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Something that has been coming up at work quite often lately for me is a small difference of opinion. This is not causing any arguments or anyone not to see eye to eye, it just has me often times making a decision differently than someone else.
I work in Technical Support (read returns) as a tier 2 (top tier for us) and answer support tickets that are opened for customers doing call backs and troubleshooting and the like. We are a smaller call center so Tier 1 and 2 alike handle grunt work.
Policy: For reference our policy goes like this: The cell phone is under warranty for 120 days no questions asked. If physical damage is admitted or can be proven then the warranty is void. Otherwise we will replace the phone free of charge providing you ship the broken one to us.
If the phone is out of warranty we can offer an upgrade for 50% off the price of a new phone. (This particular policy is the sticking point, and the reason for this post)
To give a recent example, we had a customer who had her phone for just shy of six months and called in to open a trouble ticket. The exact not on the ticket was "The phone is broken." Upon calling this customer she admitted that the phone was dropped and had shattered. One of our newer tier one agents asked me how we should proceed here. My response was to say that since the phone was physically damaged warranty would not have covered it, and its nearly 60 days past the 120 day warranty so it would not have been covered anyway. This was a first time happening for this customer. My judgment call, life sucks, she needs to buy a new phone.
Being that he was near helping someone else out I asked the opinion of the guy that trained me for the Tier 2 position. His response was go ahead and give her the half off discount for a new phone.
This is really a sticking point for me, and often times I end up saying no where he would say yes. My biggest beef is we are basically rewarding the customer in the above example for breaking her phone.
The same applies to investigating potential billing errors where the customer says a call never connected. I had one today where the customer was repeatedly calling an 800 number, "To check his minutes." He claimed the call never connected. In looking over the account calls to the said 800 number were connecting at least 50% of the time. I also called it and the number was for the Ohio lottery association which had an automated recording picking up after 1 ring. In the end I denied the credit. He asked me for a supervisor (which in essence I am at this point) so I told him no he would not be speaking to anyone else, and explained my standing. IE 50% of the calls are going through, there are evidence of calls that were not charged when calling this number. There is also a recording that picks up right away so clearly there is no error and the times that you are being charged for calling this number must be correct. He cursed me out and hung up on me.
Make no mistake these are not the only examples and there are some extremes where the customer in question is a repeat breaker/loser/complainer etc. and someone still ends up offering the discount or crediting them more often than not.
The answer when I ask why is "Customer retention." To which I just balk further and ask do we really want to be retaining some of these repeat offenders?
Anyway, my whole reason for posting/ranting is I'm curious as to what the opinions of others are on this situation. Am I just jaded or is there no point where its going to far to try and retain a customer?
I work in Technical Support (read returns) as a tier 2 (top tier for us) and answer support tickets that are opened for customers doing call backs and troubleshooting and the like. We are a smaller call center so Tier 1 and 2 alike handle grunt work.
Policy: For reference our policy goes like this: The cell phone is under warranty for 120 days no questions asked. If physical damage is admitted or can be proven then the warranty is void. Otherwise we will replace the phone free of charge providing you ship the broken one to us.
If the phone is out of warranty we can offer an upgrade for 50% off the price of a new phone. (This particular policy is the sticking point, and the reason for this post)
To give a recent example, we had a customer who had her phone for just shy of six months and called in to open a trouble ticket. The exact not on the ticket was "The phone is broken." Upon calling this customer she admitted that the phone was dropped and had shattered. One of our newer tier one agents asked me how we should proceed here. My response was to say that since the phone was physically damaged warranty would not have covered it, and its nearly 60 days past the 120 day warranty so it would not have been covered anyway. This was a first time happening for this customer. My judgment call, life sucks, she needs to buy a new phone.
Being that he was near helping someone else out I asked the opinion of the guy that trained me for the Tier 2 position. His response was go ahead and give her the half off discount for a new phone.
This is really a sticking point for me, and often times I end up saying no where he would say yes. My biggest beef is we are basically rewarding the customer in the above example for breaking her phone.
The same applies to investigating potential billing errors where the customer says a call never connected. I had one today where the customer was repeatedly calling an 800 number, "To check his minutes." He claimed the call never connected. In looking over the account calls to the said 800 number were connecting at least 50% of the time. I also called it and the number was for the Ohio lottery association which had an automated recording picking up after 1 ring. In the end I denied the credit. He asked me for a supervisor (which in essence I am at this point) so I told him no he would not be speaking to anyone else, and explained my standing. IE 50% of the calls are going through, there are evidence of calls that were not charged when calling this number. There is also a recording that picks up right away so clearly there is no error and the times that you are being charged for calling this number must be correct. He cursed me out and hung up on me.
Make no mistake these are not the only examples and there are some extremes where the customer in question is a repeat breaker/loser/complainer etc. and someone still ends up offering the discount or crediting them more often than not.
The answer when I ask why is "Customer retention." To which I just balk further and ask do we really want to be retaining some of these repeat offenders?
Anyway, my whole reason for posting/ranting is I'm curious as to what the opinions of others are on this situation. Am I just jaded or is there no point where its going to far to try and retain a customer?
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