The rudest customer I've ever spoken to....

[eltf177]

Being that his file says ABUSIVE CUSTOMER, shouldn't any calls from this automatically go to a supervisor? I'd say only they would be qualified to deal with asshats like this.

[dalesys]

Quoth Mr Hero

Why a spoon, cousin? Why not an axe?

That would be Borden's Unglued™, would it not, Mr. Fudd?

[wagegoth]

Quoth CarcinogenCrunchies

In my area, there is only one company that provides electricity and natural gas. I would imagine that if they have the monopoly on important services, they are obligated to provide service no matter how nasty a customer gets. Is that correct?

It depends. Many of them won't shut off utilities if there is a child, a senior and/or someone who requires medical machinery to stay alive. Otherwise, they'll leave you freezing in the winter or hauling your water from the gas station.

[EricKei]

Quoth rose_metal_nz

Gah. If everyone knows the guy is an asshat, why don't they just cut off his account?!

Answered above. In many areas - mine included - utilities are "legalized monopolies". The bigger ones sell power to their own subsidiaries, who sell it to other subs, and it eventually gets repurchased by the original seller for a profit -- all while complaining that they don't have enough power available to meet demand BECAUSE they sold far more than any "excess"....etc etc. Standard industry practice.

Quoth eltf177

Being that his file says ABUSIVE CUSTOMER, shouldn't any calls from this automatically go to a supervisor?

In many call centers of any stripe, the front-liners are "gently encouraged" (read: ordered to on pain of potentially losing their jobs) to escalate as few calls to Supervisors as possible. In some, they aren't even allowed to hang up on SC's for any reason, up to and including overt criminal threats.

[tropicsgoddess]

Quoth EricKei

A
In many call centers of any stripe, the front-liners are "gently encouraged" (read: ordered to on pain of potentially losing their jobs) to escalate as few calls to Supervisors as possible. In some, they aren't even allowed to hang up on SC's for any reason, up to and including overt criminal threats.

Sadly that's the case. When I did tech support for satellite tv company, we couldn't hang up on abusive customers. We had to transfer them to an escalations rep who took sup calls. If the customer got nasty with the escalations rep, they would transfer the call to an actual supervisor and that's where the line ended.

[PepperElf]

now i know why he was harping about "can" vs "may".
he knew he was in deep shit and wanted to attack someone in revenge.

cos it's easier for him to beat you up over your little mistake
vs acknowledging his HUGE mistake in not paying his bills

[lvceline]

Quoth wagegoth

It depends. Many of them won't shut off utilities if there is a child, a senior and/or someone who requires medical machinery to stay alive. Otherwise, they'll leave you freezing in the winter or hauling your water from the gas station.

Believe me, customers use this a lot. I hear the word "monopoly" quite often. The fact of the matter is, utilies like power, gas, and water are not something you can choose no matter where you live. It's not the same as a phone company, or cable for example. We have a large power company here in my state, but also a lot of the cities do their own power, but you can't choose which one you go with, if you live in a city that provides their own power, you have to use them.

And I'm not sure about other states, but here, services can be shut off even with children or elderly in the home. We offer a lot of different payment arrangements, and work with customers quite a bit before we shut gas off. There are assistance agencies, and a medical emergency option to restore or prevent shut off in those cases, but really what's to stop someone from just saying they have kids in the home? If that were the case, we'd never be able to shut the service off. People could just not pay their bill and say they have kids and we wouldn't be able to discontinue services.

[lvceline]

Quoth tropicsgoddess

Sadly that's the case. When I did tech support for satellite tv company, we couldn't hang up on abusive customers. We had to transfer them to an escalations rep who took sup calls. If the customer got nasty with the escalations rep, they would transfer the call to an actual supervisor and that's where the line ended.

Fortunately we are able to hang up on customers if we give them fair warning. Usually if they swear a lot, or start calling names and won't stop we can warn them and then if the continue we can hang up. I've only ever had to do that with one customer and my supervisor was at my desk telling me to do it otherwise I probably wouldn't have. Swearing doesn't bother me but if they do start to get personal with attacks then I'm more inclined. We can transfer the customer to a supervisor if requested, but we aren't supposed to just offer that up front. I wish we did have something in please to transfer these kinds of calls but I feel that a lot of times the supervisors dont' want to deal with that even though I think it's a part of their job moreso than ours.

[excuse me??]

We all know you can't have any long discussions with abusive customers.
I always direct the conversation right back to the real issue... with as few words as possible.

I won't play their games.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Quoth Irving Patrick Freleigh

A scissors? Amateur.

*hands over machete

*takes machete back and slaps Irv on the butt with it*

Stay outta my bedroom!

*puts machete back behind nightstand beside bed*

Back OT, some people are assholes because they are (just like bullies.) They may not be gettin' any either. Mostly because I don't know of anyone who does charity work. . .