Coworker has a problem with me.

So I work in a call center that has tiers of technical support. I am in the second tier of support and we only handle specific customer concerns. If they have concerns that are outside of the scope of my job I have to transfer them to another tier of technical support because I literally cannot help the customer.

Anyway, our call center has a policy for most transfers of calls that you only remain on hold for two minutes if the other department hasn’t answered within two minutes we are allowed to simply drop them in the queue. The next tier of technical support is notorious for having extremely long hold times, and I am probably in the wrong but I got into the habit of just dropping people in their queue because it’s a waste of my time and productivity to wait an extra two minutes when 80% of the time they will not answer within two minutes.

So because I was cold transferring every call to this other department they could sometimes see my name in the caller I.D. If they once in a blue moon answered right away, but I had already disconnected and dropped the customer. So one specific agent every time he saw my name on a cold transfer would email my supervisor essentially tattling that I wasn’t following proper procedure. Yes I will admit that I was probably in the wrong and I did have a couple of conversations with my supervisor regarding it, but really? The only difference between me transferring the call and the customer being the one on the line when they answer is that they have to verify the customer which I do for them anyway so it really doesn’t save any time for me to transfer the call anyway. This guy is just apparently too good to verify customers for some reason.

Due to this guy emailing my supervisor every time I cold transferred a call to him the transfer policy for his department and only his department was changed. Now instead of only holding for two minutes we have to hold as long as it takes them to answer the phone. The longest that I have had to hold waiting for them so far is 25 minutes. This is lost time that I could be taking calls from other customers and doing my job, but apparently because this guy is too good to take a minute or two to verify customer info at the beginning of a call that doesn’t matter.

Okay this has turned into a bit of a rant but bear with me. The department that I have to transfer calls too is also notorious for giving people transferring calls to them pushback after they have verified what the customer issue is. So instead of just accepting the call and answering whatever the customer concern is they will give you the answer and expect you to talk to the customer about t even though I have no idea how to service their equipment and no ability to answer follow up questions if they have them. We have sent emails and talked to their supervisors about this but their attitudes haven’t changed.

The other day I transferred a call to the next tier of technical support and, after waiting 15 minutes on hold who answers but the guy who has a problem with me. I go through the whole process of verifying the customer for him and helping him pull up their account and then he asks me what their issue is. I briefly explain what the customer said to me and he asks if he can place me on hold. I have no real recourse except to agree to be placed on hold because I am expecting maybe a minute or two while he gets a system pulled up or something, but no he places me on hold and doesn’t come back for more than five minutes. When he does come back on the line he says oh yeah I looked up the customer concern and the answer is blah blah blah. Essentially he just placed me on hold while he did his job. That is not okay. I can be taking actual calls while you are over their doing what you get paid to do. That, to me, is a form of call avoidance.

When he gives me the answer he heavily implies that he wants me to get back on the line with the customer so that I can provide them the answer that he just gave me. No. That’s not how that works. So I call him out on it. I admit that my tone was probably not the best, but I basically told him that I didn’t appreciate being placed on hold for five minutes for no reason and next time I would appreciate it if he didn’t do that and then asked him if he could give the customer the answer he gave me.

He agreed and I transferred the caller to him but apparently he was offended by my calling him out because he didn’t email my supervisor he emailed my boss’s boss. So I had to have a meeting with my boss where we listened to the call. My boss’s boss expected me to send the guy an email apologizing to him. At first I flat out refused to apologize without being able to say something like “I apologize for my town, but I don’t appreciate you wasting company time and resources by placing me on hold for no reason.” Apparently that doesn’t count as an apology. Then I calmed down and agreed to send a one sentence email just saying “I apologize for my tone.” and I informed my supervisor that I would be filing a complaint on Monday with HR because at this point I feel that this agent has it out for me specifically. I’m not going to lose my job simply because some guy in another department has the temperament of a child and can’t go through an interaction without tattling to mommy like a child. Now I have a meeting scheduled on Tuesday when my boss’s boss gets back into town, which would have happened regardless of whether I was going to file a complaint. I feel like I am owed an apology as well.

I know that I am probably being petty and that this was a very long rant, but I would appreciate some input on this.