(no subject)

[katyism.livejournal.com]

This isn't directly tech related, but those of you who work in call centers like mine might sympathize.

I am damn tired of taking the fall when someone gets transferred to my line and my department can't help them. It always goes something like this:

Them: Hi, they transferred me to you guys to ask about my mother's shoe size / find legal help / hook me up with a hot coed / something stupid.
Me: This is the computer helpdesk, I'm afraid that's not a question we can answer. Who transferred you to us?
Them: They did when I called.
Me: Who did, who did you originally call?
Them: I called the operator / financial aid office / kinsey institute / something strange.
Me: I see, and did they say why they transferred you to us?
Them: They couldn't help me, they said you could.
Me: We can only help with computer problems.
Them: Well, they said you could help me. So you are saying you can't?
Me: No, I'm afraid they transferred you to the wrong department. I'm sorry, but I don't handle that subject matter, and I don't know who does.
Them: Well, this is just really terrible customer service.
Me: I'd be happy to send you back to the operator, maybe you'll get a different operator who knows what department you need to talk to.
Them: She told me you were the right department!
Me: There are several operators working at any time. I'll transfer you, explain the situation, and make sure the operator who answers knows what it is you need.
Them: You guys are always so rude when I call, this is really terrible way to treat your students / professors / janitorial staff.
Me: I see no record that you've ever called us before. Just a moment please *transfer*

Comments

[crazdgamer.livejournal.com]

Fuck 'em. You're doing your job and informing the caller what your job is and how you can assist them. If they blame you for something outside of your control, then they need to realize who's really at fault.

[flainn.livejournal.com]

I get this too. Sometimes I get caught between internal customers (employees) and external customers (general public).

It seems that the receptionists (we have a half-dozen) use a random algorithm to determine who in the IT department to transfer a call to.

Efforts on our part to educate them as to what each person's role is, and therefore which calls to transfer to which person, have thus far been unsuccessful.

So every once in a while I get someone transferred to me who I am absolutely unable to help (by design; our roles are deliberately segregated, and I receive no training on certain things). Sometimes I can make a guess, but other times I can do nothing other than apologize and tell the customer I'll have $appropriate_person contact them as soon as the person returns.

Sometimes this makes people upset. "What the hell are you working there for, if you can't help me with any random problem I come up with?" is a common response.

I've learned to take it in stride. It took a long time.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

It baffles me that these callers are so massively credulous for the first person they speak with, and then skeptical when you try to contradict that person. Better still, they appeal to the innate authority of that first person when trying to reason with the tech. (well, they'd call it reason.)

My best guess is that it's because they assume everyone's an expert if they can be reached by telephone, it's just that the first person is supposedly an expert at transferring calls and was able to help them (i.e. the call was indeed transferred), so hitting our unhelpful tech selves is a major brick wall for them.

[katyism.livejournal.com]

hit the nail on the head with why it baffles and irritates me so much.

[major-error.livejournal.com]

It seems that a misplaced sense of entitlement has become a virus and is rapidly spreading.

That muffled 'oof!' you heard in the background was decency and civility being pushed out the [insert ordinal # > 1] floor window.

[kait-the-great.livejournal.com]

I did/will be doing again tech support for a University faculty.

People would either call us or get transfered for the strangest stuff. You need a transcript? Um, that's the Registrar's Office. You don't have a login name assigned to you? Ditto. You want to adjust your [other faculty]'s printing account? I don't care if you're a student in this faculty, you have to call [other faculty]'s helpdesk. You can't upload your resume to the co-op program? No shit - it sucks. Call their help line. We can't support it.

I'll have to remember to make a reference sheet of extensions for those common problems... cause I'm just too nice and have to make sure people get where they need to.

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

The majority of our calls are from an DSL provider we contract tech support with for our products that they sell. Last night I got a call from a Comcast customer who thought that, even though we weren't his ISP, nor did he have our product, we could help him. It took several minutes of trying to convince him that we couldn't before he finally went away.

[jjjiii]

If they don't even know who the fuck they called, I'd just tell them I'm eating dinner at home and/or making love and don't appreciate the interruption. I mean, it's not like they're going to realize you're bullshitting them.

"But I always answer my home phone with a corporate greeting, why do you ask?"

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Nice caller = "Please hold, I will see if I can find out who you should be talking to."

Entitlement whore = "No, you have the wrong number." *click*

Really, hanging up is the best solution all around if you don't know who to put them through to (even a corporate switchboard). It means that:

1) they get to the right department sooner because they don't get a chance to waste half an hour arguing,

2) your time isn't wasted when there's nothing you can do for this person,

3) all the people stacked up in your phone queue don't have to wait that extra time either,

(alternatively: all the items on your to-do list get addressed much earlier, saving time for the people who wanted them done)

Basically, if you have fifty people you *can* help being deprived of your attention by one person you can't, it's in all of your interests to get them off the phone ASAP. And if they won't hang up, a "sudden mysterious line drop" can be amazingly useful.

It's a judgement call, too. If someone's trying to get hold of another corporation, or dial for a pizza or something, just hang up and let them consult their phone book. If they have the right business but the wrong area, a quick transfer to the switchboard or flip through the corporate directory might be the way to go. But even then, sometimes there are very large organisations with teams so separated they've never heard of each other. (Maybe your boss might know approximately where to send them, or at least be prepared to make a judgement call on whether you can spend more time on that caller.)

The ones who really annoy me are the other technical teams who transfer calls to me when the problem the caller is having has *nothing* to do with our area. I hate being treated as a sort of idiot-dumpster or tech-area switchboard simply because our team deals with a wider range of stuff than most of the other teams. Unless the 'tech' trying to palm the caller off on me can tell me exactly why he or she thinks this caller is our responsibility, I won't take the call. What I will do, however, is write up the incident and have our boss phone their boss with some caustic remark about training their people properly.

[piepants.livejournal.com]

We have something called a cold transfer. Basically you call somebody else and just transfer your customer / victim over without as much as a word.

Then you hang up and document 'I tried to transfer user over but bungled the button pressing'.

:)