Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

Who else hates the “Customer is always right” attitude of the management? My employer is a big call centre that is employed by various businesses to deal with their clients, i. e. for us the client is both the big company and their clients. In other words, we are screwed on both ends – we are like a middle man, can’t really do much, but got blamed for most issues from both parties.

Among other things, we deal with power outages. We have a neat questionnaire that we use to identify if the problem is the Big Power Company’s or the client’s. It includes questions like – is it a residential house or an apartment block? Where is the electric meter installed? Have you checked the fuses? Have you tried turning them off and on again? etc. To make the story short, we almost never pass on the info to technicians/electricians if the problem is in an apartment block – unless they say (we are not even allowed to ask, a client has to volunteer this information) that the neighbouring buildings do not have power as well.

So, I have a call one night from an irate client from an apartment building, the issue is identified as the client’s not the Big Company’s and he screams at me for solid 10 minutes about how the last time it was the same, the problem was the Big Company’s, but the client was forced to call for a private electrician who did not do anything, but had to be paid, and the client threatened to sue the Big Company, demanded to be reimbursed for the costs, etc. So, here is the frustrating thing – the Big Company called, APOLOGISED FOR THE INCOMPETENCE OF A CALL CENTRE EMPLOYEE and reimbursed for the electrician costs. Oh, I was sooo mad when I read the Big Company’s reply. They provide us with clear guidelines what to ask and what to do, we follow the procedure to the letter and get blamed when the customer isn’t happy whatever the reason is! How don’t they understand that if they do this once, the client will expect the same next time as well? I don’t mean the reimbursement obviously, but saying that the issue must have been passed on to our technicians instead of the building administration or a private electrician. The best thing would be adjusting guidelines, but nooo, that would mean more work for them, I guess.