Reality doesn't change because you don't want to hear it

[Duckster]

You should hope your company is not on the Consumer Reports shit list, they don’t have your company on the Executive E-Mail Carpet Bomb list, and your customer isn’t aware of all of this. Otherwise, expect a call from your CEO to fix the problem your company created for itself, plus the public flogging it will receive on the Consumer Reports blog.

If any of this comes to pass, then your comment …

@Chimera

Well, as Tier 2 support, I take “Supervisor” or “Manager” calls and am fully empowered to act as such and speak on behalf of my employer. I am the last line of support, there is no one above me if I don’t choose to allow the call to go past me. Or put it another way, I’m not SUPPOSED to allow calls to get past me. I get bitched out and lectured about how I’m empowered and expected to deal with these things myself.

… is a lie.

Your customer may have been rude, inconsiderate and just a downright ass for being verbally abusive. However, you response in this thread indicates your company policy appear to be built on sustaining that same approach. In other words, the customer was a rude human being and they will probably calm down and live their life with such occasional outbursts, as we all do. On the other hand, your company policy is a deliberate bad business practice and appears endemic in its culture to fuck with people just because it can.

[Pedro]

I agree the costumer is right to complain, although that doesn’t excuse screaming or cursing. When costumer service says “it’s not possible” what they’re effectively saying is “it would be more trouble or expense than you are worth to fix our screw up so it sucks to be you right now bitch”.

[Arglefraster]

@Bosstone

Any company that doesn’t have some kind of policy for redressing mistakes made by the company isn’t going to last long. (Ideally, anyway.) Managers should be watching for this kind of problem and be willing to step in to make it right.

Absolutely. Of course most big companies won’t bother when they’re still turning a profit, but that’s a whole 'nother rant.

@Shot_From_Guns

Oh, absolutely, *that particular person *may not be able to make it happen. But *someone *can. I can’t design a jet engine, but I’m not going to tell you it’s physically impossible to do so.

You do have a point there. The situations I can think of where I was unable to help a customer, I couldn’t say it was completely impossible to do what they wanted. It was just that whatever would need to happen to make it possible wasn’t going to happen due to it being a security problem or due to it not being cost effective.

An example was a customer whose password got reset by mistake. Our mistake. He wanted me to tell him the password over the phone. He didn’t have his account number, and wasn’t able to answer any security questions to prove he was who he said he was. It wasn’t literally impossible for me to give him his password with no security verification, but it still wasn’t going to happen, even though it was our fault his password got reset. It is true though that if the CEO of the company came down and told me to give it to him, I would have. In the end the guy found his paperwork and answered the security questions, so I was able to help him in the end.

[BrotherCadfael]

@Duckster

In other words, the customer was a rude human being and they will probably calm down and live their life with such occasional outbursts, as we all do. On the other hand, your company policy is a deliberate bad business practice and appears endemic in its culture to fuck with people just because it can.

“Yes, madam, I am drunk. In the morning, I shall be sober. You, however, will still be ugly.”

I also find myself in agreement that the company should reactivate the account, or transparently create a new account, at the company’s expense.

I once had the pleasure of writing to the CEO of a large Canadian software company, telling him how bad his technical support department was. The day he received the letter, I had two vice presidents on the phone, and we finally got some satisfaction. But, that is what it took, and at that, it probably helped that I was speaking for a quite visible state government agency with the ability to recommend or not recommend adoption of the product by other agencies within state government.

[Risha]

Yes, being polite but stubborn is how to handle a situation like this. Chimera isn’t required to take abuse, but almost nothing is “impossible” to fix.

I worked in programming and managing large outsourced customer databases. It might be against company policy (or in some cases I won’t go into for obvious reasons, against various legal department’s recommendations or even blatantly illegal). But if the client signed off on it, I could and did manually remove or insert into the database every detail of an account (up to and including creating entire new ones from scratch, and as the average account hit around 150 tables, it was a major pain in the ass), remove any extraneous billing or extra forms, have an administrator manually type up any needed forms the system couldn’t create correctly under the circumstances, and extend or shrink service lengths and due dates. And then call any involved third parties and make them do the same thing.

And the client almost always signed off on it, because they’d rather pay a couple (or a lot) of bucks then listen to the bitching. The secret is just to keep on bitching politely until you get far enough up the chain to the actual management team. There are some things that are physically impossible for the system to do, but those are when the accounts get flagged to be manually handled on paper for the rest of eternity.

[Chimera]

Yup, POLITELY bitch.

If she’d have been reasonable, I’d have done what I could to resolve in her favor. If she’d have been nice about it, I’d have bent over backwards. But screaming at me? Nowhere fast.

[Morbo]

@Mr_Shine

I don’t remember the exact threads, but I do remember Chimera talking about “stupid customers” before, and every example that he gives seems to illustrate what a jerk he is. This one is no different. His company screwed up, maybe he couldn’t cancel the refund but trying to sell a brand new plan rather than restoring the old one in unacceptable. Although there’s no excuse for being rude to front-line support, if Chimera has made it clear that he’s the top of the pyaramid, and she won’t be getting any further she is 100% in the right to be angry, and show her anger to Chimera.

It was rining a bell for me too. Here is one such thread started by the OP, and this part of it is interesting:

@Chimera

Today I had a customer who would not accept the repair options given to him. He kept asking to speak to my supervisor. I kept saying no. He demanded something very different than our standard unit replacement options, and demanded not to have to pay a dime to do it. Now, technically speaking, I have the power to do what he asked. But I’m not supposed to do it for the circumstances of his repair situation.

Seems like “impossible” is a relative term here.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@Chimera

If she’d have been reasonable, I’d have done what I could to resolve in her favor. If she’d have been nice about it, I’d have bent over backwards. But screaming at me? Nowhere fast.

So, you refused to do your job and correct a situation that *your *company fucked up, potentially sending this woman on to the wide-open forum of the internet to tell everyone exactly how much you fucked her over, causing a whole big PR mess for your company, because you didn’t like her attitude? :rolleyes:

ETA: And ISTM that it was your poor handling of the situation that got her screaming at you in the first place. Not that it wasn’t ultimately her choice to behave like a child, but the screaming could have been completely sidestepped if the first words out of your mouth were, “I’m so sorry ma’am, let me fix that for you” instead of “Durrrrrr, can’t do it, let me SELL you something else.”

[BubbaDog]

@Shot_From_Guns

So, you refused to do your job and correct a situation that *your *company fucked up, potentially sending this woman on to the wide-open forum of the internet to tell everyone exactly how much you fucked her over, causing a whole big PR mess for your company, because you didn’t like her attitude? :rolleyes:

ETA: And ISTM that it was your poor handling of the situation that got her screaming at you in the first place. Not that it wasn’t ultimately her choice to behave like a child, but the screaming could have been completely sidestepped if the first words out of your mouth were, “I’m so sorry ma’am, let me fix that for you” instead of “Durrrrrr, can’t do it, let me SELL you something else.”

Actually, the customer didn’t get on the internet to tell everyone how she was fucked over. Chimera did that for her.

Looks like another case of the helpful call center person making the situation worse and then acting all wounded because the predictable result happened.

…and Chimera any chance you’ll get around to answering my questions?

[tdn]

@Shot_From_Guns

Holy shit–a thread where I’m in complete agreement with **Shodan ***and *tdn? Somebody hold me.

I find I’m often in agreement with Shodan as long as the thread isn’t political in nature.

[Shodan]

@Chimera

Yup, POLITELY bitch.

If she’d have been reasonable, I’d have done what I could to resolve in her favor. If she’d have been nice about it, I’d have bent over backwards. But screaming at me? Nowhere fast.

This kind of demonstrates what I was saying earlier - all that stuff about how it was impossible wasn’t true. You just didn’t want to do it.

However justified your desire not to be screamed at, look at it from the customer’s point of view [ol][li]the company screwed it up[]the next level up lied about what could be done [] and then tried to upsell her to a more expensive option.[/ol] [/li]Regards,
Shodan

[Voyager]

@Chimera

Yup, POLITELY bitch.

If she’d have been reasonable, I’d have done what I could to resolve in her favor. If she’d have been nice about it, I’d have bent over backwards. But screaming at me? Nowhere fast.

From reading the OP, it doesn’t sound like she started out screaming. She only did that once you told her “sorry, Dave, I can’t do that” and refused to connect her to someone who was able to make it right. She shouldn’t have screamed, true, but I’m not sure I blame her that much.

I get from your posts here that you are very focused on your procedures and your company, and not very focused on your customers. She doesn’t give a shit about your internal mechanisms.Don’t you think she would have been very satisfied for the warranty to be reinstated without payment? Sure you can’t get the money back from the bank, but you could make it even better than that for her.
When she asked for a manager she was asking for someone with the authority to make it right. If that was you, she’d be fine with talking to you. If you can’t make it right, and do bump it up, you should inform your management that their processes are broken. Every company makes mistakes, the mark of a good company is how they deal with them.

If her case turns up in the consumer column of the local newspaper, you think your boss will pat you on the back for not bugging them about it?

ETA: And curse you for making me agree with Shodan.

[Voyager]

@Chimera

I have intimate experience with all levels of AT&T support. There are some good people at higher levels, but the front line people are badly trained with horribly insufficient resources at their disposal. I’d sooner ask a stray dog if there was an outage in my area than call AT&T General Care. Not that they’re blatantly incompetent, they just DON’T KNOW.

In their defense, last year I had a horrendously complicated change with AT&T, which involved taking one phone out, moving DSL to the other phone, changing the service plan, and moving from the old Worldnet plan to the new plan while not changing our email address. I spoke to 3 first level AT&T service reps (I’m surprised it didn’t take more) and every one of them was competent, professional, explained precisely what they were doing, and, when I had to be redirected, told me how, why, and gave me a way of getting back in touch with them if I got dropped. Not only that, but one of them told me about a special rebate plan I hadn’t been aware of. It was an awesome piece of customer service. Sometimes you just get lucky, but lucky three times is a trend.

[Bosstone]

@tdn

I find I’m often in agreement with Shodan as long as the thread isn’t political in nature.

I find that happens a lot. It makes me curse at my monitor. “Goddammit, you’re not supposed to be likeable!”

[BigT]

You abused your power. Just because you have the power to end the call doesn’t mean you should, if it is clear that your company (whom you are representing) did wrong. Your personal feelings about the matter should not have been relevant.

You’re the one who isn’t facing reality, because you DID have the ability to do something about it. You did have the ability to escalate, but chose not to because you didn’t have to, and were more worried about it looking bad on you.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@BubbaDog

Actually, the customer didn’t get on the internet to tell everyone how she was fucked over. Chimera did that for her.

At least he wasn’t stupid enough to say what company he works for. So there’s that, anyway.

[fluiddruid]

@BigT

You abused your power. Just because you have the power to end the call doesn’t mean you should, if it is clear that your company (whom you are representing) did wrong. Your personal feelings about the matter should not have been relevant.

Just to chime in here, I can see some of the basis of criticism but I have done the same thing in similar situations. If someone is literally screaming profanely in my ear and does not stop despite being requested to, they can call back when they’ve calmed down.

Don’t get me wrong. I can understand the teeming rage of dealing with customer service nightmares – I’ve dealt with a few, including one I escalated all the way to the CEO of a major telecom to finally get it resolved. But there’s just no call for that kind of nonsense. I can see raising your voice, getting angry, even crying, but act like a human being.

I can, and have, hung up on people who were beyond the point of discussing something and who dissolved into really nasty personal attacks. I can, and have, told my staff (when I was a supervisor) that it was OK to do so in similar extreme circumstances. I’ve heard calls from centers where people were not allowed to hang up for any reason and they can get really, really ugly.

Think of yourself, and your job. If you screw up, is it really okay for your boss to come at you, frothing at the mouth, calling you any name they can think of, insulting you personally, making crude sexual references aimed at you, threatening what they’d like to violently do to you, at the top of their lungs? Nobody should put up with that, and I have heard calls that involved all of those things – and it wasn’t even that person’s fault, it was some other representatitve of the company!

I don’t know if this particular situation was like that. But just being right is not a card to be able to do whatever you want, no matter how extreme, with impunity and to expect service personnel to put up with you. The person at the end of the line isn’t a robot who can stay calm no matter what the customer can dish out, and frankly I’m a bit appalled at such an expectation.

Politeness is, frankly, to your benefit, but I don’t even expect that. I do expect some people will raise their voices and get upset, and be brusque or rude. But screaming? Actual screaming in someone’s ear? Not cool.

[Chimera]

I most certainly would have escalated the call to the proper department if the customer had been calm and rational. Simply because that department has to do whatever it is that needs to be done, not me. They could have decided if they could do something different than what I advised. But there’s no way in hell I take a screaming incoherent person to someone else. That’s not about power, or abuse of power, or doing anyone a disservice, or any other bullshit the RO people want to throw up all over the issue. Likewise I’m not escalating to someone “above” me simply because someone is screaming in my ear. That would not be professional on my end of things, nor would it be responsible.

So you calm the fuck down and we work something out, or you go away until you can.

[aruvqan]

@statsman1982

Shit, man. A car?! You must really have a way with tech support. The most I’ve ever gotten is a “thank you, sir.”

Look at the price…they gave him a yugo…

[Apex_Rogers]

@Chimera

I most certainly would have escalated the call to the proper department if the customer had been calm and rational. Simply because that department has to do whatever it is that needs to be done, not me. They could have decided if they could do something different than what I advised. But there’s no way in hell I take a screaming incoherent person to someone else. That’s not about power, or abuse of power, or doing anyone a disservice, or any other bullshit the RO people want to throw up all over the issue. Likewise I’m not escalating to someone “above” me simply because someone is screaming in my ear. That would not be professional on my end of things, nor would it be responsible.

So you calm the fuck down and we work something out, or you go away until you can.

If your customer service skills reflect the sort of tunnel-vision with which you’re approaching this thread, I can see exactly where the customer was coming from. You keep describing the limitations of your own internal software and best practices, but who gives a flying shit? Do you think the customer is interested in the limitations of your bureaucracy? Or maybe she just wants to talk to someone who can restore an equivalent plan. Remember that your company fucked up, it’s on you to make it right.

You have yet to describe what the differences would be between restoring their account with your hypothetical magic wand and having the customer open a new account. It certainly sounds like the terms would include new service dates and possibly a different pricing scheme. I’m also inferring from the way you’ve phrased it in the OP, that your offered solution was to SELL them another plan? Really? I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that the second she stopped listening to you was the second you started offering to SELL a new plan rather than fix the problem.

And if even a sliver of the pomposity with which you describe your role made it through into the conversation, I’m sure that primed the customer for the meltdown. Perhaps you should reconsider how to best serve the customer rather than acting like you are the end-all authority. Despite your claims to the contrary, it doesn’t really sound like you have much authority or competence if this is the way you handle such a situation. Sticking your fingers in your ears and refusing to kick the call up the chain is not the same as being the top dog boss.

Let’s take a quick look back at your posts:

I am the last line of support, there is no one above me if I don’t choose to allow the call to go past me.

Ok, you’re the last line of support, except you’re really not. Trying to upgrade your job description or what? I’m sure this attitude played a part in your customer’s meltdown.

I’m empowered and expected to deal with these things myself.

It is not possible for me to cancel it, we need to sell her another plan.

Hmm you were unable to restore the original account (AKA undo the “cancel”), so you clearly are not empowered to handle this situation. You should have sent it up the chain right then. Instead you tell her she needs to buy a new plan to recover your guys’ fuckup? Absolutely ridiculous and piss-poor service. I would be rightly pissed if I were in the same situation, though I would refrain from abusing the support person. I’m sure if a competent manager followed this call from the beginning you would be bitched out heartily.