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[alpha-orionis-v.livejournal.com]

You must be, because my ass would have been walked straight out the building for this.

The guy sitting next to me: "No! I'm done answering your question! I've answered it three times already! No more."

Yes. We have all wanted to say this (or something like it), and probably have, after putting the phone on mute. But I looked over at this guy's screen to see what sort of idiot question was apparently being asked, and he was saying this TO the customer, and then proceeded to argue with the woman over answering the question again.


I can probably guarantee that if I'd been on the other end of that call, the next words out of my mouth would have been, "I'd like to speak with your supervisor."



I wonder if he'll still have a job after quality hears this call.

Comments

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

We've all had to tactfully answer that question - the broken record treatment is our friend. I once did this with a customer who demanded a supervisor, and after repeating her unreasonable request he used my exact words twice more before she hung up.

[alpha-orionis-v.livejournal.com]

Well, sometimes you just can't help stupid. If you're lucky, they'll get confused and think they know what's going on, and just hang up.

I just couldn't believe this guy started arguing with the woman over answering her question again.




That said, I do support the idea put forth by Douglas Adams, that would allow us all to say, "Use [company name here] and die!" once every hour.

[4ti3k4t35.livejournal.com]

Broken record is good, especially if you sound perkier and happier each repetition.

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

It's the assholes like that who give the rest of us a bad name.

Hell, just today I had a lady who felt like calling me all sorts of names. Perfect politeness 'til the call ended. Part of the job. Deal with it.

[kemeticmiranda.livejournal.com]

He would have been frogmarched out the door from my training course. And I'd have burned him in effigy. Twice. With needles in the effigy. Three time.

Then I would have shot him.

Seriously, wtf?

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

I dunno ... I had a coworker who used to tell customers (small business and enterprise-sized) who weren't being cooperative: "When you're ready to try what I've told you will work, just let me know. Until then, I'm going to put you on mute; think it over." Every ~20 minutes or so: "Are you ready to give that a shot? OK, no problem. *mute*"

He's still here, 3.5 years later.

[kyidyl.livejournal.com]

Ha, I had a friend when working at AOL who would say "Sir, I'm sorry, but you can't talk to me like that. We're both adults, and when you're ready to act like an adult, then I can help you." and would put them on mute till they shut up, then would say "Ok, are you ready to act like an adult now?"

That's not what he got fired for...actually, this friend has one of the best firing stories ever. Our company required us to read a little sales pitch at the end of the call. A short two sentences (oh, how we all hated it) and if the person took the pitch (as in, agreed to be transferred, not necessarily bought the product...heh, we would sometimes call each other and say "read me the pitch" just so other people could get a dollar. And when employees from other departments called us, it was great cause they always took the pitch.), we got paid a dollar. All added up and paid out at the end of the week. So, he was really good at getting people to take the pitch. At one point the owed him over a grand for doing this, but they weren't paying it out. So he finally got them to issue a check, but it wasn't signed.

One week, right as this was happening to him, the company gave us some free ice cream. There was a banner in the break room that said "Thank you for being employees of $company". He took it down, wrote "but some of you won't get signed pay checks this week" on the bottom, and hung it back up again. One of the almost-next-in-the-running-but-not-quite-a-supervisor-yet people saw him, and tattled.

Ha, I'm still friends with him to this day tho, that was years ago. lol.

[emsporter.livejournal.com]

It depends VERY strongly on the organisation you work for. I could get away with saying that, no question. I choose not to (I find "I'm sorry, but there's really nothing more I can say, that's just how it works!" works) but I totally could. And my boss would back me up, too.

[wibbble]

I've said things like that before. Usually after answering their question a lot more than three times.

I've also ended a call like that, saying something like 'I've answered your question, and asking it again will not change the answer. Unless you have another, different, question I'm going to end this call so that I can assist other users.'

(In that specific case it was something that was outside our scope of support, and he'd been referred to Nokia's developer forum, which has its own support channels - no phone support, though, just email.)

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Yup. Every ten thousand calls, there's two or three that really, truly do need to be told to shut their pie hole, no, they are not getting a supervisor because the supervisor's got better things to do than listen to stupidity, and they can either follow instructions or get transferred to Mr Dial Tone.

And that's just internal company support. I hate to think what the ratios are like dealing with the general public.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

I'm on a corporate helpesk. Guy wot sits next to me got so frustrated with one of these people all he could say was "Look, I just can't help you. I'm sorry" and hung up. He got a day off without pay.

What we're supposed to do is get them to put someone else on the phone who can bloody understand what we're asking/telling them to do. But seriously, some people calling the Helpdesk who are so clueless they don't even understand "what is your username?" Or so clueless they don't understand "click on the Start button?" My question is, how did these people get hired?

[lillyflowers.livejournal.com]

"My question is, how did these people get hired?"

My question is how do these people eat without choking. ;-)

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

:snerk: Amen!
...let me tell you about the guy I had to explain 'desktop' to.

[lillyflowers.livejournal.com]

*laughs shakes head*

"You mean the thing with my paper & pencils on it?"

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

As much as I'd like to say that to a number of my clients, I'd have fired him if he did. Part of being good tech support - and the part that keeps people coming back to the people I work with - is that we're friendly and supportive, not assholes. Sure, there are times when I can't do anything more for someone, but you don't tell them like that. Though I could probably get away with it at the current place, depending on who I said it to. But still!
...Damn.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that once when I was really tired and not thinking straight, I said something quite snarky to a customer. Since then I've tried doubly hard to be on the ball all the time. I wouldn't fire him off the bat, but I'd be watching him more closely to see if he makes a habit of it or if he tries to do better.