Wanted to deal with the local office, not the call center

[lobo94]

Yesterday, I had a guy call in, wanting to see about moving from TX to KS. When I asked for his zip codes to generate the quote, he asked for the local office # so he could deal directly with them. I advised him that we handled all the calls for our franchised locations, especially for interstate moves, and that I didn't have a local # that I could give out.

Guy expressed the thought that he wanted to deal with people face to face, not through a call center, and that if he was spending money with us, we should accomodate him. Said he wasn't trying to tell us how to run our business/

Really? That's just what you've been doing the past few minutes. Didn't say that, but I wanted to.

[flutes_and_fabric]

I was able to get a hold of the local # for a big telephone company (after I had been told repeatedly that the local office didn't even have phones which I thought was hilarious considering the product they sell). Sometimes I can see wanting to deal with the local office, but it was wrong for him to ask for it before you even tried to help him. (Remember the example above is from a different company which operates differently).

[Kristev]

It's all part of the foolish concept of 'Local is better.' It's not . . . at least not where I am.

[freeatlast]

We get that all the time - they call accounting because they think we are at the specific franchises. When we give them the corp number to contact, they say that they want to deal directly with the local franchise. It's like beating your head against a brick wall to try to convince them that we can't give quotes or do anything with interfranchise accounts. Especially if they have had long time local accounts and have built relationships with the people in our office.

[Evil Queen]

Every time I call a certain hotel in Texas, they forward me to the call center. EVERY TIME.

"Yes, I'd like to know what your tax rate is?"
"Sure." *forwarding click*

"Do you have Microwaves and mini fridges in your rooms?"
*forwarding click*

"What's your name? I didn't catch it."
*forwarding click*

God, that ONE GUY is a little dick! I just want a simple question answered that can easily be done at Hotel level without the expense of forwarding ALL calls to reservations!

[Magpie]

I like having someone local if it's a special case which applies to a lot of people in my area, but not often outside of it. When you call the national office you really would get the impression that they just didn't get "it's been four months, of course I'm cancelling". A local office, presumably, would have been more used to students.