Given Confidentiality Laws and Agreements probably signed when employed, this is a Very Bad Idea. I would be immediately fired with cause if it was discovered that I had written down customer information and taken it out of the building. Probably be sued too.
Now on the other side of the coin, I will agree with Doug K. that there bad reps (I deal with them internally all the time) and bad companies that want to fuck you over. It’s the same - the OP’s company is fucking him/her over by doing something potentially unlawful and lawsuitworthy, and companies likewise fuck over customers on a regular basis. For far too many people in this world, “X is Illegal” is only an issue when you get caught. Our prisons and our streets are full of this. It doesn’t stop people in their daily lives, it certainly doesn’t stop people who run companies.
I have Comcast, and I’ve been right there when I have equipment malfunctions and outages. I get the same bullshit answers from them as they give anyone else, which seriously pisses me off. (Reset the router my ass. I’ve done that 12 times in every possible combination, asshole, the problem doesn’t originate in my apartment! OH WAIT! NOW you are able to tell me that it is a regional outage? No shit?) The only thing I have going for me is that I can say that I’m a level 2 tech with XYZ company and I know what the fuck I’m doing, which usually (but not always) gets their attention and stops the “blow this guy off with bullshit” responses.
Why on earth would a company be even interested in keeping a customer with a history of abusing your employees? Someone who has done it so often he has a note on his file?
They would likely save money by firing this customer, and encouraging him to please go to their competitor.
How much profit does this customer bring in anyway? And how is that compared with the costs to the company of all the calls he makes, the effect on staff morale, and the costs of training a new employee when one quite because of this tool?
Honestly, and this is a completely different discussion, all I have to do is look at all the dangerous, public abusing cops we have around here who cannot be fired because of their union; and some of the people I’ve met on past jobs who not only do zero work but negatively impact everyone around them - and cannot be fired because of the union; and I want nothing to do with Unions.
Because this is a “large cell phone company” the OP is talking about, I’m assuming that means one of the “Big 4,” who are extremely competitive with each other and IME will do anything to retain their customers lest they lose them to the competition.
If a customer likes another company’s rates better, they can’t help that; letting their customers abuse their customer service reps, who they must employ and pay whether abusive tools exist or not, costs them nothing.
I’ve been lucky with TWC. I’ve been having an ongoing problem that requires a piece of equipment to be reset from time to time. The ONLY people that can reset this is Tier 3 tech support. When this happens, I call TWC, hit the tech support button, explain the problem to Tier 1. They spend 15 minutes troubleshooting (reset this, reset that, unplug that cable etc etc) and kick it to Tier 2. They spend about ten minutes troubleshooting and kick it to Tier 3. When I get to Tier 3 it tends to always be the same person answering the phone. He gave me a trick. He put notes in my file that explain the problem and told me that when it occurs, instead of calling Tech support, who work from a script, call billing. Tell them you need to be kicked up to Tier 3 tech support.
It’s so much easier now. As soon as the problem shows up, I call TWC, hit the button for billing. Tell them what’s going on, explain that I need Tier 3 tech support and if they look at the notes in my file they’ll understand. I hear about 15 seconds of them mumbling the notes under their breath and then they transfer me.
Now, the problem gets fixed in 5 minutes instead of 40.
I had that job for six months. You clearly work for [company name deleted], right? It’s not monitored as closely as they say. I often did cold transfers with zero consequences. The rep on the other end has no way of knowing that you didn’t wait the required two minutes before cold transferring. You have a number of automated systems you could dump people into as well as sort of a customer purgatory. Just do it in a way that makes it sound like a misunderstanding - not maliciousness. “Oh, your bill? I’ll transfer us into the automated system. Sounds like you missed the correct option, let’s try that again.”
Also, tell people to restart their phone. A ridiculous percentage will actually hold their power button down on the very same cell they’ve been using to speak with you without realizing that ends the call. Quickly attempt your call back before the phone restarts. Note the account, and go back into the queue. Or you can walk them through pulling their battery. Only a very small percentage will realize that this will disconnect them. If a manager ever calls you on it, feign ignorance and say you thought they were on a different phone.
Or, when you legitimately need the customer off their cell, like in 99% of all troubleshooting procedures, deliberately mess up the number of the line you’re supposed to call them at. Note the account, and you’re done.
All of this terrible behavior will actually send your stats through the roof. Because you know that the asshole calls will inevitably take 45 minutes or more. I regularly did all of this along with a friend on my team. When awards certificate time rolled around we won every award save one – most improved. I was actively promoted during my stint there. When I quit, they had pulled me out of the queue and made me a de facto supervisor. I only took escalated calls and answered questions from regular reps. Most of the time I dicked around on my new HTC Incredible.
Also, if they happen to choose one of these calls for a coaching session, they are unable to record the call after you disconnect to reach them on another line, so you can’t lose.
If I were stuck in a job in which I was required to listen to people abusing me over the phone, and if the corporation was not willing to improve the working conditions, then a union would be my best bet in forcing the corporation to come to the table and make the changes necessary to improving those conditons.
Call centre workers are cheap, plentiful, easy to train, and have no bargaining power what so ever, so they are easily replaced. Unionization can not address the overall market factors, so I expect that the workers will never make high wages simply because call centres can easily move elsewhere, however, when it comes to simple, inexpensive workplace matters, such as instituting a reasonable procedure for abusive calls, I expect that most corporations would prefer to improve the workplace environment than have to deal with a union.
I hear what you are saying about unions, Chimea, for one of my reasons for being self-employed is that I prefer not to be in an environment in which others call the shots, be they unions, employers, or bureaucracies in general. The stereotypes of the fat lazy guy being the union’s health and safety officer, or the union defending indefensible the conduct of a bad union member, does not arise out of nowhere, but at the same time what the pubic does not often see is the temendous dedication and effort put forward by union officers who try to move heaven and earth to make better working conditions and better wages.
Right there he has a really good, rational reason to be abusive. Obviously he is a major asshole, but having that instruction on his account, and letting him become aware of it, is just asking for trouble.
Wow. I worked in call centers for a few years and nobody ever screamed “FUCK YOU BITCH” at me. Especially not multiple people in one evening. Is there something about that phrase that is particularly popular in your area? Seems weird that two people in the same evening both scream the same phrase and hang up. Maybe they were working together or something.
It can be entertaining using data protection laws (dunno if they’re the same in the US) to demand a copy of everything they have on you, including notes. I’ve read some hilarious newspaper articles about what people found.
These days - after a few companies got stung a number of years back - I imagine they’re much more careful about the notes that employees leave on accounts.
I really don’t get why you think this is costing them anything.
Customer Service Reps are not paid by the call. Their job is to be on the phone all day long. They are paid and the incoming calls are paid for no matter what. It doesn’t cost them anything extra if someone is a dick to them on the phone. What does [company name deleted] care as long as they pay their bill?
Customer service reps and the call center have a cost. It is not cost-free to provide this service to your customers. If your service reps are tied up listening to abuse, or to obscene phone calls, or listening to nonsensical rants, they are not helping real customers. The more stupid calls like this your reps have to deal with, the more reps you’ll have to hire in order to keep the call waiting time to a reasonable amount.
Your competitor, who does not deal with these useless customers because they have gotten rid of them, will be able to hire fewer reps to deal with the good customers.
When I call a toll-free customer support number, I usually have to suffer through a long complicated menu tree (including wasting my time with the “Press nine for Spanish”) and then horrible hold music that’s periodically interrupted by “Your call is important to us. Please hold.” before I talk to a human being. So unfortunately, I’m sometimes a little on edge to that person. I apologize to any call center operators out there.
Also, with some call centers, the automated system asks me to enter my account number. So why, oh why, does the operator ask me for the same information?
I know. That’s what I said; they have to have them whether there are asshole customers or not so it’s not costing them anything extra to have asshole customers.
They’re asshole customers, well possibly not the guy described in the OP, but the overwhelming majority of callers who get impatient and frustrated and become abusive are still “real” customers who have a real issue or they would not be calling. Obviously they are not taking a constructive approach to dealing with their problem, but they still had a reason to call.
So… assholes aren’t allowed to have cell phones? The number of people calling the customer service center for no reason other than to abuse a CSR has got to be miniscule, and you are suggesting that this tiny number of people is going to cause [company name deleted] to hire an additional army of CSRs to deal with them? :dubious:
I’m with Tao on this. I’ve worked tech support for more than five years for a lot of different companies. The last one was Sony’s online gaming arm, and I left after four months, because it was starting to cause serious health problems.
If the company allows customers to verbally abuse you they’re creating a hostile work environment. If the verbal abuse is sexual in nature, and you’re job is at risk if you object, that’s pretty much the definition of sexual harassment. The only problem is that most of the previous cases have been about employers or fellow employees doing the harassment. This is one step further out, but I’ll be a decent lawyer could rip them several new ones.