This happened 20 years ago on my first call center job. It was my summer job and this incident occurred in my “third week of training”, which meant it was my first week on the floor. Also, we were assigned to teams of like 10 or 12 with a leader per team, only my team leader was out this week (because of course he was) so if anyone on my team needed a team leader go find someone else’s team leader who wasn’t busy. Also, we represented “two” phone companies that were basically one phone company with two names but either identical or nearly identical plans.
So on my second or third day on the phones I took a call and this guy was hot under the collar. He was ranting and raving, he was going to sue the company, he was going to sue me personally, etc. Now we had a group who specialized in dealing with calls like that so what we were supposed to do was put the customer on hold and transfer the customer to them. But we’re not allowed to put a customer on hold without permission, which I had drilled into me the past two weeks and he’s not giving it.
After he calmed down a bit I found out what was wrong, he was billed under the wrong company but under an identical plan. So all his charges are right but the company is wrong. There’s a problem though, I can’t switch existing customers from one company to the other. I tell him as much and ask him if he’ll hold for a manager and he still refuses to be put on hold. If I’d had a team leader I could have raised my hand and they could have taken the call, but again, no such luck.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I lied. I told him it was taken care of and he should receive a proper bill in a couple of days. He was happy with that. He hung up. I closed his account without making a single change (I don’t think I could do notes without making changes but even if I could I’m pretty sure I didn’t want to leave anything with my name on the account). I hoped QA wasn’t listening (they weren’t). Who knows, maybe he sued when he never got a bill with the right company name on it.
submitted by /u/ShadowcatX2000
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