I didn’t realize this board had so many beaten-down customer service employees posting on it.
I’ve never worked in customer service and after reading this thread, I’m glad.
I mean, what the hell do you people want from Chimera here? His company screwed up and he told the customer what had to be done to correct the screw-up.
You’re leaving out a lot of context there, Rysto.
Nice nit picking. Look at the details. It wasn’t claimed that the problem didn’t have a good solution for the customer. It was only claimed that a refund that had already been issued through a separate CC company couldn’t be undone.
I can’t cancel the cancellation because the refund has already gone through. I can fix the problem so that you have what you want at no cost to you.
In the quote you selected above there’s a very good reason why we don’t automatically give the customer whatever they request. Certain customers will use an error to try and get much more than reasonable compensation. So, even tough we technically can do it, it may be a bad business decision, depending on the details of the situation. Part of the job is to balance customer service with protecting the profitability of the company.
It’s a little irritating to watch people eagerly misrepresent what was said concerning a field I know a little about and they apparently know extremely little. I couldn’t resist offering my 2 cents and pointing out that those gleefully piling on the OP didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about and hadn’t bothered to read the posts with any real comprehension.
If you can’t take a little ribbing then don’t dish it out.
Not at all. Rysto read the posts and understood. Those joining in the pile on didn’t get it and made false assumptions.
Climbing up on a high horse about inappropriate behavior while calling a level-headed poster a “dip shit” makes you look like an idiot.
Undoing the refund is irrelevant - the company should simply eat that loss, since it was their mistake in the first place.
Regards,
Shodan
Actually, in post 97 Chimera gets around to addressing some of the points. Only two days after being initially asked. Must be those excellent customer service skills.
Voyager I always respect your posts but I think you missed the point in the OP.
The way I read it **Chimera ** was trying to calmly explain what could be done to solve the problem and get her what she wanted and she was so busy shouting over him that she wasn’t hearing “I have a solution”
Once he said “I can’t cancel the cancellation” which was simply a statement of fact, she launched like a rocket and never came down to hear the solution that would result in her getting what she wanted. That’s why he hung up and why the person she talked to the 2nd time hung up. You can’t solve a customer service issue if the customer refuses to stop ranting long enough to hear the solution.
As Chimera explained, there’s no good reason nor is it professional or responsible to hand off a call like that to someone else when the customer is a screaming non listening lunatic.
He as CS rep explains a solution that gives her the contract she wants at no cost to her and then he forwards her to the proper department to actually do that. First she has to be coherent enough to grasp the solution or there’s no point in forwarding her anywhere.
What loss? They hadn’t lost anything. Did you read the OP or just stop by to sermonize?
Either way no company is required to absorb a loss unnecessarily because of a mistake if the mistake can be corrected without that loss, or with minimum loss.
calling someone a petty tyrant and liar because you failed to comprehend their posts is not level headed and qualifies for the dip shit title. but YMMV
Yes, but before that he said:
And that, other than the part about not being able to reverse the credit card refund (which is probably true, though I did it all the time with other kinds of third parties, but I never worked with credit cards), is a bunch of shit. We all know that there actually is an Ubermanagement team - I worked on one! He just normally refuses to escalate to them because it hits his and the overall team numbers, and he gets bitched at as a result.
And then later he says:
And here he acts like it would take magic pixie dust to fix the problem, which is absolutely not the case.
And then the customer starts screaming abuse and he hangs up, which is absolutely the correct thing to do at that point. But acting there wasn’t anything he could have done to maybe avoid the situation is disingenuous. Did he screw up, or just write the OP badly? Hard to tell from what is (as you said) a rant OP, and he’s only human either way. But talking about how he’s being obstructionist to someone who his company screwed up with isn’t going to get him much sympathy from the hoi polloi in the Pit.
Note: I get that he probably has a callflow and procedures sitting in front of him on how to handle a situation like this, and it has him create the new account because it’s the cleanest and easiest solution for all involved, including the customer.
I just have an objection to him acting like he doesn’t have any other options on how to make the customer happy, when he actually has plenty.
No exact optimum needed here. A lot of companies have a loose policy of “don’t say can’t” to a customer, and it’s to prevent just such a customer losing hi/r shit that much sooner. For whatever reason, even this was not an option in chimera’s call.
A “reasonable” customer should not ever be that close to a screaming fit, but “I can’t do that and you need to pay more money because one of uf made a dumb mistake” is not going to help.
She wasn’t going to have to pay more money. Which she would have known if she hadn’t flipped out.
This thread is exactly why I will never work phone support ever ever again. Kudos to Cosmosdan for fighting the fight I don’t have the energy for.
It wasn’t, “you need to pay more money to fix this”, it was, “you need to give us back the money we incorrectly refunded to you to fix this.” What is so hard about this?
Right, but we’re talking about the entire OP and what it says, not just them portions that you like to pick out. All that means is that it’s his job description to solve problems rather than hand them off and he has the empowerment to solve them. He could have and would have gladly solved this woman’s problem if she had listened to what he had to suggest. He’d be doing his job poorly if he forwarded a screaming incoherent customer to upper management.
Huh? It’s probably true but it’s a bunch of shit? Undoing a week old credit card refund is called reselling the item. Sadly the lady started her shit fit before he could explain that. It’s not complicated and doesn’t change the outcome. She gets what she wants but I assume she needs to understand and approve of the refunding of the 2nd account and the recharging of the one that was mistakenly canceled. In the end she gets what she wanted initially if and when she calms down and accepts the reality of it.
You and others are assuming negative things about Chimera that are not in evidence. As he explained, it would be doing his job poorly and being irresponsible to forward a screaming incoherent customer to someone in upper management simply because she couldn’t or wouldn’t listen and kept insisting he do so. He had the ability to solve her problem and was perfectly willing to do so. The fault was hers.
Again a misreading and assuming negatives about Chimera It’s simply an acknowledgment that he can’t solve the problem in exactly the way and with the wording she demanded. He can’t go back in time and undo the refund that was a week old. That’s just a simple fact. That simple easily understandable reality seemed to be what set her off and she begins her unreasonable tirade without listening to the solution that will give her the results she wants. It’s not that there is no easy solution. There is a relatively easy one, that she refused to listen to.
The problem I see is that the posters who jumped on to criticize eagerly made some false assumptions about the situation. I find the OP pretty easy to understand but maybe because I’ve dealt with that kind of customer before. If you’re willing and able to help someone but they refuse to listen to a perfectly equatable solution that won’t cost them anything what do you do? If they insist in screaming tones that you do something you can’t do instead of a solution you can do that ends with the same results what do you do?
You and others have accused **Chimera **of claiming the problem couldn’t be solved and then backpedaling to admit it could be. That’s not what happened. The ability and willingness to solve the problem was stated in the OP but you all were so busy piling on you apparently missed it. I hope you know better now.
Not long ago I heard Adam Carolla comment (ok, rant) about his experiences dealing with TV producers and network execs who always had “notes” and suggestions for changing jokes, etc., and when he’d protest they’d invariably say “look, I’ve been doing this for twenty years, TRUST ME, I know what I’m doing.” And invariably the jokes would bomb, because they’d been FUCKING THINGS UP for twenty years and somehow managed not to get fired.
You’re reading something into it that I don’t see at all. It’s not that there are no other options. Based on this customers problem and behavior what’s the best option? When someone is screaming obscenities and refusing to listen the best course is not to forward them to upper management. Try to reason with them {he did that} and if they are out of control , hang up and hope they calm down before they try again. That’s his job and he did it correctly and professionally, regardless of what armchair CS reps want to think.