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Ahhh, classics from the front lines a couple of years ago that I had to share:
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Sweet Gramma Dixie / Psycho Beast From Hell
This older lady, we can call her Dixie to conceal the real name of the guilty, would regularly write my team with troubles she was having on our company's update site...usually about once a month or so. Her first response would always be nice, civil, and very helpful, but if someone hadnt responded fast enough (to her POV), that nice, sweet reply would be followed by 2-3 pages of scathing, screaming bile, full of epithets and insults about how we were horrible people putting her in this position deliberately, trying to ruin her life.
To rectify this situation, I or someone else on my team would just call her, in the hopes of calming her down and working out the problem right there on the phone. On the phone? Sweetest old lady you could ever speak to, the kind you'd love to have as a gramma. No hint at all of the psychotic beast that just got through questioning your heritage and calling you a minion of Satan.
Of course, once you got off the phone, if something came up again, this cycle would repeat over and over and over. Once the 'b*tch' switch was flipped, you simply could NOT turn it off - even emailing her instructions on how to fix the problem she had would be ignored. You HAD to call her and walk her through it.
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Conspiracy!
I'm sure you've heard a story or two about how Microsoft is behind a big plot to (insert nefarious end here). This guy took the cake. He'd call one of my CSRs and begin raving about how the computer he had ordered from Dell was intercepted in Miami by illegal Cubans who replaced the BIOS chip on his motherboard, and forced it to send everything he did to their 'evil overlords', and wanted US to do something about it.
Of course, the moment you opened your mouth to try and suggest something (Like, oh, why don't you call Dell if you think your shipment was tampered with...we dont make hardware), he went on. And on. And got progressively stranger the longer he went on. One of the pinnacles of his calls was the point where he claimed to have caused the crash that killed Dale Earnhardt (sp?) with his cable remote control.
No matter what his 'issue du jour' was, his calls invariably all ended the same: With the CSR finally hanging up on him, not able to get a word in edgewise.
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I like networking, how about you?
And my last one for the day, a very pleasant young man, we can call him Johnathan, apparently trying to better himself with a study of computer networking. Every Friday evening, he would call one of my CSRs, and the moment he was greeted, would begin reading out of a (I suspect) networking exam study guide, pausing after a couple of sentences to ask one of the study questions to my CSR. This usually elicited a response that explained the CSR was not a technical engineer, and did he have an issue we could assist him with today?
Undeterred, the questions would always be ignored, and he would go on to read another couple of sentences and ask another question. When he got the same response, he would insist and sound disappointed that the CSR did not want to play 'study group' with him. These calls, too, usually ended up with Johnathan getting hung up on. He would typically call back 4 or 5 times a night before giving up.
The funny part would always be if he called late enough for us to only have 2-3 people available. He'd keep getting the same person, and sounded genuinely disappointed 'Awww, not you again. You wont talk to me!'...and then launch into his reading again.
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So if you happen to hear stories about how Microsoft employees sound crazy, well, there you go. Its from dealing with wierdness like this.
***********************
Sweet Gramma Dixie / Psycho Beast From Hell
This older lady, we can call her Dixie to conceal the real name of the guilty, would regularly write my team with troubles she was having on our company's update site...usually about once a month or so. Her first response would always be nice, civil, and very helpful, but if someone hadnt responded fast enough (to her POV), that nice, sweet reply would be followed by 2-3 pages of scathing, screaming bile, full of epithets and insults about how we were horrible people putting her in this position deliberately, trying to ruin her life.
To rectify this situation, I or someone else on my team would just call her, in the hopes of calming her down and working out the problem right there on the phone. On the phone? Sweetest old lady you could ever speak to, the kind you'd love to have as a gramma. No hint at all of the psychotic beast that just got through questioning your heritage and calling you a minion of Satan.
Of course, once you got off the phone, if something came up again, this cycle would repeat over and over and over. Once the 'b*tch' switch was flipped, you simply could NOT turn it off - even emailing her instructions on how to fix the problem she had would be ignored. You HAD to call her and walk her through it.
***********************
Conspiracy!
I'm sure you've heard a story or two about how Microsoft is behind a big plot to (insert nefarious end here). This guy took the cake. He'd call one of my CSRs and begin raving about how the computer he had ordered from Dell was intercepted in Miami by illegal Cubans who replaced the BIOS chip on his motherboard, and forced it to send everything he did to their 'evil overlords', and wanted US to do something about it.
Of course, the moment you opened your mouth to try and suggest something (Like, oh, why don't you call Dell if you think your shipment was tampered with...we dont make hardware), he went on. And on. And got progressively stranger the longer he went on. One of the pinnacles of his calls was the point where he claimed to have caused the crash that killed Dale Earnhardt (sp?) with his cable remote control.
No matter what his 'issue du jour' was, his calls invariably all ended the same: With the CSR finally hanging up on him, not able to get a word in edgewise.
************************
I like networking, how about you?
And my last one for the day, a very pleasant young man, we can call him Johnathan, apparently trying to better himself with a study of computer networking. Every Friday evening, he would call one of my CSRs, and the moment he was greeted, would begin reading out of a (I suspect) networking exam study guide, pausing after a couple of sentences to ask one of the study questions to my CSR. This usually elicited a response that explained the CSR was not a technical engineer, and did he have an issue we could assist him with today?
Undeterred, the questions would always be ignored, and he would go on to read another couple of sentences and ask another question. When he got the same response, he would insist and sound disappointed that the CSR did not want to play 'study group' with him. These calls, too, usually ended up with Johnathan getting hung up on. He would typically call back 4 or 5 times a night before giving up.
The funny part would always be if he called late enough for us to only have 2-3 people available. He'd keep getting the same person, and sounded genuinely disappointed 'Awww, not you again. You wont talk to me!'...and then launch into his reading again.
************************
So if you happen to hear stories about how Microsoft employees sound crazy, well, there you go. Its from dealing with wierdness like this.
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