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The conference call from Hades

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  • The conference call from Hades

    I'm not kidding, though I wish I were. To start, I will try to keep this short, and I'm going to start with a little background. As I've probably detailed before, I work in a tech dispatch call center for a company you've heard of (but I'm not naming) that makes radios and 911 equipment. My job is to coordinate support for customers, meaning I take the initial call, verify that they've paid us for support, and determine whether they need tech support or an actual tech dispatched to the site. I also conference people on together when we have an issue that requires it.

    Last night, one of our customers down South, who just recently had their system installed, called in with an issue that the original caller stated may have been due to electrical storms in the area (i.e. a lightning strike). I called out to the shop and got techs on site at two of their locations, and they got to work. They realized that they couldn't fix it on their own, and called in (after hours, mind) for tech support. We paged out the on call, and she followed up. I'll note that when they requested tech support, they refused to have the TSO call them back, but wanted to hold on the line. Which they did, which tied up one of our agents for a good 20 minutes. At this point, E called in to handle the call, and she was conferenced on with the techs, who immediately began fussing and hollering to high heaven, for no good reason.

    Fast forward, five hours later, E is still on the phone working on the issue, and has brought in K, her manager, to help. The techs on site from the shop are being downright obnoxious--yelling, screaming, occasionally leaving site for 30-60 min at a time, and refusing to do what the TSO's are telling them they need to do. They're also not giving straight answers--answering the same question differently each time it is asked, lying to our TSO's and don't have any of the test equipment they should have had. We contacted our leader on call (basically the after hours supervisor) who gave us permission to contact who ever we needed to resolve the issue.

    I wind up with E on the phone, we talk to the LoC, who gives the above permissions. At this point, I conference E on with H, the customer/shop CSM (customer support manager) who I normally get along with famously. I get them on with K again, and the three begin discussing. H starts out immediately defensive and accusatory, which kind of shocked me, since he's normally really calm and level-headed. Super. He has me contact about 10 different people, including *ourcompany* techs in the area and engineers for back up, until I finally get someone on the phone, after waking him up. At this point, I have E, K, H and now R on the line with me, and another call center rep listening in, so we can monitor what goes down. H starts making stupid demands (he wants parts shipped out TONIGHT! which can't be done, as there are no flights out to the bufu town they're in until the morning) and talking over people, and we spend way too long getting nowhere. H keeps demanding to know why TSO can't fix the problem, but doesn't want to listen to anyone's suggestions or hear about the fact that the MSS is being difficult.

    After about an hour, and a lot of organizing and call backs on my point (people's phones kept dying, and I'd have to put the conference call on hold and call them back to add them back in) I found out that our phones will only let us conference something like 6 lines on together, and unintentionally hung up on everyone while trying to conference another TSO, M, onto the line. I get E, K, R and M on the line together, and decide to leave H out, and have someone call him back with the update. At this point, my shift is over, but I don't want to leave everyone hanging, so I stay on the line. I briefly conference on N, another engineer, who can't help. Finally, after conferencing on B from the shop, they decide to set up a conference bridge, not a moment too soon, as I was ready to give up.

    I suppose in this case the customer wasn't being sucky, but still, the shop and the CSM were, and the CSM really ticked me off, as he's supposed to be an unbiased helper--he's supposed to listen to our side too, and we can't help someone if they don't really want to be helped and won't listen to our suggestions.
    "In the end I was the mean girl/or somebody's in between girl"~Neko Case

    “You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about.” ~William Stafford
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