Haven't posted in here in a while.

[katyism.livejournal.com]

Do you have banned users at your place of work? I mean specific people to whom you must outright deny any help whatsoever, as a result of verbal abuse or policy violations or whatnot?

We do. Over the summer this guy who's not affiliated with the university directly, but was in the habit of calling for inane, simple, Windows 98 help (something for which we massively stepped down support recently) every single day. On two occasions he got verbally abusive with some of our consultants and we have all heard him shreiking and throwing breakable things against the wall over the phone line and demanding we pay for his "$3,400" copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking (which he got FREE from his department and which we do not support at all)... anyway, as a result of such behavior, our boss's boss's boss's boss contacted him and informed him he was not allowed to call anymore, but he could email us for help for one month, and then we'd cut him off completely. The cutoff was at the end of August.

I answered my phone today to hear this user's familiar voice (our entire support center knows his name, voice, and loathes him) so I immediately put him on mute and announced loudly who I had on the line, and un-muted it so he could hear their screams of "Oh no! HIM! What is he doing calling here?"

It turns out he had e-mailed the big boss (a mistake ever letting him contact the boss directly) begging to be allowed to contact us for support, and got a flat response of "No. We told you once and are telling you again, we will refuse all future support requests from you!" ... and on the phone now he tells me that he was granted support privleges by that department head. I flatly told him that until we are notified of such a decision we have to hang up, just as not one but THREE supervisors rushed over to my cube to listen in along with the rest of the cube farm and to fill me in about the e-mail to the boss which I wasn't aware of before he called.

Now the supervisors are accessing the ticket I logged for him and gossiping up and down and bitching and grumbling. This guy's name alone can ruin our day. And we were already really loud and riled up since a few other customers today were being much more difficult than usual (I can hear one customer yelling through a co-workers headset all the way across the room)...

Fun. This story's not terribly related to technology, but it's about the support environment. POINT of POST: I'd love to hear your stories along these lines.

Comments

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

used to work @ DOJ.

had one user a sheila who would call up & tie up a tech for idiotic word processor questions. She'd do this every day & ask for the same tech until that tech got wise to her & learned to chop her off by just answering THAT SPECIFIC QUESTION or by quoting previous tickets at her. (one of my favorite tactics) She also rapidly learned who would & wouldn't play along. it finally got to the opint where we complained to the manager because she'd tie up a tech for hours. it finally got to the point where there were standing orders that her manager had to call us for her so she had to prove there was a problem.

we suspected she did it to get out of work.

[jecook]

I don't have any of those people YET, but I've gotten pretty damn close with some people.

And I'm normally pretty damn easy to get along with, too.

[wyldthyng.livejournal.com]

I have a story sorta similar to that.

Without getting into too much detail, there's this dude in our customer base (I work in alarm dispatch) who decided he was going to go into the programming of his alarm and completely revamp it. Why?! I dunno. Essentially it's rendered his alarm completely useless - rather than us getting messaged signals (arming, disarming, bypassing, trouble, etc. etc.), we get scads of "Undefined Signal".

Normally we'd call Helpdesk on these, but pretty much everyone on the floor knows to ignore them. The guy refuses to have service out to reprogram his alarm (probably because, DUH, it'd cost him money) and so I dunno if we're supposed to call and harangue him about undefineds (I'm new) but he's now paying for a useless electronic box, and it's all his own damn fault. And no, as far as I know, he hasn't asked to cancel, and if he has, he's been refused, because his account is still active. Idjit. Heaven forbid he encounters a real intruder or emergency - we'd never know.

Humanity astounds.

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

Before I started working for my current employer, they used to get calls from a woman who was convinced the FBI and hackers were stealing her e-mail, reading it, then forwarding it back to her. The tickets on her account are required reading for all new techs.

There is also a guy who was verbally abusive to everyone. It got so bad our boss called him and said he could no longer call. He shot back that he knew the owners. He once called me and I told him we weren't supporting his account. He then went on - to me - about how we cost him $10m and how he was "gonna get my ass fired". Big fuckin' deal. Haven't heard from him since. :)

[alysania.livejournal.com]

Verbal abuse policy? WOW i wish we had one of those.

I'm a subcontractor on a major government contract. When I was at the helpdesk, we were instructed never to hang up on a customer. Ever. No matter what they said. The second a caller asked for a supervisor, they'd come right over, but we had to take it all including threats on our lives, cursing, inappropriate language, etc. After I moved to desktop support, I dealt with that less - people are less inclined to be that rude in person, but there are two users that want things their way even when I have no control over policies and procedures, and they're not afraid to threaten and be rude and belligerent about it. Anyway, I wish we did have some kind of abuse policy to protect us, but as contractors, we have VERY little pull on issues like this that involve government employees.

[annamaryse.livejournal.com]

We had ONE. This one woman was so unbelievably hostile and abusive that the company told her to return the software. A C-level wrote her a letter and told her that he'd instructed the tech department not to assist her again, and that none of his employees need endure the level of abuse she was laying down. It was, in their opinion, beyond the call of duty for us to have to be submitted to her. That only happened once. In general, if someone starts swearing we were permitted to advise them that if they did not stop, we could put the phone down.

[adriannevandal.livejournal.com]

When I first started at the company I work for, we had a guy who would call up and while he was trying to get us to fix his problems with Windows 2000, he'd talk to us about how he lost money because our stock prices went down. He was eventually banned from talking about our company's stock when calling into customer support (because we can really do a whole lot about that...)

AV

[harry-whodunnit.livejournal.com]

There was one customer at the last company I worked for who got banned. He called multiple times every day, claiming that the stress we put him through forced him to quit his job and go on disability.

He actually tried to sue us to get support back, and management caved in, on the understanding that he wasn't going to abuse any more techs. That lasted almost a week before he got banned again.

Then there was the guy who said "My connection is too slow, I'm going to rape your wife"... he got to look at the world between a set of bars for a while.

At my current company, there was a customer who made death threats to one of the managers - he tried for a prosecution, but apparently the customer was a psychiatric patient in 'community care', so it couldn't go ahead.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

no no no, your post is the EXACT reason this comm is here ;)

[jon787.livejournal.com]

I work in the computer labs for one of the departments at my college. Last year one of our workers got a no contact order against a user. That user isn't allowed in our labs anymore, makes it hard for him to do his homework sometimes.

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

We had this alumna who graduated in the sixties and still lives in the area. She came by on a weekly basis with elaborate questions that often required house calls, which we refused to make. If we weren't able to help her right away, she would wait patiently at the desk until someone was not immediately occupied. Helping alumni is all right, so long as the desk isn't bustling, but our policy is that current students and faculty always come first. If someone is taking up too much of our time, we have to set them aside. She definitely took up too much time on a regular basis, and the director took her aside multiple times to explain our policy. And yet she kept coming back and requesting help.

[zig-mover.livejournal.com]

yes. there are 4 or 5 customers whose voice i recognize, and will either refuse to help them, or change my name and read off old tickets. or pretend i can't hear them. "hello? hello? hello? *click*"

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Exactly. This is what the disconnect button was invented for. Anyone who complains to me about it gets the user transferred to them on the next call.

We support broken computers, not broken personalities. Hang up and call a shrink.

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Hey, do you work where I work? We have a Crazy Ticket Lady too!

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

No, I work for a localised company in Austin. I think every place has a crazy lady that calls up saying stuff like that though. :)

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

You know what's a funny thing, though? I work for a company that has employees in all 50 states--and our Crazy Ticket Lady lives in Texas, too! ;)

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

It might be her. She's totally paranoid about the FBI. She has a website too - stopcovertwar.com. Makes for fun reading. :D

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Heh, our Crazy Ticket Lady wouldn't know how to make a website if her life depended on it. I will definitely check that one out, though!

[klytus.livejournal.com]

Oh, I would just love to use that on a difficult client.

"I'm sorry, sir. But after listening to you, it appears you have called the wrong number to address your problem. Please hold while I conduct a web-search for the phone numbers of anger-management therapists in your area..."

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

Right to work state? Personally I'd call the cops on anyone that threatened me.

[alysania.livejournal.com]

Yes, right to work state.. and it's on a Navy base, so I really don't know how that would work out with calling the police. PLUS, it's their word against mine. (me being the younger sub-contractor and them being the older government employee) Funny, one of them did call my boss directly because she was so angry that I was following policy, and he, thankfully, put her in her place and told her she was wrong.

[trenthamfamily.livejournal.com]

I so very very wish we did. We can't deny them service though but then again I'm on a Help Desk for a certain company. Although there comes a time we do have to have the L-users talked to and tell them to quit it but that never works.

But oh I wish...

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

threats are threats regardless of who makes them... hell military base means you call the MPs.

your calls aren't recorded at all? if not get your self one of those mp3 players that can record and hook it up to your phone.