Hey there, I’m still fairly new here and still new to working in a call center. I made my first post here only yesterday.
I just got off the phone with a customer who was extremely upset her exercise equipment delivery was pushed back to January. The reason she was given by the girl who took the call before me was because the warehouse reported inclement weather.
I did everything I could to try to deescalate her. I gave her a partial refund. I offered to get her in touch with a supervisor. I told her, odds are, she will get bumped back up soon as most people are. I tried to set her mind at ease about how she “would be put in the back of the delivery schedule” by telling her that isn’t true. I tried to keep calm but she continued to berate and belittle me.
So I hung up. And I blamed it on internet connectivity and browser issues. The “training” we were put through was hardly training at all and I’m not an actual employee with this exercise company. I don’t know the best ways to make a person relax over the phone when they’re going off the rails. But I couldn’t take being berated anymore by this woman. I was shaking and hearing her talk shit about me to her husband in the background was too overwhelming. When I went to reassure her she would talk over me and insult me.
I usually recognize their anger isn’t directed to me personally but to me this one particular call felt personal. I’m a bit nervous about the possible consequences I might face if someone finds out I purposely hung up on her but I tried to hold it together as best as I would while I had her on the phone and did everything I knew to do to try to ease her.
I hope this gets easier. I don’t dislike this job but feeling the brunt of people’s misdirected anger is really so exhausting. I’m not paid much to begin with but I’m definitely not paid enough to be insulted even when I exhaust everything I know to do in these particular situations.
Has this happened to you? Any advice? Is there ever a situation where this is okay within your own companies? Was it not okay? I feel a bit gross as a person currently but I’m not kidding when I say I did everything I was trained to do when a person is like this but I couldn’t continue letting her insult me..
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Today I had lady call me for an order that she failed to pick up. In our store, the order expires if he or she does not pick up the order within 30 days. The order was 36 days old. When I told her this, I assured her that her money was returned as it always is in cases like this, and that I was more than happy to help her in placing another order. Further within the phone call, I reassured this fact to make it clear and this is the only thing I could do. She said, “Can you not repeat yourself?” I just hung up on her. When I’m giving you a solution to a problem, and working to help you, why on earth would you go that route? Just because I’m a retail worker doesn’t give you the right to be disrespectful. I’m not tolerating that behavior. Plain and simple.