That is fantastic, and I am still cheering about it. :p:p
I wanna thank y’all for your support and stories… it helps a hella lot to know that I’m not alone in this. Keep the stories coming… it gives me something to smile about.
And especially thank you Ellen Cherry for deleting the company name… it’s not where I work anyway, but we have been told that there are people in the company that it is their job to google the company name and see if the employees are saying bad things… I actually knew one girl who was fired because of a post she put on FaceBook, so I know it’s not just blowing smoke.
I have to agree 100%… the customers that are nice to me, I will go out of my way to help. If you yell and scream and cuss… not so much.
Here’s another story from last week to illustrate that…
Had a customer call in from L.A. and at once set into yelling about his lousy service, dropped calls and failed texts. I sat quietly and let him yell. He finally says that his friends are yelling at him because they think he’s not answering his calls, and do I know what it’s like to be yelled at for no reason?
Well, he paused to take a breath at that point, and very quietly I said “Yes sir, I understand completely.”
The line went dead silent. Then in a very meek voice he said, “That’s what I’m doing to you, isn’t it?”
Well, If I had answered honestly I would have gotten in deep shit so I let the silence speek for me. He started apologizing all over himself and the call was great after that, AND I ended up giving him a nice credit.
You DO catch more flies with honey!
Awesome when they get that.
Probably at least once a week I tell someone “Look, I’m just some guy in a call center. What do you think I can do about this?” when they’re demanding that I singlehandedly change my company’s policies, rewrite software to do something different, whatever.
Sometime we forget that when we call a company, the person on the other line is just that, a person. They aren’t the company.
Well, at least until Siri takes over Apple. Then God help you if you have Sarah Connor in your iPhone contacts list. 
<3 for Ellen! And sorry I made extra work for you. 
I usually save this sentiment for people who call and demand our CEO’s information. I couldn’t get that information if I wanted to. Not that I want to for the assholes that tend to demand it, but even if I did want to, I wouldn’t have the authorization to give that out. Are those people fucking crazy? Don’t they understand that someone making multi-millions has ZERO interest in listening to them whine because their $250 deductible wasn’t reimbursed? I work for this company and the CEO doesn’t give two shits about me, much less an individual customer. Unless you’re a shareholder, the CEO of a large company isn’t going to care about you. PERIOD.
The worst calls I get are from people who have gone up the chain of command 2 or 3 (or more) levels, simply because they don’t like the answer they’ve gotten. I’ve gotten calls from people complaining that their adjuster’s supervisor’s supervisor isn’t calling them back. It turns out that the claim was settled 6 fucking months ago, but they’re still calling to whine because they didn’t like the (logical and fully-documented) decision the adjuster made. :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=rachelellogram;14385649I usually save this sentiment for people who call and demand our CEO’s information.[/QUOTE]
I stumbled across the right answer the very first time someone demanded to speak to our CEO right then and there.
“Sir, I’m just some tech guy. I don’t have the ability to transfer you to someone at that level. First, he’s not going to take my call, and second, if I tried, I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be working here at the end of the day.”
Customer goes “oh yeah, good point” and dropped it.
Use that about once a year. Dunno where people get the idea that any random person they call at a company can instantly connect them to the very highest levels of the company, and that person would for some reason take the call. Pretty sure they have more important things to do.
As for the chain of command, that’s where I get the most heat on this board from people who are SURE that I am lying about it. We have a two level chain. Our company procedure is that I, at Tier 2, am the highest you’re going to get to. My boss doesn’t take calls, nor does his boss. You don’t like my answer, then call back, but you’re still only going to get to Tier 2.
And then people will do that and lie about what the last person said. “They promised me the moon! In a box with a solid gold gem encrusted bow!” Um sure, their notes said they told you NO. “Those notes are a lie! You’re lying! I demand your supervisor! Betsie promised me the MOON and you’re going to give it to me!” Ok, so call Betsie back. It says here that she gave you her number, so if she made that promise, which I don’t have documented, you’ll need to call her. “Oh, um, she’s not there today. I left her number in my other shoes. The stars are not aligned properly to call her. I thought you could do this!”
I do front-line customer support as a part of my job, and we don’t have hold music (or queues) or long annoying phone trees, and it does cut down on a lot of the assholes. I still get one from time to time but I think it’s something about the whole experience of calling a big call center that tends to turn people sour. I mean, I get tons of emails and quite a few calls, and I’d say I’ve maybe had two or three abusive callers in that whole time. One of them sent a written apology afterward (and he was nowhere as bad as the OP, either).
There’s something so dehumanizing about both working for and dealing with big call centers. It doesn’t excuse the behavior by any means, but really the problem is not just that there are assholes in the world – there are some fundamental problems with the call center model.
Clearly. But the benefits to companies far outweigh the perceived issues, most of which the companies can pass off as being “not our problem” such as people’s ability to cope with the environment. Hell, I’ve gotten that clearly from our Director. “Just put on an invented personae of the happiest person in the world and be extra special nice to everyone! Put it on like a suit when you walk in the door and take it off when you leave at night!” Sure, sure. Because that clearly works for everyone who tries it. :rolleyes:
And on the other side, yeah, it’s tough to deal with a mass of dehumanized drones who have very little access to information and very little power to change your situation. Unfortunately it is a fact of the Economies of Scale. You can talk to the guy at the corner store and he knows all of your details and can make a custom deal just for you. When you’re calling ABC Incorporated and they have 100 million customers and 10,000 call center workers, you get ground up in the cogs designed to deal with 99% of their issues and they are neither equiped to nor interested in making custom deals for the hundreds of thousands of people who demand one.
If it makes you feel any better, I once had a guy cuss me out in the middle of a Sunday morning Cracker Barrel crowd and demand a manager because I had the horrible nerve to bring his daughter what she ordered instead of what she wanted. I shit you not. When the manager backed me up on that, about five minutes later he needed a manager again because it had taken too long to get their grits and biscuits and gravy. Mind you, all of those things were already on the table and being nommed when he made the first complaint.
"Behavior that is rewarded, is repeated"
You can tell these people to STFU and then live with the criticism about how awful you are (see any given one of the threads about CSRs), or you can give them what they want and watch them continue to do it because they’ve just been taught that it works. Unfortunately, the path of least resistance is to give them what they want in hopes they’ll just go away and that it will be someone elses problem when it happens again.
!!!
An oversight online. 10,000 goddamn apologies.
How is it going? Have you talked to a manager yet? Any changes?
I was doing some additional harassment training while I wrote that last post.
Then I came across this from my training. ( I printed it so the wording is exact out of my training)
Let me repeat that: If vendors, customers and contractors harass your employees, you may be held liable.
Do not put up with this any longer, file a complaint and stick to your guns
Wow, thanks Rick… that really in good information. My manager and I have discussed it, but he is of the ‘can’t-do-anything-about-it-gotta-keep-the-customer-happy’ belief.
Who whould I look into filing a complaint with and how would I go about it?
Would HR be of any help here?
Only mildly related, but it might make you feel better: There was a time we actually had our company’s headquarters’ phone number and physical address. I actively encouraged those customers annoyed enough to ask for the info to utilize it. I don’t expect HQ was very happy, but it made us feel better. I mean, the phone tree alone was RIDICULOUS.
Once again IANAL
Well my training on Sexual harassment focuses on how to avoid a complaint, what to do if a complaint is received, and all the bad shit that can happen to both the company and me personally if I blow off a complaint.
For some silly reason, my training did not include a section on how to file a complaint. 
Before I go on, I would like to point out that my training made it very, very clear that a manager can be held personally liable if they fail to investigate and take steps to eliminate a hostile work environment. :eek:
How you proceed is up to you, but I see a couple of courses of action.
- Go back to your boss
- Go to a higher up boss
- Go to HR
Your boss will probably blow you off again. You bosses’ boss might not have the same crainal rectal inversion (his head up his ass) your boss has, and might realize that his dick will be on the guillotine if you file suit. Of course then again he might be just a clueless.
HR? Well you if your company had an effective HR department, they would have put a stop to any policy that contributed to a hostile work environment, but they have not, so how effective do you think they are in reality? If you do talk to HR, talk to a manager, not just a clerk.
Document everything including dates and times you spoke to your boss and his comments (an’t-do-anything-about-it-gotta-keep-the-customer-happy)
If there is no change then go to option #4 - Start Googling and find out how to file a claim/ suit. I suspect you will wind up with a lawyer and on the winning end of a great big lawsuit naming your company and at least 2 managers personally.
Oh, one more thing it is also against the law to take any type of retaliation against any employee that files a hostile workplace complaint.
oh and if your work environment is so bad you quit, you can still file suit after you have left the company, your quitting is not a get out of jail free card for them.
If I were in your shoes, I would go to a higher up boss and tell them about how being harassed by customers is making you depressed, and you are losing sleep and how being threatened with sexual assault is destroying your well being. If he gives you the suck it up buttercup speech I would document that on my way to the nearest meanest lawyer I could find.
I hope this helps and you can get to a better work environment soon. Keep us posted
As I said earlier and will elaborate further upon;
Google your state Attorney General’s Office.
Email them, documenting what you are being expected to tolerate and what your bosses have said.
Ask their opinion.
They’ll give you some direction.
Another possible source of info: your state and federal legislators.
They almost all have a “constituent services” person in their offices. They buy your vote by helping you out in navigating the beauruocracy (damn, I can never spell that word!) with info, and sometimes leaning on the beaurocrats (that one either).
Google them, find their websites, and if you don’t find an actual “Constituent Services” (or something to that effect) email address, send an email to their main “Contact Me” address, and mention “Constituent Services”, while outlining your problem. I’ve done that before, on much more trivial matters and have had good results.
ETA: bureaucracy, bureaucrat … Hey, that passes the spell check.
Thanks so much for all the info guys! Since this all happened previously and I don’t have the customers’ names or numbers, and don’t know exactly when the calls happened now, not sure if anything can be done, but I will be checking into it and if it happenes again… no, WHEN it happenes again, I will be prepared.
Documenting is definitely the first step to a successful case. Hopefully you don’t have to pay out of pocket for a lawyer, though it might come to that. Unscrupulous employers pretty much rely on their employees being too broke or scared to fight back using the legal system. 
But, if the place you work is as large as it sounds like, they REALLY should have a large HR staff that’s afraid of being sued. Surely it has happened before.
Holy cow, I think I spoke to a relative of that guy. He started out by telling me how cute his granddaughter was, and the cute things she did, and you know what else she does? She sucks . . .
I was fairly new at the time & he caught me so much by surprise that I think I did disconnect him.
I used to work in a call center, airline reservations. Fortunately, we had an “emergency” button to record calls just in case that rare bomb threat came in. The emergency button set off an alarm in the control room, marked the trunk line & time, and started recording the call. Anyone in the control room within listening distance was required to listen in the call to collect as much data as possible. If it wasn’t a specific threat it still got forwarded on to be traced.
I have a personal theory that phone tree hell was created to make it SO difficult for these people to get to a live person to abuse that most will just give up.