Friday, October 06, 2006
Hanging up
It's pretty rare that we have to hang up on people here at work, but it does happen sometimes. I think that some call centres have a policy in which you never hang up on a customer no matter what. We don't. If a call is going absolutely nowhere, like if a customer is arguing about the fact that we don't offer refunds for upwards of 20 minutes, then an agent is justified in warning the caller, then hanging up if they have to. And if a customer is being excessively rude, we'll also hang up at that point.
In my time here, I can only remember hanging up on two people. One was the case of a man arguing about his billing and saying he didn't agree to the things he'd agreed to. We went in circles for about 15 minutes before I told him that we weren't covering any new ground, we weren't changing the billing terms retroactively for him, and that I was going to have to hang up to help other people. He then launched into a tirade about how he was a university professor and even though I wasn't educated, I should be able to appreciate that we don't live in Communist Russia and that we should accomodate him. I told him that since he was making derogatory personal remarks towards me that I was ending the call.
The second was much simpler! A lady who had repeatedly encountered billing problems often called to bitterly complain. The first four times her billing failed, it was because she had given us completely incorrect banking information. The fifth time, she did finally give us the right information, but she NSFed. She called, got me, and right away proceeded to yell, scream, and cry about how we were ripping her off. I waited for her to finish, and explained that we can't help it if she gives us the wrong numbers or doesn't have the funds in the account. She cut me off and screamed that you can "cram it up your ass!" So I hung up.
Today, I was on a long, slow call while another coworker fielded several calls in a row from a lady. I don't know what her original problem was, but I know that she became rude, and the coworker had to hang up on her. She called right back, got him again, and said something like "you hung up on me!!" He said "I sure did." "Why did you do that?!" "Because you were being very rude." She proceeded to complain, and said she'd call back to deal with someone else. However, the rest of us were all on calls. This means that when he was finished, my coworker jumped right to the front of the available agents list. Each time she called back, she got him again.
I believe she was eventually convinced that he's the only person who works here.
Anyway, there's a lesson to be learned here, and that lesson is that if you're being rude to someone, they might not want to help you anymore. Just because you're calling someone who is working doesn't mean that the veneer of a business-client relationship permanently innoculates you from the consequences of being a jerk.
In my time here, I can only remember hanging up on two people. One was the case of a man arguing about his billing and saying he didn't agree to the things he'd agreed to. We went in circles for about 15 minutes before I told him that we weren't covering any new ground, we weren't changing the billing terms retroactively for him, and that I was going to have to hang up to help other people. He then launched into a tirade about how he was a university professor and even though I wasn't educated, I should be able to appreciate that we don't live in Communist Russia and that we should accomodate him. I told him that since he was making derogatory personal remarks towards me that I was ending the call.
The second was much simpler! A lady who had repeatedly encountered billing problems often called to bitterly complain. The first four times her billing failed, it was because she had given us completely incorrect banking information. The fifth time, she did finally give us the right information, but she NSFed. She called, got me, and right away proceeded to yell, scream, and cry about how we were ripping her off. I waited for her to finish, and explained that we can't help it if she gives us the wrong numbers or doesn't have the funds in the account. She cut me off and screamed that you can "cram it up your ass!" So I hung up.
Today, I was on a long, slow call while another coworker fielded several calls in a row from a lady. I don't know what her original problem was, but I know that she became rude, and the coworker had to hang up on her. She called right back, got him again, and said something like "you hung up on me!!" He said "I sure did." "Why did you do that?!" "Because you were being very rude." She proceeded to complain, and said she'd call back to deal with someone else. However, the rest of us were all on calls. This means that when he was finished, my coworker jumped right to the front of the available agents list. Each time she called back, she got him again.
I believe she was eventually convinced that he's the only person who works here.
Anyway, there's a lesson to be learned here, and that lesson is that if you're being rude to someone, they might not want to help you anymore. Just because you're calling someone who is working doesn't mean that the veneer of a business-client relationship permanently innoculates you from the consequences of being a jerk.
# posted by Terry @ 9:04 AM 
