[ad_1]
I work for a utility company and we are instructed to keep calls as short as necessary but also help customers with their issues. there are many times in which people ask questions that don’t necessarily have anything to do with what they called in for or forget to tell us crucial information that is necessary for helping with whatever it is that they call for. Human error, I get it. It’s just rather tedious how often things like this happen.
An example of this happening recently is that one of the things that I do is help set people up with us at a new address that they moved into or help landlords set up addresses back into their name after someone moved out.
A landlord called to set up an account back into his name at an address. Call went something like this. M = me and C = customer
M: “Hello yes how can I help you today?”
C: “I am a property owner for an apartment complex and someone moved out, I want to set up things back to my name.”
M: “I can help with that, what is the address?”
C gave me the address of the complex but left out the apartment number. I searched for it and accounts popped up with each apartment divided into different accounts.
M: “you did say this was an apartment complex, which one is it that you’re wishing to switch back over into your name?”
C: “oh, yeah apartment XX.”
M: “Thank you, so I’m sure you know but in order to switch it back in your name we’d need a SSN to add to the account, so what is yours?”
C: “Oh Um I’m not putting into my name I have a leasing company name I’m wanting it to go under.”
He did not give me the company name at this time.
M: “oh no problem, what would that company name be?”
C: “it’s barbecue properties LLC”.
(Fake property name I made up).
M: “sounds good, and what the tax ID of that company?”
C: “The tax number is XXX XXX XX”.
M: “alright and to confirm you said xxx xxx xx?”
C: “Yes, xxx xxx xx.”
M: “the reason why I ask is that tax ID numbers are 9 digits long, so we are missing a digit here, so again to confirm you said xxx xxx xx?”
C: “I did say 9 digits.”
At this point I get slightly annoyed because we just went through like 2 rounds of confirming.
M: If you did so I only got 8, xxx xxx xx”.
C: “Oh um… yeah let me look again here… oh I see, it’s xxx xxx xxx.”
M: “Alright. It’s all set up, now would you want your bills to be mailed to you or emailed?”
C: “I want them to be mailed to a different address.”
M: “Ok great. Would you want any email on your account at this time?”
C: “oh no not at all.”
We put the mailing address in the system he wanted the bills mailed to. A moment later I was able to generate his new account and got a new account number for him.
M: “Alright this is good to go and I can read off your account number to you if you want to write it down.”
C: “Can you email it to me?”
At this point I just sit there and look at the screen in annoyance for a few seconds because that’s not possible at this point since he didn’t want to add an email to his account before when I asked him while we were setting the account up.
M: “I can’t do that at this point but if you want I can add an email to your account.” I say with as much of a customer service voice I muster
I offer a second time.
C: “Uh sure.”
I go back and access the new account and add his email. Knowing this guy may change his mind I asked him a second time as well:
M: “Now would you want to have your bills sent to your email address from now?”
C: “yeah that would be great!”
A few seconds more I got him squared away and he was good to go and the call ended. I sometimes don’t know why people don’t register things. Or even if that is the issue here. People are just weird. Multiply this by 300 or so and this is what we get to deal with each week
[ad_2]
