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Customer doesn’t like accents.

Generally when a customer tells me about a previous rep who screwed up their account I can empathize because I get it. This wasn’t one of those times.

Some background info, I’m from a Slavic country and have an accent. Most people assume I’m in India or Philippines. Even in person I have been told that I sound like I have a faint Indian accent. About 99.9% of the callers have no problem communicating with me. Sometimes I get people who “want to be transferred to someone in America” or demand that I talk slower (in the past, I’ve slowed down to 3 seconds between each word, but the customer still said I was talking too fast), and some people just pick and choose which parts they understand. To sum it up, xenophobes like to mess with me.

The call:
This very condescending woman started the call by bitching about a rep she spoke with 3 days earlier. She was complaining that he was “Spanish” and she didn’t know what he was saying and that he didn’t want to help.
Evidently after that call, her account settings somehow got switched to Spanish. Every message or email she received from us was in Spanish. When she dialed our number, IVR started talking to her in Spanish and she didn’t even know what to do.
She spent about 15 minutes bitching about the rep being “Spanish” and his accent and that she’s always spoken English. She seemed more irritated with his accent than her messages not working.
I switched the account back to English. The rep’s notes showed that he tried to do the standard troubleshooting, but the customer refused to cooperate and demanded that he just fixes it himself.
Surprisingly, she did not mention my accent. Either she learned her lesson or her foreigner aversion is unique to Spanish speaking people.

Mr. “Spanish” rep, if you’re reading this, your my hero.

TL;DR: Condescending xenophobe called back because 3 days earlier she bitched at a Hispanic rep. Next, her account settings got switched to Spanish. The rep is my hero.

What do you think?

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Kudos!

30 minute call for a vehicle that was removed