You'll Get Whiplash Like That

[Jay 2K Winger]

Just saw this happen with a couple of my CWs.

So my CW "Jimmy" (not his name) is helping train a new ITSD tech. At present this means that Newbie is on the phone, talking with the user and entering all the data, while Jimmy stands by and listens in on the handset.

A Sucktomer calls in, and is being quite nasty with Newbie, just speaking harshly and not being very happy with what help Newbie can give-- which is the same level of assistance that anyone else can give him, since Newbie is using Jimmy's access to help the user.

Finally, Jimmy speaks up on the handset, identifying himself as a supervisor-- which is sorta true-- and INSTANTLY the Sucktomer becomes all sweetness and light in speaking with him.

Careful making turnarounds that quick, Sucktomer, you'll get whiplash like that.

[MoonCat]

Typical jerk. He could probably tell the guy was new and deliberately gave him a hard time.

[heyheadmaster]

Unfortunately a rather too common occurence in call centres.

Although it's nice when they get called on it by whoever takes over the call.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Unfortunately a rather too common occurence in call centres.

Although it's nice when they get called on it by whoever takes over the call.

Given the nature of The Client, it's actually not that common. Or at least it hasn't been from my (admittedly one year's) experience.

I had one call of my own today, in which frustrations mounted and tones got heated. Caller wanted to know why a ticket had been closed when the work wasn't finished. I apologized that the ticket had been mistakenly closed-- and then Caller says that work was still being done on the ticket by <Engineering Team>. But when I looked at the ticket, the last entry on it was the closing notice.

We went around in circles-- her wanting to know why it had been closed when it wasn't done, and who had closed it. Both questions I can't answer. The first one I can't answer because I don't have that information available, the second one because I CAN'T ANSWER those questions. We're not allowed to give names out over the phone like that-- not even over our secure lines.

Finally my manager overheard my tones and could tell I was getting frustrated, so she came in on the call. While this didn't deflate the customer completely, we were able to get more information out of her. Like the fact that there had indeed been another ticket opened regarding the issue-- a network had gone down, tripping some alarm and prompting a Tier 2 Ticket to be created-- and this one was still open and being worked on. This information was passed to Caller, who seemed mollified and finally let me go.