"I don’t know how to transfer."

Hello everyone,

I began working my first call center job 4 months ago, and all was going well until yesterday. I do Internet support for a big ISP. I had a sub call in, and he was pissed because a manager did not call him back. He demanded I xfer him to Joe from -blank city- in Texas. He was angry because Joe did not call him back, in regards to a refund he wanted. Almost, immediately, the insults began to fly. He even told me that he was a call center Manager (I doubt this was true, and I found it hard to believe that someone who works at a call center would treat other people this way.) But he seemed to know how things worked at call centers.

Nevertheless, I told myself to get a grip, and to stand my ground. “Sir I cannot xfer you to Joe from Blank City Texas.” Then, sub says: “You and your company are incompetent.” Then he went on a rant about how he was going to file a complaint about me. I laughed it off, and realize I had to get a Supervisor/Lead involved, so I put him on hold.

My lead tells me that she will take the call. I was so relieved, I did not know how to deal with him at this point. Little did I know it was going to worse. Before I move forward, I have only done about 5 transfers in 4 months. I dont really have much escalations. But in the past, I had just called the sup/lead on avaya, and then xfer the sub by dragging him below to my leads call that was on hold, and xfer popped up, I dragged it, and it was done.

I checked in on the sub, and I told him that I was going to xfer him. I dragged the call, and it did not work. So I told sub that I was going to put him on hold, to which he states “You dont even know how to xfer hu? “You’re so incompetent.” I did not know what to say, but he was right. At this point I began to really get nervous. My lead was next to me, so I asked her for help, my hands trembling and all, and she starts to give me instructions, to no avail. 1-2 mins later she starts rolling her eyes on me, and by then I go into full blown panic. Until at some point, I managed to xfer the call….

I was then conference in the call, with a muted mic because I did not know how to get out, until I managed to figure it out 3-4 mins later…..

I felt so stupid, even worse, I had a breakdown, and I had a full blown panic attack…. All over an abusive customer, and a lead that was not too helpful.