You might want to read this out loud while looking in a mirror. Daily. Posting it near your work phone might be a good idea as well.
No, you misread it! Ha!
Damn, I’m good at this.
Judging from its witty repartee on this thread, I sure as fuck do.
The quiet, Hawaiian lounge version? With the little banjo swelling to a cresendo by the third paragraph? Cause that’s how I heard it.
This was my question also. I understood that the customer had ‘two’ plans, one she wanted and one she didn’t. She called to have the one-she-didn’t-want removed; instead, the one-she-wanted was removed and refunded. Leaving her with only the plan she didn’t want.
So she called BACK to have the plan-she-didn’t-want removed and the plan-she-DID-want reinstated. Now, according to Chimera, it wasn’t possible to reinstate the removed & refunded plan; she needed to buy a whole new plan… OK – but won’t that leave her back where she was? With TWO plans, one-she-wants and one-she-doesn’t?
There is never any excuse for rudeness and yelling, but I don’t blame the woman for being confused and frustrated. And this is leaving out the (so far unanswered) question of whether the newly purchased plan would be the same as the one that was erroneously removed.
By the way – I’m always extra-super nice to call-in customer service reps because I have long suspected that, if they don’t like me, they might arbitrarily decide not to do my deal… Looks like I was right about that. At least in regards to Chimera.
Perfectly acceptable, asshole. 
That’s where we’re going to have to agree to disagree, then. There’s nothing you can say that will ever convince me that it wasn’t an incredibly poor way of handling the problem (what kind of retarded tyro would pull something like that?), and there’s nothing I can say that will convince you that there’s a good chance that a blowup with a clearly immature, entitled, and irrational customer wouldn’t have happened anyway.
I think you will find you are dead fucking wrong, my dear. One of my many hats is doing the purchasing for my office, so I know these things.
Now, I don’t know how this applies to refunds. But I *do *know that’s how it works with goods and services.
Yes, these are all very reasonable things to say “no” to. The customer, after all, is not always right. However, when the customer’s problem is something your company fucked up, then, IMO, is when the word “no” should firmly disappear from your vocabulary. You do everything that is physically within your power to make this problem right, *without *further involvement from the customer.
And gentlemen of the SDMB now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon the “Reality doesn’t change because you don’t want to hear it” thread.
All ***I ***got out of that was that you should kill your uncle so you can fuck your half-sister. Maybe I should have paid better attention.
Nope. KOMPRESSOR.
TALL UND TAN UND YOUNG UND LOFFLY
THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA GOES WALKING
AND WHEN SHE PASSES
EACH ONE SHE PASSES GOES,
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”
Just to throw another random opinion, I don’t think that it is about how you ask. In my present job, I get it all. Literally customers screaming angry, customers that demand the CEO of the company withing the first 10 seconds of the call, and the nicest customers in the world. The real issue for me is can I help them.
If I can, I will…doesn’t matter how you act, if I have the tools available to help you, great! Let me do that and get you off my phone. Now, for the record, I’m not a supervisor. But I know what issues I am allowed to escalate and which issues I’m not. I will escalate if it will help you. When it is clear that escalations won’t help, I will do you the courtesy of telling you flatout and upfront that repeatedly calling and asking for a super is not going to benefit you.
But yeah…I think most CS (to be fair, I am mainly sales, and don’t want to try to really speak for CS) reps will try to help as far as they can, even if you are an asshole. Cause they are there to do a job. The things that are bugging the customer is DONE already. The company has already fucked up, or whatever, and the CS rep is there to do whatever they can to help you at this point. And most CS reps have a clear list of what they can or can’t do to help you. Chimera notwithstanding, I think most CS reps do what they can regardless of whether or not the customer is nice, or screaming, or whatever.
I mean, in my job, very often, the phone is ringing back to back. Customers are waiting in the queue. It is very hard to take it personally or get all emotional about whether or not you are going to be helpful to an asshole. You just do what you can to assist the cu and get them off the phone.
All of that said, I am always super nice to CS too. Because, why not?
I’m glad you put no value on your time. However, some of us do - I personally prefer not to spend my spare time rectifying the incompetence of companies with which I do business.
As I said later in the post (oddly cut out) I’d expect a discount as a result.
No, as I made clear I would expect a discount.
Well, I would assume it took the customer about an hour to rectify the situation, including time placed on hold, time recognizing the problem, and time spent afterwards checking the bank statement to ensure that the company had not screwed up once again.
Should I ask for my billing rate or my pay rate as a fair measure of the worth of my time?
Unfortunately, I would get neither. In this instance, I might suggest a 10% discount as being a sign of good faith on the part of the company.
Not exactly.
The customer had two accounts, account A and account B. Account A is the one the customer wanted. It cost more than account B. Customer wanted account A, and did not want account B. The company canceled account A by mistake, and refunded the difference.
Then the customer called back and said that she wanted account A, not account B. Chimera then said No, we can’t do that, because we already sent you the refund and we can’t get that money back. You have to open account C, which costs more than account A. Then the customer flipped out, because she did not want to buy a new account that cost more than what she was paying - she wanted account A.
The various mistakes involved were [list=A][li]The company fucked up by canceling the wrong account []Chimera should not have told her that the company could not cancel account B - if they canceled account A, they could cancel account B[]Chimera should not have said it was “impossible” to undo the cancellation, because it was not impossible - it just would have cost the company money because they would have had to provide an account with the same service level and features as account B at the price of account A. [*]The customer should not have started screaming.[/list][/li]
I worked as credit manager for a small department store in my youth. How I handled problems like this is something like the following:
"You are absolutely correct - we canceled the wrong account. I apologize.
My name is Shodan, and I am now responsible for fixing your problem. My direct number is 555-1234. If you have problems with how we are going to fix your issue, you call me directly. Don’t go thru the phone tree, call me directly. OK?
Here’s how I propose to fix your problem - I will open you up a new account. It will cost you exactly what you are now paying for account A - it will not cost you a penny more. If worse comes to worse and the price of the account is higher than you are now paying, I will make sure that we add a credit to your new account so that your first bill will be reduced by that amount. It will not cost you a penny. OK? The new account will offer you the same services as account A, or more. OK?
I will have an update for you by close of business today. Would you prefer a letter, or shall I call you?
Again, I apologize for our mistake."
You don’t make the customer jump thru hoops, you don’t tell them they cannot have what they want, and you do not tell them they have to pay for your mistakes.
I did this kind of thing once, and I got a commendation for it, because the woman I did it for spent a lot of money in our store. And she mentioned me by name to the owner.
Regards,
Shodan
What, this thread’s still here? I thought I told it to go fuck its mother!
Crap, now I’m agreeing with Shodan.
It just isn’t that hard really. But power corrupts and turns people, with even just a little power, into petty tyrants sometimes.
And that’s what came across with the OP, that’s what people responded to. All attempts to seek clarification were ignored, making some even more skeptical. Finally the OP returns to back pedal by admitting he actually could have helped her but didn’t because she flew into an unreasonable rage. But, see, that kind of screams petty tyrant too. And kind of makes him a liar about it being impossible.
Professionals choose their words with more care, there were particularly foolish choices made in the example in the OP, and work to resolve issues, not exacerbate them, especially when the company is at fault. If I don’t like how you’re speaking to me, I can choose not to help you, even if it was our error, smells like a petty tyrant to most people, I think.
Perhaps the OP just didn’t express himself, in the OP very well. I could understand that.
This thread has been quite amusing for us spectators, but posting this:
without a link to the (debated) hotness is simply irresponsible, and I DEMAND to speak with your superiors!
The thread in question was Heeeeeeeeey FATTIES. Over a dozen pages of pure awesome.
Well, there goes my morning.
But to a good cause. It’s like TVTropes, only with more vitriol.
As someone who has done a lot of in-person customer service, I think the call in the OP was handled poorly on both ends.
A lot of customer service is having some empathy for the mental state people are in by the time you get to them. Someone who has suffered some screw up that was the company’s fault is liable to be cranky, and justifiably so. Someone who has waded through the field of bullshit that often is getting bumped to a higher-level service agent is liable to be cranky, and justifiably so. Someone who has suffered a company screw up at the company’s hands and then waded through the field of bullshit that often is getting bumped to a higher-level agent is more than double cranky, because that sort of thing tends to have a multiplier effect rather than a cumulative one. People in that state tend to hear the first half of the first sentence you speak to them, and base the rest of the interaction on that. They just do.
If that first half includes the words can’t, won’t, or impossible or describes what kind of pain in the ass the fix is going to be, that multiplier effect goes exponential, and it’s very, very likely they’re going to hit the end of the rope and get ugly. Which, of course, is good for no one.
That is why you do NOT further antagonize people in such a situation who are still being civil by leading off with what you can’t or won’t do for them. You lead off with “I am really sorry you’re having this problem,” and follow up with “It looks like what has happened is…” or “Okay, I think we can fix this by…” or “I know who we need to talk to to get this fixed for you.” Once you’ve done that, you can usually go on to explain why the fix has to be a bit of a process with very little fuss. Not always, there will always be the odd handful who are going to go off anyway, but the vast majority of the time people are willing to be civil if they feel like you understand their position and are sorry for the mistake and you’re actually trying to help them. They’re still not happy about the situation, of course, but they’re immeasurably less pissy.
The woman in the OP behaved unconscionably, yes. But I understand her losing it. If a company had screwed something up, and you’ve had to sit through the automated phone system and sit on what I refer to as “perma-hold” to get to the Tier 1 rep, and give your name and account number three times and explain the issue only to be told there’s nothing they can do, please hold for a supervisor, sit on hold some more, and when you finally get to speak to the supervisor you have to give your name and account number again and tell the whole story again…unless you’re Mother Teresa, you’re going to be tired and annoyed and frustrated and altogether less equipped to deal with any further setbacks reasonably.
God knows when we missed the last possible connection home the other day because our initial flight was delayed by three hours, I probably would have bludgeoned someone if I got any whiff of obstructionism from the airline customer service people. I’d been sitting in an airport terminal for 4 hours, stuffed in a flying sardine can for 11 hours, herded through various chutes like cattle, and was facing a night in a strange city with no damn clean clothes and some massive jet lag. I was in no goddamn mood to hear about their policies or what they couldn’t do for me. I wanted to hear about what they could and would do for me to make things right after their screw up had disrupted my life. If the agent had handled it the way the OP handled this call, by saying “I can’t get you home tonight,” things would have become very ugly very quickly.
If you look at Chimera’s posts you’ll see where he explained and answered. Depending on how the computer system works you can’t simply decide to call plan B plan A and problem solved. They are two separate products.
Chimera was ready willing and able to solve the problem by canceling the plan she didn’t want and reselling her the one that was accidentally canceled that remember, she had already received a refund for. He could also discount the new plan to match the pro rated refund so the lady wasn’t out anything.
According to my reading of the OP she didn’t pass through confused and frustrated on her way to screaming crazy. She wanted the the mistaken cancellation , canceled. It was too late, it had already gone through and the refund was issued. Hence the thread title. The way to fix that and get her that plan was to sell her the plan again using the refunded money, and then go ahead and cancel the plan she didn’t want and issue a refund for that.
She never heard that explanation because as soon as Chimera started to explain that the mistake{canceling the wrong plan} could not be stopped at this point and he could sell her the plan again, she went straight to ballistic screaming. He never got to explain to her that he could indeed get her what she ultimately wanted by steps X, Y, And Z because she simply refused to listen got loud and irrational and stayed that way.
If you haven’t been in customer service you make find her behavior hard to believe and think it’s exaggerated. I’ve been doing CS a long time. It isn’t hard to believe at all. Some customers become their own worst enemy and prevent the person who is willing to help them form helping.
okay I’ll take that to mean you wouldn’t expect it for free, which means , with a discount, you would pay for it.
Let’s assume you won;t have to take time off work to make a phone call.
I think some compensation is good customer service. Often in extended warranties you get free X months or a discounted fee. My point was that some were arguing she should get the plan for free. I don’t agree and I don’t think it works that way in most commerce.