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I had pretty much the most irritating call I’ve had in a long time today. I work in a utility call center dealing with electricity. Someone called in to report that a dusk to dawn light being out. Typically in order to report one of these lights to be worked on we have to find the account that is paying for that light to report it being out or else our system won’t let us report it to be fixed. So this is basically the focus of the call, albeit in a rather annoying and round about way.
The call even started out on a way that let me know it was going to be a rather frustrating call.
As I offered my name and asked for hers she responded with
“Why do you need that? That’s not important.”
“Ok then… so how can I help you?” I ask after she said that.
“I’m calling to report an outdoor light isn’t working.”
“Alright I can definitely help with that. May you please give me the account number for the account you’re reporting this on?”
“You don’t need that either. I’ve reported things like this over 10 times and no one’s ever had to ask me that.” She scowled at me.
Confused and already slightly ticked off at how uncooperative she’s being in this only being less than 2 minutes in I say
“isn’t the light that’s out that you’re calling for on your property?”
“I’ll give you the address that I’m calling for, it’s ___________.”
I type the address in and it pulls up an apartment complex and had many different accounts that’s at each apartment at that address. In which one detail she left out with the address she gave me was the apartment number. In which I had updated her as such.
“The address you gave me was to an apartment complex, is that correct?” I ask
“Yes it is. It’s on the property in the parking lot.”
Then I explain what I wrote at the beginning of this story.
“Alrighty so in order to report the light being out we need to know which account it’s attached to and paying for it. so again do you have the account number or exact apartment that the light is on?”
In which she became more frustrated at me and repeated in an increasingly angry tone “no one ever had to ask me for this when reporting this in the past why do you keep asking me this? Just report it.”
This went on for another 10 minutes before I figured out what account we had that had that light attached to. Then was able to report this for her.
“Alright ma’am, so you said one light isn’t working on the complex? You said it was in the parking lot?”
She paused for a second before just slowly telling me in an angry tone “no it’s not in the parking lot it’s on the side of the building, right next to it.”
“Oh my mistake I thought that’s what you said earlier. So may I have a number where our field servicers can call you regarding this issue?”
“You keep on asking me personal information and I don’t like it.” She retorts.
“This is just in case we need to reach back out to you regarding the order we’re placing for you, is all.” I say.
She gave me a number to put on the order.
“Is this a cell phone number? An office number?” I ask casually.
“It’s a number you can call regarding the order.” She says sharply.
“Ok thank you. So I was able to report this for you, would you want to write down the confirmation number for the order?”
“Yes I’d like that.”
I give it to her in which she then asks “so what was the owner of the account that you were able to report this on?”
In which I told her “I’m sorry but I can’t release any account information without verifying the account number and/or other security details.”
“Well I just want to know who is actually paying for the account, is it the electric company? Is it the apartment complex?” She pushes further.
I double down saying “I’m sorry, but I am not allowed to release any information unless you can verify the account number or other security details. Do you have those for the account?”
She gets angry and says “you know what is there a supervisor available that I can talk to?”
At that point even though I know she was going to complain about me, I was happy to put her on hold and patch her to a supervisor so she’d no longer be my problem anymore..
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