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I’m a supervisor at the call center for a large retailer in my town. One of our phone reps is a young guy (early twenties). He’s about 5’5″ with a nerdy voice and big blue eyes. He’s polite and professional to a fault, works hard, and does whatever is asked of him without question or complaint. He also has a touch of either Asperger’s or autism, I’m not sure which.
At my company, hanging up on a customer is the cardinal sin. Worst of the worst. On paper, there’s supposed to be no reason we are allowed to hang up on a customer.
At this point, I should also add that I’m in my mid forties with a twenty-year-old son, so I’m pretty protective over our younger reps like this guy.
He called me yesterday and said that a customer had become very irate and threatened to “choke the shit out of” him. He said he panicked and hung up. I told him that I completely understood and that I was going to handle it.
I pulled the recording and holy hell y’all. Dude sounded like he was either drunk off his ass or had a mouthful of marbles. He rambled off his credit card number to the rep in this garbled voice, and very fast. When the rep asked him to repeat it one time “to verify,” the customer devolved in seconds, insulting the rep’s intelligence, dropping F and MF bombs, and then the threat.
I put the customer’s account on hold, pulled the recording, and contacted my boss. Before listening to the recording, she said that he should have passed the call to a supervisor instead of hanging up. I pointed out that he did so in a panic after being threatened, and she then agreed that he did the right thing.
After listening to the recording, she said that she passed the matter to HR and they’re making a police report for a legit threat. They also contacted the rep to check on him. He asked me how he could have handled it better and I told him that he did fine. I also told him that if anyone gives him trouble for hanging up, to tell them to come talk to me. At this point I’d honestly take any punishment on myself instead of him but I don’t think it will come to that. I won’t let my reps get bullied.
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