask address, the number of members of a family, age etc so that they can understand the situation.

While the callers are saying that they feel harassed, the patients on the other hand have said that what irritates them are the number of calls. They get these calls repeatedly and have to answer the same questions multiple times. It would have been fine if I answered just one call a day, but I have to deal with six of them, said a patient.

Even when we are trying to rest, these calls break our sleep and in turn disturb us. Sometimes these calls are just for the sake of it. One patient was contacted almost when he recovered. It does not make sense to get the details then.

It is a situation where both the patients and the callers are frustrated.