Dear customer,

[tadiera.livejournal.com]

You, lady, are a grade A dingbat and idiot.

So anyway, today I had to help a customer get connected. That's fine; it happens often. It's DSL. Connections aren't flawless. Esp. with the customers you can get.

So anyway, then the following ensues:
Cust: "So how do I reply to email?"
Me: "In the webmail, when you open an email, there's a button that says reply."
** Now the other day, I had to walk a guy through HOW to type out an email. Ugh. **
Cust: "Okay, I see that and I clicked it, but now I only see the message I received."
Me: "Yes, is it in a text box?"
Cust: "Yeah... Why is it there? I don't want that there."
Me: "Many people like to have the message they received there when they reply. If you don't want it, you can click your mouse on it, drag it over the text, then press delete."
Cust: "Okay, it's gone, now what do I do?"
Me: "You type out your response in the field..."
Cust: "Tell me something... Why isn't there an instruction manual for this? I don't know what I'm doing!"
Me: "Well, m'am, most webmail is similar and..."
Cust: "AOL wasn't like this! They gave me a book! This is insane that they don't give an instruction manual! Why don't they!?"
Me: "M'am, I can't say why. I don't have control over how they do this or-"
Cust: "Still! I can't believe they expect me to just /know/."
** Yeah, they do lady. Why? Because it is the most SIMPLE THING EVER. Each button is labeled, everything else is labeled. It's bloody self-explanatory. **
Me: "I'm sorry, I can help you more if..."
Cust: "I know this isn't your fault, but this is just unbeliveable!"
Me: "M'am, perhaps I can find you someone you can talk to..."
** Just to get you off my phone.... Supervisor says to transfer to Senior Agent. Poor people. Okay...*
Me: "M'am? Okay, I'll be transferring you to someone who can help if you don't mind holding."

I feel sorry for the SA that had to take it. He had to tell me that we don't offer a book... I explained that I /know/ that, but the customer wouldn't accept it for an answer.

I don't give a damn what AOL did! They're slower than us, they take over your computer, and... c'mon, it's AOL.

This, combined with the lady who spoke VERY QUIETLY, while her kid SCREAMED in the background (meaning my volume was on high so I could hear her, while my eardrums got pierced by the child's screams) lead to the mood indicated. x.x

Comments

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Lame for passing it off.. I take calls on our 'Customer Resolution' queue, otherwise known as the Irate queue, and half of the calls are just transfers from reps who can't deal with a difficult customer.

My advice? Deal with it. Its your job.

[tadiera.livejournal.com]

I spent about 5-10 minutes trying to. The woman kept ranting and I kept explaining that I'm sorry we don't offer an instruction manual, that I can't affect that, that I can help her through it, etc...

That was around when she began demanding a supervisor and I had to offer alternatives.

[gholam.livejournal.com]

I probably would've snapped and asked her "If AOL is so great, then why aren't you there?". Then again, I rarely do phone support (2-3 calls a day), most of my work is hands-on.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

You are perfectly capable of explaining that to someone though, surely? You weren't passing it to someone else because you were unable to do it, right?

So make that clear to the customer. If a customer is being difficult and demanding a supervisor simply because they think a supervisor will kowtow to their ludicrous demands, then you deny them access to a supervisor. It is not their legal right to speak to a supervisor.

Everyone where I work is far too busy to deal with idiot customers, if I palm something off to someone else they'll question why it was done.

Toughen up ;)

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

Eh, at my job I pass things off sometimes because I know that no matter what I tell them, they won't believe me. They have to hear it from someone with a more vaunted job title. Since I'm all internal support, they know who I am.

Now that many of the users have realized that I do their security changes, too, they've started listening a bit more, but there are still times...

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

Different places have different ways of handling things. I've worked in call centers where if someone asked for a supervisor, we had to transfer them. Especially if there was a queue, they didn't want us wasting time explaining reality to people who were refusing to listen to us; we transfered them, the supe said no, they went away, and we all moved on to someone we could help.

But if it's different where you work, that's cool too.

[tmercenary.livejournal.com]

There is an instruction book for everything.

Just point them to:
http://etips.dummies.com/

[tadiera.livejournal.com]

So people don't keep flaming me for passing the call off, here's what it was:

The woman would not listen to me. I continued to tell her I'm sorry we don't have a manual for the webmail, but that's the way it is and I can't do anything. She began demanding a supervisor or somesuch. I asked a supervisor if we have some sort of comment/suggestion/complaint line (I'm new, hadn't heard of one, thought maybe if she could leave a message somewhere requesting that we start giving out instruction manuals for webmail, she'd be happy). The supervisor told me to send it to a senior agent.

Likely for: 1. may be what they do. - 2. I'd been on the call for a while. Once we hit the 20 minute mark, they want us to send it to a senior agent anyway to finish up. Usually they let us go to 40 minutes, but that's pushing it.

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

I understand doing that completely, myself.

I'm the senior helpdesk person but I still pass things like that onto my boss, the network group, the techs, etc sometimes. Why? I don't have the job title. Nevermind I've been doing the job longer than most of our techs have been employed at the company. They don't believe me because I'm 'just the helpdesk' and they like it better if someone else tells them exactly what I'm going to say.

[tmercenary.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean.

At a previous job, we had specialized teams at the helpdesk, each to support a specific application/tool/PC function. Each team would have several.

So say someone has a VPN issue. They call in, push the phone options, get to the network support team. If they are unruley, and ask to speak to a "VPN Speicalist" (Which the network team is.)
You simply IM the ticket # and info to the person next to you, and they will come on the line saying "VPN Specality support....." and due to your before xfer coaching, can imedeiatly say the exact same thing you just told them that set them off.

[ex-prunesnp.livejournal.com]

*I* understand you completely.

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

no, no, I get it. It's a whole "voice of authority" thing. Being a supervisor, you get that alot, when the poor tech who's taking the original call hands you the headset shaking and nearly in tears, then the moment you get on the phone, the formerly irate monster of a customer backs down ASAP when you tell em no.

Someone who was authorized to say no, said _no_. So they know for sure it's just not a "basic level tech holding back b/c they're a prick" thing that customers seem to think happens all the bloody time.

[schalaislost.livejournal.com]

Woooahh. That's just terrible. I'm so sorry you have to deal with that kind of crap.

[lovely-shan.livejournal.com]

I always thought AOL was for people who shouldn't have the internet... Now I know it is true. :-)