I work at the customer support call center for an alarm/smarthome company who’s name rhymes with Divint. I do smarthome automation, traditional security systems, and tech scheduling/rescheduling. 30 minutes before my shift ends Avaya beeps and the customer is already screaming and spitting fire because their tech had no showed. The second I get done with verification the customer goes on a 30 minute rant about how we never send out techs right (the only other tech we had ever sent them was the install tech) and they’ve had 6 techs for this issue (this was the only workorder on the ticket) and now this tech didn’t show up and how if they didn’t get a tech out there “RIGHT NOW” then they should get the rest of their 5 year contract (which they were only 1 year into) for free. They even did that thing where they occasionally stop talking for a minute like they’re giving you a chance to talk and then the moment you try and respond to them they snap “DON’T INTERRUPT ME THAT’S SO RUDE AND UNPROFESSIONAL!” and start talking again but if you stay silent they snap “ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING!?”.
Best of all the issue they were having was with the Philips Hue integration not even something critical like a security sensor or the thermostat. Even better the only problem was they had refused to troubleshoot with the agent enough to press 3 buttons to update their panel to a firmware that supports it. The original ticket said they had just immediately started screaming at the rep until they booked a tech for them.
Eventually they quit ranting and actually let me respond and I start setting up a new tech appointment. Since the tech didn’t do anything but left detailed notes about waiting for the customer and them not responding to the cell number provided or the doorbell they didn’t get charged but the next tech isn’t waived. Que the customer literally screeching into the phone about not getting the next tech for free because “we made them wait at home all day” ect ect. Eventually they run out of steam and get a new appointment scheduled. Soonest available given it was not contract critical is a week out which of course sparked another scream session. Two hours into the call and it’s finally booked I ask if there’s anything else and they just start going over each of the issues addressed during the call and yelling about them and insulting my intelligence and threatening to get me fired for being so rude to them (I wasn’t and the calls are recorded so QA also knows I wasn’t).
Since I can’t hang up on customers until I get approval I just turn my headset down and use this as a chance to catch up on my work email and check my phone while I wait for my supe to listen in on the call and approve me hanging up. Out of curiosity I open up the panel history on their system. During the entire appointment window plus a couple hours on either side the panel had been armed away. Meaning that if it had detected motion, and the customer had a lot of motion sensors, it would have set off the alarm. In other words the customer had been demonstrably not home until over an hour after the tech’s arrival window had expired. How do you even get that worked up about something you know was your fault? 20 minutes later my supervisor sends me a message that I can go ahead and hang up and once the customer pulls that staying quiet until you talk so they can snap at you for interrupting them thing I roll out the “I feel this call is becoming unproductive” line, which they just keep yelling over and I ignore and say anyway, and after they don’t acknowledge it for 5 minutes I end the call and clock off.
submitted by /u/DECtape
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