Call center workers. Tell me your horror stories.

[graywarrior]

I start on the phones for the first time tomorrow. I am shitting my pants. I hate the phone.

[Kutjara]

1. I'm sorry you're feeling anxious about tomorrow , Gray.

Here's a little link to cheer you up. http://www.techtales.com/

It's a website full of tech support and call center stories, some true and some no doubt apocryphal, but there are some real screamers in there.

Just realize that there's humor to be found in the most onerous task and that your next call may provide inspiration for an hilarious post on DU.

:hug:

[graywarrior]

2. Awww, thank you!

:loveya:

[trueblue2007]

25. ANGER MANAGEMENT JOKE

Take some time to read this, too funny!

Are you pissed?? Take it out on someone, don't take it out on someone you know, take it out on someone you don't know !!!!!!!

I was sitting at my desk when I remembered a phone call I'd forgotten to make. I found the number and dialed it. A man answered, saying "Hello."

I politely said, "This is Chris. Could I please speak with Robyn Carter?"

Suddenly a manic voice yelled out in my ear "Get the right f***ing number!"

And the phone was slammed down on me. I couldn't believe that anyone could be so rude. When I tracked down Robyn's correct number to call her, I found that I had accidentally transposed the last two digits.

After hanging up with her, I decided to call the 'wrong' number again.

When the same guy answered the phone, I yelled "You're an ass hole!" and hung up. I wrote his number down with the word 'ass hole' next to it, and put it in my desk drawer. Every couple of weeks, when I was paying bills or had a really bad day, I'd call him up and yell, "You're an ass hole!" It always cheered me up.

When Caller ID was introduced, I thought my therapeutic 'ass hole' calling would have to stop. So, I called his number and said, "Hi, this is John Smith from the telephone company. I'm calling to see if you're familiar with our Caller ID Program?"

He yelled "NO! " and slammed down the phone. I quickly called him back and said, "That's because you're an ass hole!" and hung up.

One day I was at the store, getting ready to pull into a parking spot. Some guy in a black BMW cut me off and pulled into the spot I had patiently waited for. I hit the horn and yelled that I'd been waiting for that spot, but the idiot ignored me I noticed a "For Sale" sign in his back window, so I wrote down his number.

A couple of days later, right after calling the first ass hole (I had his number on speed dial,) I thought that I'd better call the BMW ass hole, too.

I said, "Is this the man with the black BMW for sale?"

He said, "Yes, it is."

I asked, "Can you tell me where I can see it?" He said, "Yes, I live at 34 Oak tree Blvd , in Fairfax . It's a yellow rambler, and the car's parked right out in front."

I asked, "What's your name?" He said, "My name is Don Hansen,"

I asked, "When's a good time to catch you, Don?"

He said, "I'm home every evening after five." I said, "Listen, Don, can I tell you something?" He said, "Yes?"

I said, "Don,you're an ass hole!"

Then I hung up, and added his number to my speed dial, too. Now, when I had a problem, I had two ass holes to call.

Then I came up with an idea. I called ass hole #1. He said, "Hello."

I said, "You're an ass hole!" (But I didn't hang up.) He asked, "Are you still there?"

I said, "Yeah,"

He screamed, "Stop calling me,"

I said, "Make me,"

He asked, "Who are you?"

I said, "My name is Don Hansen."

He said, "Yeah? Where do you live?"

I said, "Ass hole, I live at 34 Oak tree Blvd, in Fairfax, a yellow rambler, I have a black Beamer parked in front."


He said, "I'm coming over right now, Don. And you had better start saying your prayers."


I said, "Yeah, like I'm really scared, ass hole," and hung up.

Then I called Ass hole #2.

He said, "Hello?"

I said, "Hello, ass hole,"

He yelled, "If I ever find out who you are..."

I said, "You'll what?" He exclaimed, "I'll kick your ass,"

I answered, "Well, ass hole, here's your chance. I'm coming over right now." Then I hung up and immediately called the police, saying that I lived at 34 Oak tree Blvd , in Fairfax , and that I was on my way over there to kill my gay lover. Then I called Channel 9 News about the gang war going down in Oak tree Blvd. in Fairfax .

I quickly got into my car and headed over to Fairfax. I got there just in time to watch two ass holes beating the crap out of each other in front of six cop cars, an overhead news helicopter and surrounded by a news crew.

NOW I feel much better.

Anger management really does work.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

3. I don't have any stories....

But I do have a great smiley just for you!

Good luck!!!

[graywarrior]

Ha ha.

Hope I can be that nice.

[Breeze54]

4. Learn to use the "release" button!! It's red!

:rofl:

Just tell them you're putting them on 'hold' and then, oops! My bad!!

"I meant to put them on hold but hit the wrong button." ;)

But only for a-holes that are yelling at you because they didn't pay their bill for 8 months
and can't understand why they lost cable service/satellite service or what have you! :P

What kind of call center is it? :shrug:

I've worked for cable/satellite TV and computer tech support. :banghead:

Tech Support call I actually had.

"Hello, tech support. How can I help you?"

Customer: "Ah...I have no sound on my new computer!"

"OK. Let's try to figure this out. Are the speakers plugged in and turned on?
Do you have a power light showing on the front of the computer?

etc, etc."

Customer: "You don't understand Ma'am!!! (getting angry) I have no sound and no power!!!
The electricity went out an hour ago and I can't get my CD player to play any music!!
I HAVE NO SOUND... Gheesh!!"

:crazy:

I swear. That was one of my first calls !! :rofl:

Have fun!! :P

[graywarrior]

6. It's an alternative energy company

It's gonna suck.

[Breeze54]

7. Naw.. I'll bet those customers

will be very happy to have alternative energy!

Sounds like a great job! You'll be fine. Just do your best and if you don't have all the answers, keep your supervisor's extension handy! Make friends with other workers who have a years experience or more! They know the ropes. ;)

[graywarrior]

8. Thanks for that.

I hear from the people who've been there awhile that NYers are the most difficult to deal with. Ha ha! I should get along fine with them, seeing that I'm from up north.

[Breeze54]

9. Well;

hate to say it but it's true. The worst I (we) had to deal with were people from Alabama.

They got really nasty and would start name calling using terms like "You F**king libruls!!"

They really sucked!

[graywarrior]

11. Oh geeze. I'm afraid my co-workers will call the callers that name.

[grannylib]

5. OMG...I used to be a CS rep and then a CS Training Sup in a call

center; my biggest horror story was getting my job outsourced to cheap foreign labor, and have never caught up, income-wise, since. (That was the Sup position, which I loved...training all the time. The CS rep pay sucked...)
This was in a rebate center (PC rebates, cell phones, etc., so it was 8 hours of pretty much being screamed at all day long, since most folks didn't call to say, "Hey! I just got my rebate, and it was for the right amount, and I got it within the 8-12 week time frame as stated on the rebate form, and I only had to submit it once! Thanks!"

One of the hardest things was explaining, to the first-time, elderly PC buyer, what the difference was between the PC, the CPU, the UPC bar code, and the UPS guy who delivered the thing to her front porch *lol*

[jmm]

10. I briefly worked as an operator for a cab company

My favorite call would have to be from someone wanting a cab in Cambridge. When I asked her where exactly she was she got upset and she already told me she was in Cambridge. She didn't know her address, a lot of people who called us didn't know, so I asked what she was near attempting to help her figure out. The best she could say was that she was near a bank and she couldn't even tell me the name of it. I asked her to walk to the nearest street sign then tell me the nearest building number. She just kept yelling because apparently she already told me enough to help her. As politely as possible I told her that it would be impossible for our cab drivers to locate her if the only details we had were that she was near a bank in Cambridge. Her reply, "Well I'm wearing a blue coat." I simply said, "Ok, somebody is on their way," and hung up.

[Bryan]

12. Sounds like you need some encouragement

I've been at it for 6+ years, and I can count on one hand the number of times I had an unpleasant call that I didn't forget about as soon as the shift was over. If you're like me and have some form of social anxiety, it's the easiest customer service-related job there is, since there are no people in your face. If you happen to enjoy talking to people, it can be diverting.

More than that, it's pretty impersonal; I don't know them, they don't know me, and I almost never have to speak to a person more than once. The people I speak with are usually less a source of frustration than what I am or am not allowed to do to fix their problems. Even so, a buoyant "Wow, that guy was an asshole! Oh well." attitude is helpful.

It's not inspiring work, and I would not recommend it as a long-term career, but it's not a hard field to excel in. Employee turnover is huge, and reliable people who don't have ongoing personal issues are quite valuable.

[bridgit]

13. I worked at Westat administering scientific samples for a while...

http://www.westat.com They were alright, even got some stock and a 401K :thumbsup:

You'll end up speaking with allot of good people, allot of nice/trending barely nice people, some less than nice folks, and some assholes...then the really big assholes, but mostly good people

One shit-head said he'd participate if I told him what color bra & undies I was wearing, and talked sex to him before we proceed...I terminated the call, and was harangued endlessly for doing so by one of the supervisors that made a previous move on me that I snubbed at the time; but was then vindicated by another Sup that was monitoring the call and said I was under no obligation to gather data by way of such means as the data would likely have been skewed regardless

I think you'll do just fine. There's still allot of good people around...somewhere, I think. Just get your head around your script, prepare to offer creative solutions, show the world that bubbly, vivacious girl inside and always remember: Turn That Frown Upside Down :(:)

What kind of call center work is it?

[Orrex]

19. When I worked a call center

It was common practice for my female coworkers to receive calls from male brokers who insisted on using the toilet, bathing, or otherwise tending to their daily routine while on the phone, and these callers mysteriously made a point of mentioning what they were doing.

"Sorry, could you repeat that? I couldn't hear because I was taking off my pants."


It was, sadly, routine. Curiously, my male coworkers and I never received such calls.

[bridgit]

27. oh i know, aren't some people just too precious...

[ghostsofgiants]

14. Haha, well there was this one time a guy threatened to sue me for slander because...

The phone number he gave me didn't bring up the account he wanted me to look at.

And of course there is every customer who thinks being a total dick is gonna make me want to help them MORE.

[Orrex]

15. Years ago

I took a call from a man who wanted to close a joint account held by his daughter and her husband, whom I'll call Mrs. and Mr. Jones. I asked, according to procedure, if he was authorized to act on the account. He wasn't. So I informed him that we needed either the daughter's or her husband's permission before we could take instruction from him.

"I'm afraid that my daughter is dead," he informed me.

"I'm very sorry to hear that," I managed after a moment. "But Mr. Jones can authorize me to accept instructions from you."

"Well," he replied, "that won't really work, either. He's in jail for her murder."


Doh! I'd been on the phones maybe three weeks when I took this call. It didn't exactly conform to any of the scripts we'd used in training...

[Common Sense Party]

18. Ouch. That'd be a tough one to deal with. nt

[Orrex]

16. Self delete--double post

Whoops! Hadn't done that in a while...

[krispos42]

17. Yanno... if you want to feel unloved and despised...

and be insulted and ridiculed, you can just go to GD-P for a while.

[yellowdogintexas]

20. OK is thisyour first day on phone after training, or are you starting the job for first day

and going to training ? I was in training for 90 days before I actually took live calls alone. I work for a large company with a LARGE call center (actually several of them) and I do get some doozies sometimes.

FIRST OF ALL GOOD LUCK ON YOUR FIRST DAY!!!!!!!

I get yelled at a LOT because I am in a sub specialized area and deal with time consuming issues that the main call queues are not trained to handle ..I can do many things they cannot do. And about50 percent of my calls are invalid transfers because the frontline reps hear the one of the 3 topics I handle and dump the call over when it was actually something they could do

My favorite was the one where the lady was in a really crazy snit over late charges, and increases in payments etc. Somewhere along the way she had gotten a month behind and never got caught up even though every bill showed her which month was due. She boldly told me she never even opened anything from us anymore because we sent out so much junk mail..we had been telling for for about 18 months she was a month behind perpetually and that she had some payment increases due to other things out side our scope. She never got it never understood it. And as another poster pointed out..I also never spoke to her again.

However you do get some seriously rewarding moments. I have had customers in tears of abject gratitude over some minor thing I could do that helped them out tremendously.

You will get callers who are in a good mood who will crack jokes left and right, let you know that they are willing to take whatever you tell them just as long as they know exactly what to expect and you will get callers who will go ballistic over a 10 cent error. And you will get dumb asses, who will reaffirm your belief that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and the handle is frayed.

PM me if you want. After 3 yrs at this job and 3 years in another field doing this kind of work, I have worked in all sorts of scenarios.

[vixengrl]

21. Don't "hate" the phone--and don't agonize--

The best advice I can give (nine years of call center work) is that, although they are really memorable, the really difficult callers are actually in the minority. For the most part, I find that if I can identify what they want to know, or what they need fixed, I can send them on their way happy that they didn't have to take up too much of their time. Sometimes they want the impossible--so you just have to lay out the possible alternatives, and sometimes give bad news. The trick is sometimes getting them to get past the frustration to communicate what they need, and that means asking the questions that help you hone in on it--it gets easier.

At my call center, we are actually *forbidden* to use the "release" button, but there are ways to deal with a highly agitated caller without it--the "hold" button is a great tool. Sometimes it gives *you* time to compose yourself, think of what needs to be said, gives you time to look up information that can help--and sometimes it give the *caller* time to STOP TALKING LOUDLY (the one who yell rarely seem to know, or maybe they just don't acknowlege, that their voices have crept up the decibel range. Unless you need to be heard, I have found that a deadly steady voice is a good way to go with them.) Also, when you are just starting, a well-run call center should have pretty hands-on supervisors keeping an eye on you--and sometimes, all a customer will want is a manager.

I think some of the hardest calls I've had were from people who called without any information (Do you have your account number? "NO." Do you have your notice with you? "NO." Do you know what it was about? "NO--aren't you supposed to know--you work there." Sheesh, this isn't a Psychic Hotline!) One thing to keep in mind is, the difficult callers are really shooting themselves in the foot--you can only help them as much as they *let* you and cooperate with you. The ones that don't give straight answers or just want to yell in the end don't get the best service--you can't take it personally.

One of my favorite anecdotes is with a guy calling from Texas, who had this kind of deep drawl, and at some point he decided he had enough of me explaining that he was wrong, so he asked to speak the "The head may-un in charge." I explained that I could only transfer him to my direct supervisor, and she was female. "Wall, the head may-un in charge would understand whut I'm getting at, isn't there somebody there I can talk to like a man?" I said I would put him on with *my* supervisor.

Well, her supervisor was a female, and her supervisor's supervisor, and every last one of them was going to say the same thing. I really don't know how that turned out for him.

[lost-in-nj]

22. I've talked to you on the phone

You have a great voice ......

just gotta keep the swearing in check!!!!


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

lost

[texas1928]

23. Way to many to tell. I was a telemarketer for 2 years, and a technical support rep for 6 years.

Way to many to tell here.

[billyskank]

24. Dude.

That is not a job I could imagine you in.

[ikri]

26. Best of luck

I'm just getting out of a call centre job & wouldn't wish a job here on my worst enemy.

I work for a fairly large outsource call centre business in the North East of England, not my first job in a call centre but my first in any sort of managerial role at one. There are a couple of things that you'll notice, these seem true for all the call centres I've worked in so they may be universal call centre truths. 1) Management hold the employees in utter contempt, they really do hate you. 2) Many team managers get their jobs through longevity, not through talent, if they last longer than 6 months they're manager material, no matter that they're utterly incompetent, can barely write or do maths, if they've survived the first 6 months they're in.

If your company works shifts or weekends, prepare to lose anything that remotely resembles a social life - you'll never be off at the same time as your friends. Customers generally won't call up to thank you on a job well done, if you're taking inbound calls expect to listen to a load of customer complaints.

On the other hand, the employees at most call centres are generally pretty good people, if it weren't for the people I work with here I'd have quit a long time ago. As long as you don't sit in the corner all day sulking you'll make friends with people pretty fast and they alone will make going to work worthwhile.

The best advice I can give you is this Even when the mic is muted, they can still hear you. If you need to vent, curse, kick/punch something thanks to a call then leave the room, losing your job for (accidentally) telling a customer that they're an idiot isn't worth it.

[mainegreen]

28. Here's a good story.

Cold calling the never donated before stack for a non-profit fund.
Got a man. He wanted to know 'how I got this number'. Told him my story, how I was a poor college kid just working the phones to pay for school. He asked my if I worked on commission. I said yes, (sorta, we got bonuses tied to every thousand dollars over a certain mark we had), and he said something along the lines of this is your lucky day and donates 15 grand. I got a big bonus that night.

Of course, the worst is when you call a dead guy and get the grieving widow. Fun shit right there.