[ad_1]
This is a relatively tame story but I wanted to share at least one of mine here. I have quite a few stories of awful interactions with customers but most of them didn’t last very long. But this one…
So, the center I work at has various programs you can learn to work with different clients. The program I’m scheduled on most is for natural gas companies in Ohio/Pennsylvania/Michigan. I qualified to be able to work from home in October and have been doing so since, but in order to do that I had to move to another floor where I could take a practice call on the PC I would take home with me so they could make sure I knew how to connect to the vpn, set up the headset, etc. etc. So I’m a little nervous, not being sure if the systems or I are going to work properly, thinking about how much harder it’s going to be to reach out to supervisors for answers from home, you know how it goes. The biggest comfort I had at that moment was a friendly coworker who I’d been talking with a week or so. She was going to start to work from home as well and was taking the ‘test’ beside me. We can call her Ally.
Anyways, first call, can’t hear anything. Headset issues, easy fix. No worries.
The next few calls after that go just fine. And then, there was Kevin (not his real name of course).
So right off the bat this guy has maybe the worst mic quality I have ever heard. Dude sounds like he’s got his phone plugged into an amp. I have a poor memory and since this happened so long ago to me I don’t remember exactly all the details, but if I recall correctly he was already somewhat upset-sounding when I was trying to get his information, but when we actually got to the meat of the call, boy did he blow up.
I think what happened was that he switched gas suppliers without remembering his contract with us had an early termination charge. It’s a pretty common problem and the frustration is understandable since those fees aren’t pretty. They’re prorated for each month that’s left in your contract, so if you start a 12 month plan and cancel it a few months in, you’re likely to pay $100+. And it makes sense as to why he was already upset; he would’ve received the seperate bill in the mail and probably called in upon seeing that number.
He loudly asked me the same questions over and over and over and didn’t understand the information I was giving him about the charge. Since the contract was not dropped by his utility company, he was not moving or disconnecting the gas line, and he didn’t want to do a re-enrollment, the fee was unable to be waived. That really set him off. He told me he wanted to speak to a supervisor, so off I go to my original floor. The whole time Ally is listening to me and shaking her head. When I get up she asks me ‘you’re really ready to handle that at home all day?’ I just laughed and shrugged. I mean really, the supe will probably speak to him for a few minutes and he’ll calm down and be on his way, right?
I get the attention of a coworker who works the same program but also has a sort of unofficial mentor/supe status. I explain the situation, she agrees to come back with me, takes the customer off hold, and then shit really starts to go down.
This dude *really* lays it on her thick. He went on for several minutes at a time not letting her get in a single word, and when she finally did manage to sneak in the first half of a sentence he would abruptly interrupt, probably with another angry quip or screamed question. At one point he must’ve cussed her out because she interrupted him and told him she would not be talked to that way, and that he was free to hang up if he wanted to use that language. He was a tiny bit calmer after that, but still proceeded to ask questions that I’d already answered the same way.
This call went on for, get this, **58 minutes.** Usually in this program calls last about 10-15 minutes, and from my understanding any calls that go over that time are especially scrutinized for mistakes. Cheers to the lucky agent who got to listen to that one.
I don’t remember how it ended but eventually she read out the conclusion and got off that cursed call. The whole time Ally and I have been snickering and the supe has been throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. After the call she laughs with us and Ally and I thank her for her assistance. After she returns to her station Ally suggests we both give her positive feedback in the program we use for her handling of the call, which we did. It was very much deserved. I felt bad for putting her through that.
It really wasn’t that crazy except for the time it took to get this dude to understand he was gonna have to pay that charge. How can you justify wasting nearly an hour of your life yelling at people you will never meet for something that is pretty much your fault, since you didn’t go over the contract’s details again before making the decision to change it? I will never get that.
[ad_2]
