No Supe for You! - Supe Nazi

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

We all know that the supes are there to take the crappiest of callers off our hands, and often get paid up to half a cent an hour extra to do so. But does anyone regularly deny callers their apparent Them-given right to a supervisor?

"Get me a supervisor!"

"No."

It's quite liberating, really. It separates the callers into those who will instantly back down and those who will explode into incoherent ranting, thus earning themselves a chat with Mr Dial Tone, with the option of calling back and waiting in the queue again.

It's even more fun when you IM the rest of the desk with "If X calls back, put them through to me immediately." There are some callers who just need to be broken on the wheel of Being Comprehensively Outmanouvered.

I don't know exactly when I started doing this. I'm pretty sure it was before I got shanghaied into occasional supe work. It was probably after I realised that the supes we had were either slices of fried gold (a tiny minority) or imbeciles. I wasn't going to spoil the day of the former, and I wasn't going to let the latter have an excuse for going near a keyboard.

What do you think? Supe, or no supe?

Comments

[ex-deliveryboy.livejournal.com]

I'm a supe, and we regularly advise those on the floor to advise that the supe isn't going to tell them anything different. Occasionally, the escelation is warranted, but usually, there is no reason for me to speak with them.

The awesome part, when they are transferred to me, and they obviously don't like the same answer, they will sometimes ask my boss or (and this is the one I love) the CEO of the company. That's when I advise that I'm the highest person they will be able to speak to. I usually get "Someone signs your pay checks!!". "Yes they do, and I get paid to make these decisions. Anyone else is strictly in an administration role and wouldn't have the ability to assist you regarding your techinical/billing issue."


I've had them hang up after yelling at me, then call back and ask for a Supe. Guess who they go back to? ;)

[fuego.livejournal.com]

Someone signs your pay checks!

oh you'd like to speak to the outsourced payroll department? Well...sure I guess so...I'm not so sure they'll be able to help you, but you can give 'em a buzz if you really want to. Tell 'em I said keep up the good work.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

actually, in my last job, we didn't transfer to supervisors. supervisors were not techs. theywere always former techs with the same knowledge but they were strictly supervisors, and only made descisions as pertained to employees- as far as the custoemrs were concerned, my supervisor had no power whatsoever. When a call got transferred to a higher tech, it was a second level tech.

(actually, I once had my supervisor take a call. But that was a slight emergency situation in which I had a sudden panic attack and couldn't speak. He took over long enough to transfer the call to the level 2 folks.)

[taleya.livejournal.com]

highest ranking staff member (BOFH) in a graveyard shift that has about 3/4 people on. Sometimes i take calls.

I love it when they scream for a supervisor. I love it.

"I AM the supervisor."

'coourse I'm not, I just don't give a shit because frankly? I'm only taking calls to give the helpdesk monkeys a hand. No one would blink twice if I never picked up a phone - it's not my job.

[ex-deliveryboy.livejournal.com]

There have been a few times I jumped into Queue to help out with something or cover for someone's lunch.

When I've had to tell people I was the supervisor, ther ehave been times where they didn't beleive me.

fun times :)

[fuego.livejournal.com]

Lemme just transfer you to my supervisor, D. Tone....

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

I used to do outsourced tier 2 work, and you could get fired on the spot for refusing an escalation to supervisor. The instant they asked for it, you got on the horn to ops.

[floatingpencil.livejournal.com]

I mostly thank my lucky stars that I'm about to get rid of the fuckwit, to be honest. They won't get anything more out of our supervisors and there'll be a fifteen minute wait to speak to one. Not because there's a queue, but because I have to put them on hold (hah), locate a supervisor, let them know what the problem is, take an optional two or three minutes to mock the caller with the supervisor, then the supervisor goes through their account to make sure they're not a serial complainer...all this time is time I'm not on the phone, which suits me.

Depends how much of a git the supervisor is, but it can take a while. Usually the fight has gone out of them by then, either that or they've transitioned into 'entertainingly angry'.

[zzyzx.livejournal.com]

They just love it when I tell them there's no supervisor to talk to, because there isn't. *glee*

[trayce.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of the time I worked the interview desk at a certain aus govt department, and some cranky fuming customer demanded to "speak to someone higher up".

So the clerk stood on his chair and said "is this high enough for you?"

Ah, government work is so great. You just can't get fired.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

As an ex-govt worker, I'd have to agree.

There are actions which will get you fired, but being snarky isn't one of them. Generally it's stuff like "Signed statement saying they would not use govt computers for porn, then installed Porn-O-Matic on their first day and ran a porny pornhound porn ring for three years."

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

At my last job, the only "supervisor" demands I ever received were billing disputes. And since my role was as a tech and not a billing monkey I was only too happy to send them through.

One time someone who called through to our NOC (who had a service that provided e-mail-only support) got indignant when I told him that I couldn't troubleshoot his issue. I told him - quite rudely, since he was giving me shit - that since he had called operations and not support that he wasn't getting diddly-squat from me. Poor bloke got several weeks of frustration shot back at him. Well, it made me feel better...

But in all seriousness, I would never really deny someone a supervisor unless it was something I had outright authority to make a final decision on. I figure that my supervisor gets paid more than I do, so why not send him the shit that comes my way? :)

[arsey.livejournal.com]

My supes have started refusing to take calls, we have to provide 'one call resolution' and 'take ownership of the problems'

Sooo I have to refuse when a customer wants to speak to a supervisor unless I want a big lecture on how I could have totally dealt with that myself...

[arromdee.livejournal.com]

As a user, I can assure you that it is entirely possible for someone on the other end of the phone to respond to a complaint in a clueless enough manner that asking for a supervisor may be the only useful way to continue. (Particularly when the person on the other end is following a bad script.)

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Yup. It's a judgement call, and there are rare occasions where I'll even offer someone a supe escalation if I think it would help sort out the whole mess faster. Effectively, my criteria include "If this incident went to the boss/CEO/media, would I feel comfortable defending my decision?"

[arromdee.livejournal.com]

Deciding "well, I'll call the supervisor if the customer has a point and I'm really being clueless" has a problem: if you're really being clueless, there's a good chance you won't know it. Haven't you ever run into a clueless person who thinks they're totally on the ball?

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Hey, if the caller's being rational and calm, and still pushing for a supervisor, I'll probably give them one for the sheer novelty. And I can usually tell when I'm not on the ball on a given day - I monitor the speed, accuracy and effectiveness of my thoughts (or their results, which is much the same), and won't run the Total Bastard filter unless I'm really on top of my game and looking for a challenge.

Colds, hayfever and lack of sleep will underclock me noticeably. However, the only point where I can't tell how well or badly I'm doing with fair accuracy is when I'm so toasted from a combination of the above that I can only peg it roughly as "Brain Hurts", and at that point my boss.job[-1] tended to tell me to go home before I fell over.

I do vaguely recall once arguing, while in this state, that I was still smarter than the callers... which was stupid, because even if I was right it still didn't mean I had enough IQ points to be any use on the phones that day. When my manager can out-think me, that's a really bad warning sign.

Not being a great one for drinking, I can only assume that being drunk is something like diseased sleep-dep. You can't hold a coherent train of thought, you need to concentrate to walk and perform any feat of dexterity, your vocal and analytical skills are almost completely shot, you feel queasy, and you just want to lie down and sleep it off.