As for documenting, if you’re doing tech or customer support, you almost certainly have access to the Internet. Keep notes or send yourself emails through a web email account to document. I wouldn’t bother with full names, just first name, last initial, date, and time of call. That’s more than enough for a lawyer to use to subpoena any documentation or recordings.
Because when the system asks you for it, it’s to direct you to the right place (business vs personal, homeowner vs rental, charge vs revolving etc). But it doesn’t necessarily mean that info populates on their screen. Even if it did, they still want to verify your identity. No use in them spending the first two minutes talking just to find out that you typed the number in wrong and the incorrect info pulled up.
Oh, dear. I am 80 per cent sure I know where you work and if that’s the case, I know your boss’s boss. My sympathies. 
When will rude and nasty customers understand that is NOT how to get a deal?!
IANAL. I am a manager in another industry. I am currently going through my legally required bi-annual training about sexual harassment. Your story sounds like one of the case studies in the classes I am taking. By forcing you to take verbal sexual abuse from customers IMHO they are creating a hostile work environment.
Again IANAL.
The legal test BTW is called the reasonable person test. So would a reasonable woman find being forced to listen to a customer threaten to fuck her up the ass ok or not. I am also not a woman but I vote not.
Your manager could be found personally liable in addition to the company for these policies. (that was in some training I took yesterday)
The symptoms you describe above are consistent with what my training says can be the result to the employee in a hostile workplace.
Also in my training it was made clear that you do not have to follow the chain of command. The employee is allowed to go as high as they feel it is necessary to get their issue addressed. So if your manager blows you off go over his head to get this handled Getting your CEO on the phone is acceptable.
My recommendation is to talk to a lawyer versed in sexual harassment law.
I can tell you I would not allow any customer to talk to any of my employees like you have been talked to. I have fired customers in the past and I won’t hesitate to do it again in the future. Customers are not allowed to fuck with my people.
PapSett keep us in the loop, we care about you even if you company doesn’t.
I’m an older male and I have once or twice had it happen to me.
Years ago, I worked for a cell phone company. I wasn’t in customer service, but the call center was in the same building as my office. For months, we had an armed security guard at our location because of specific threats made to our reps, including the address of the building we were in. Not that fun going into work for awhile there.
I worked credit and collections for about 30 years, mostly commercial collections dealing with mom& pop bookstores. Only one time was a customer abusive to me. My uber-uber-boss got on the phone with him and told him if he ever spoke like that to an employee, his account would be terminated. The customer called me back and apologized (which may have been at the VP’s insistence, I don’t know).
It makes all the difference when you think y our employer has your back.
Papsett - Did you watch the movie?
StG
I worked in a tech support call center for a few years. It gets…interesting. We WERE allowed to inform the customer that abusive language would not be tolerated, but the call had to last at least 3 minutes first, with at least two warnings, before disconnecting.
On the notes thing…we had one guy that would call in twice a month, always on a Saturday, always for about ten minutes. He had notes on him going back years, because what he’d do is just garble absolute nonsense. Aliens coming through his screen, the computer trying to kill him…and we had to try to actually find solutions to his problems. We guessed he was at a psych ward or something, and only allowed computer time twice a month or something. Or maybe in jail and really bored; who knows? Without the notes, it would have been almost terrifying. With the notes, it became kind of a joke, and it was always fun when a newbie would get a manager and exclaim that ‘There’s a guy named Ricky on the phone who wants us to stop sending mind-control beams through his mouse…what’s the protocol on that?’ 
I worked in health care for a few years as well, and sometimes the patients weren’t all there mentally, or were just really stubborn-minded and wouldn’t take care from a particular person. The first time this happened to me, a nurse told me to hold on while he got someone else, and I felt like total crap. Later he explained that it’s not uncommon for a simple switch in personnel to totally change a patient’s attitude; the next week, I was the one they called in to change out with another attendant…on the same guy. And he was fine with me. So don’t feel any compunction about switching an abusive caller up to a manager; sure, the manager doesn’t get paid THAT much more than you, but it’ll probably defuse the situation and THEY can take the heat.
In fact, I had one customer service rep job, with a satellite television company, where they insisted the rep could not discontinue service for a customer NO MATTER WHAT. As an absolute LAST resort, you kicked it up to a team that took over and kissed their ass to get them to stay. I had one guy who wanted OUT no matter what <without going into details, I agreed with the customer; we were screwing him over royally> but no managers were available to take the call. I actually left the desk and looked all over; the team said they weren’t going to take any calls for whatever reason, so I went back to the phone, told the customer to call back in half an hour and ask for (the name of the team) and then I went to lunch and didn’t come back. I refuse to work someplace like that; it’s incredibly fucked up.
We get this at my work (not a call center but we do take calls from our donors frequently, it’s part of my job to answer them) - there are a few different repeat offenders, clearly much older folks with a lot of time on their hands and varying stages of dementia. At this point I recognize their voices and just let them rant for about 2-3 minutes, then make sympathetic noises and transfer them to my manager (with warning of course!). Without fail, just hearing a new voice on the line flips a switch and they calm right down. It’s not the fact that she’s a manager either, we’ve tried it the other way around when she happens to pick up the phone and then transfers to me after the initial rant and it works just fine. I would really not be OK with answering phones someplace that isn’t willing to take advantage of this easy trick. On top of that, we are never pressured to accept inappropriate language, even from donors.
Please,** PapSett**, take Rick’s advice. This is not in any way an OK way for your employer to treat you. I know you can’t name them or hint but I’m finding myself really hoping it’s not my carrier because I don’t want to have to switch companies but I don’t want my wireless dollars supporting a shit atmosphere like this. You rightly blame the callers, but really I think your managers and employer are far more culpable for putting you in the line of fire with no backup.
OP specifically requested that no company names be brought up in the goddamn thread. Do you have any idea how high SDMB is indexed on google?
Is there anything that can be done to remove these references from the thread?
I’ve let the mods know.
Thanks, I also put in a report.
When you repeat the company name in your post, you double the work the moderators have to do.
You know how most people regard tipping as something you always do, unless it was absolutely horrible service? I regard politeness with call centre employees the same way. Always say please and thank you and be polite. Plus, if I’m calling in because something’s wrong, the person I’m talking to didn’t personally do it, so snarking at them is useless.
This thread seems to happen about every two months.
And so this bears repeating: If you are asking a call center employee or tech for a favor, something extra, or something out of the ordinary: BE NICE.
I have zero reason or incentive to give free stuff to some screaming demanding jackass. I’m not inclined to go out of my way or beyond the normal limits of my job for nasty people.
It is absolutely amazing how many people do not get that.
I worked part-time at the call centre for a city-wide pizza chain that had a “30 minutes or free” delivery guarantee. This offer was waived during heavy snowstorms … information we gave at the end of the order. I could always tell which customers had called hoping specifically to score a free pizza by the way they’d freak out at this information.
One caller said he knew where the call centre and would be waiting outside “to fuck [me] up”. For once, the right response came to me instantly instead of hours later: “All righty, then. So just to confirm, your name is John Smith, your address is 123 Main Street and you’re coming to the call centre to “fuck me up”? I just want to make sure the police have the correct information when I turn over the tape of this conversation.” If Canada had an Olympic Backpedalling Team, that douchenozzle would have brought home the gold.
I certainly see your point;
If a company has 1 asshole client out of 100, it really makes no difference if this is increased to 50 asshole clients out of 100 in terms of the call support costs. They still have to have a call centre, and the staff to deal with 100 clients.
However: I would guess that the asshole clients take up much more of the call centre’s time per call though, and need help more frequently.
I’d also wager that the company with more asshole clients will have lower morale among employees. Employees will be snarkier to the nice clients after dealing with an asshole. Employees will take more time off, and quit more readily, leading to increased costs for obtaining and training new employees.
And this does not account for any lawsuits that may be forthcoming, if previous posters are correct in their assessment.
I’ve deleted the references to the particular company that Papsett may or may not work for. It’s no skin off anyone’s nose, is it, to avoid posting where you think she might work?
Everyone, please refrain from repeating the name of the company it has been suggested she works for, and from making guesses. It’s not worth it to possibly place her job in jeopardy.
Thanks,
Ellen Cherry
MPSIMS Moderator
I agree - and I’m in a union. The amount of freeloading lazy sacks is discouraging. Luckily I’m in a sub-department that has all of 5 people in it so we can self regulate.
Can say that without a union I wouldn’t have health insurance though.
Turnover in the call centers I have been in is ferocious. Well over 100% annually. A good part of it due to the stress of bad people and the call after call after call flow of the day where catching a breath and recovering before taking the next call is seldom possible. Another fair part of it is that, to management, you’re just an expendable cog that they don’t give a shit about as long as they make their numbers. Hell, if they’re not making their numbers, but you are, you still get shat upon because they want EVERYONE to be miserable about the overall numbers.
But I gotta say that the single largest cause for our turnover is people being fired for absenteeism. For a while this summer we were regularly having 15-20% absenteeism every Saturday and Sunday.