Smaller center people - Dontcha love when this happens?

[Peppergirl]

Minor background:

I work the weekend shift of a fairly large emergency travel call center. We also support about 30 online-websites, but the online help desk is closed on weekends, which happens to be when most people are booking online. Makes sense, right?

Anyway - we're told to tell people that if we help them we have to charge them a large service fee, as opposed to the smaller fee if booking online. This tends to go over about as well as you'd think, especially if the website isn't working or has some kind of glitch that's causing issues. We don't have the authority to waive the fee, even if we verify that the website isn't working. I agree it's total bullshit, but hey, don't shoot the messenger, right?

Anyway - this guy calls and says that he's trying to imput his childs date of birth on our website, and that the child will be a 'lap child' which is an industry term for children under the age of 2. If they don't occupy a seat, you don't have to pay for them.

So I automatically figure the kid is over 2, or that he's putting the date in wrong.

Nope - he recites a date that would make the child 7 months old. He's also imputting the date in the correct format to my knowledge.

I inform him that it appears that he's doing it correctly, but that the online help desk is closed. I suggested that he go ahead and finish the booking without the child's information, and call back on Monday morning and have the online help desk figure out what the issue is with the lapchild's birthdate.

Guy isn't sucky at all...thanks me, and hangs up.

Guy in cubicle next to me gets the next call. I hear him saying "Oh...what's the child's birthdate?". Automatically I knew it was my guy. He tells him the same thing I said, and hangs up.

The funny part is the guy acted like he had never called before. I love it when people think they are calling these HUGE res centers and tries to get a different response. The only thing that made this guy half-way decent is that he wasn't yelling and screaming. He just simply didn't like my answer or didn't believe me.

[cj1991]

The company I work for does major business nationwide and we are the world leader in our field. Consequently, people think we have some huge office. Wrong.

There are 6 of us that you stand a chance of getting if you call - just 6, and we sit fairly close together. You wouldn't believe how many people call in for pricing (our product can get expensive) and then call back and get someone else, pretend they've never called, and try for a better price. Some will pitch a fit if you're even just $5 more.

I actually had a woman call me and ask for a price quote (like she'd never called before). When I gave her the shipping cost, she flipped, telling me that she'd called last week and the cost was $15 less (on something that costs thousands of dollars). I explain the item must ship common carrier, and the fuel rates are constantly fluxing. Just because it was "x" amount of dollars last week, doesn't mean it will be this week, and if she didn't give us a firm commitment on the item, then we wouldn't have printed the freight quote off the carrier's website (which is firm for 30 days provided you reference the quote number), so I can't honor last week's price.

Our customers that would need to work through a sales rep (depending on what they're buying and if there is a rep in their area) will often call the rep and get a quote, then call us and try to get a rate. If we try to refer them to the rep, we will often hear that they've tried to reach the rep, and can't. I may believe it occasionally, but I have some really good reps that I know for sure wouldn't ignore a customer (their average sale is around $8000).

One guy once told me that he tried reaching a rep (one of my really good ones) and he called 6 or 7 times, with no reply. Toying, I said "Gee, that really upsets me. They are consistantly one of our top sales reps, but that's no excuse. I'm going to go to the National Sales Manager as soon as I hang up, and he'll take care of it, I promise you." The person then "umm'd" for a minute or two, then said "Well, maybe it was only 2 times, and they did call and leave a message on the answering machine after the 2nd call". They're just trying to get a better price. I understand many of our customers are on a budget, but our sales reps usually have a hard-wire on things going on in the area (sponsorship opportunities, etc), so they are better off going to the rep. We're good, but we can't be in every state hanging out with people in the industry trying to get the inside scoop - no one can. That's why you need a good outside sales staff.

People seem to labor under the idea that our sales people will make a huge mark-up, but that's not true. You just can't make some people understand that.

But yeah, it's funny when people labor undrer the idea that you work in some gargantuan cube farm, and they can hop around unnoticed until they get the answer they want. I had a guy once that was asking for technical info, but couldn't give me the info I needed to make those calculations. Every question I asked him, he answered "I don't know, just give me what I need". I would tell him that I couldn't because he couldn't answer my questions. Finally, I told him I could assume, but I'm not comfortable doing that because someone might get hurt or something if I'm wrong. He got mad and muttered something about getting the info and hung up. About 2 minutes later, he called back and got me.....again. He acts like he's never called, and I tell him the same thing I did previously, but phrased slightly different. He finally relents, and gives me enough info that I can make an educated guess, then I upped it to be sure. He thanked me and proceeded to tell me that I was much better than the other person he spoke to, and that person had no business working with this type of thing. I absolutely loved telling him that the other person was ME, and that I was uncomfortable assuming things due to injury and liability (the magic words), and he stumbled with his words, then said "Thanks" and hung up. Funny!

[Dips]

I can relate to both of these stories. The first one happens all the time. I also answer emails, pick up faxes, and check the snail mail. It's really amusing when an SC tries all of the above.

In relation to the second one, we have overseas resellers and it's hilarious when an SC thinks they're going to get a better price by buying from us directly. Usually a local reseller is going to be able to get stuff through customs much more cheaply than an individual customer, not to mention that a local reseller usually has multiple units shipped at time which decreases shipping costs.

And yet they try...

The best attempts have to do with our UK distributor, Harry, because he is a close friend to all of us as well as an awesome reseller. I'll get an email looking for a quote and I'll quote them in USD, mention the shipping/customs issue and refer them to Harry with a glowing recommendation.

Then, just to be "helpful" I'll publically cc that email to Harry.

9 times out of 10 Harry will write back to me to tell them he's already been in touch with the customer and include a few choice words describing his opinion of the customer's intelligence.

I enjoy it.

[Alpha Strike]

I've also experienced what I like to call "Cubicle Farming." People probably believe our company (or at least my department, which receives the bulk of the calls) to be much bigger then it is. Consequently folks will frequently hop from Rep to Rep with their sob story or tales of Woe, hoping that a naive, sympathetic or lazy Rep will give them a "better deal."

The ironic part is that we don't sell things per se; we mail the results of standardized tests out and even if a customer "convinces" one of us that we need to help them out, we typically can't. Mail takes X number of days to go from Point A to Point B - all the whining or pleading doesn't change the laws of physics or the US Postal Service.