“You have me on hold on the other line”

I work for a large regional bank in the US in the loan servicing department. My department is relatively small, we only have about 80-90 employees across three sites to service all loans for the bank. One of my colleagues and myself sound very similar and even our names are similar especially if you’re not paying attention.

I had a customer call in, and I answered the phone as usual. Right off, the customer asks for my name again (and mistook what I said for my colleagues name), my agent ID number ( which we do not have) and my location (which we do not disclose). The customer then goes on to inform me that I currently have her on hold on the other line and I am now taking other calls and neglecting her call. I tried to explain that our phone systems will not allow me to take other calls from queue, but she didn’t want to hear that. I informed her that I’d be happy to help her, and all she would say is that she will report me and have me fired. At this point I’m slightly annoyed, and she hangs up. I proceeded to message my colleague that I mentioned before and he did have her on hold while he researched her request. I told him about what was happening and then the customer disconnected from his line as well. The same customer calls back in and gets another person who is at the same site as he was and complains and she tried to inform her that we cannot have somebody on hold, and that she really did speak to two separate people who are in two different sites and she accused her of lying and covering for us and said she would also now get the third agent fired.

I cannot wait for her to call back in when management is here to try to complain, I hope she feels like a complete idiot for being so unreasonably rude.

I hope this is enjoyable, I definitely got a nice laugh out of the situation. It’s a perfect example of when the customer is NOT always right.