At what point do you hang up?

[Gravekeeper]

One good part about my job is we have a lot of freedom in this regard. We can terminate a call if one of two things occurs:

1) Caller is abusive ( Its fine if they curse once or twice about the situation, but the second they direct it at us all bets are off )

2) Caller isn't listening because they're too busy ranting or throwing a shit fit. If they don't respond to our polite requests to stop and/or keep yelling over us, they get axed.

Well, ok, and for my shift specifically, there's a third:

3) Caller is obviously out of their god damn mind or otherwise off their gourd. -.-

[MoonCat]

I don't take abusive language from customers. Rule One: When the swearing starts, I say goodbye and end the call. Rule Two: If they threaten me, I hang up, period.

We do have a couple of idiots who occasionally call in and start screaming about how unhappy they are with us. We will transfer them to a manager, but he's not there, it's back to Rule One.

[TheSHAD0W]

I wonder if being forced to endure verbal abuse from a caller could be considered creating a hostile work environment.

[Stryker One]

Sorry, you're not on the list.

You may be able to put "Nasty customer, please be warned, or "Very impatient and abusive. Please xfer to supe immediately when calling in", or things like that. If you don't get the caller id right away, simply wait until they stop and ask if you're there. Check with management and ask if you can reply with something along the lines that you're not there to take abuse and that you can't help them if they're yelling, cursing and are generally abusive towards your staff. Then see if you can get their phone number, account number, name, etc. And like the steps above, write it down for future use so you can keep track of abusive customers and you'll be better prepared if they call in again. Pass the info on to other reps as well so that they're not caught off guard.

I could see the list thing get interesting. You could have a Bat-Shit-Crazy list, a damn-she-sounds-hot list, a holy-crap-are-you-ever-stoned list, etc.

[EricKei]

Yes, this meant I couldn't hang up on the man who said he wanted to [expletive] me.

This is one end of the scale -- the darker one x.x Naturally, you can't hang up on people but these are probably the firms most likely to ride their workers about shorter call times...x.x

On the other end would be pretty much everywhere I've worked phones at all, even the office from hell. If we got cursed at, we were authorized to hang up immediately, as long as we did NOT respond at all (after all, they can't accuse us of saying something to inflame them if we just shut up and hang up immediately, now can they?)

I wonder if being forced to endure verbal abuse from a caller could be considered creating a hostile work environment.

If you can prove it, I would think so. But IANAL.

[Andara Bledin]

Also, it's worth noting that most places don't actually have laws regarding hostile work environments, sadly enough.

Thankfully, when I was working phones at my current place of employ, I could do pretty much anything I wanted on the phones as long as I didn't behave unprofessionally to a current or potential customer or vendor. Unless they did something to deserve it. Thankfully, there were very few calls where I any reason to hang up on anybody, and one of those was a scummy collection agent harassing me for an already-paid debt, and he didn't like it when I told him that I'd file charges if I ever heard from him or his company again. Funnily enough, I never did hear from him or his company ever again.

^-.-^

[Mr Hero]

3) Caller is obviously out of their god damn mind or otherwise off their gourd. -.-

Considering the calls you do take, these types of callers have really got to be pretty fucking crazy. But now that I think about it, haven't you hung up on Uncle Vick on numerous occasions?

[Jay 2K Winger]

I'm fortunate at my job that my callers aren't the type to get verbally abusive. At least not at me. Oh, I've heard them verbally abusing the various applications that The Client uses-- especially when they change from one to a another-- but it rarely comes down to them abusing me, personally.

Near as I've heard, we've only had one really bad one, and he was a ...special case.

I hear my coworker Fellow Whovian getting into some heated discussions with her callers now and then, but it's usually just her trying to hammer her point (often that we don't have the access to do what they want) past the armor of their self-importance. She's pretty good at it.

[Moirae]

Honestly, I work a job where I can just pretend I lost the call. Sometimes the calls really do go poof.

Generally, it depends on the manager. The DORR I loath actually hung up on a guest after she was swearing at the agents and then started swearing at him. If I remember right his exact words were "Talking to my agents that way is not acceptable. If you don't calm down, I will terminate the call". Thats why I loved him so much when I first started the job. Of course, now he's the whole problem but thats another story.

From what I've seen, the lower management in this company generally doesn't put up with being talked to like that. The highest management caves like a house of cards and gives them almost anything they want. If he decides he doesn't want to give them something, he just won't answer the phone, lets it roll to voicemail, and then never calls them back.

In previous jobs, I once saw a manager tell a guest that they were no longer welcome in our hotel and to please leave. I saw one forcibly removed by police once.

Me? I have no idea how I put up with any of it. Truthfully though, I find it much easier to deal with guests when they're trouble makers than with co-irkers. The irkers you still have to deal with every day. The guests normally come and go and you're done.

[Argabarga]

First instance of swearing/slurs gets a warning, second usage and I terminate the call.

If/when they call back, the first words outta my mouth are "Are you ready to talk to me without swearing?" Third usage, and I terminate and ignore the number when it calls back

So far, only one person has gone that far, the shock of being hung up on seems to put a lot of people back on the right track quick.

[emax4]

I wonder if being forced to endure verbal abuse from a caller could be considered creating a hostile work environment.

Speaking from experience, sometimes its the general management of the company that puts down confusing and stupid rules that they expect customers to follow and not break, and when that doesn't happen the customers curse at the CSRs. So in effect, the company itself is creating the hostile work environment.

I believe that I read it on these wonderful forums somewhere (and I really do mean that), that it's better when the word "lawyers" is involved. When they threaten you with their lawyers, you can simply and quickly reply, "Because you've stated that you're getting your lawyers involved in this I am no longer (obligated/permitted) to speak to you and any further correspondence will take place between your lawyer and our team of lawyers.."

If I hadn't read that here I don't know how long those calls would have gone on for...

[tilly101]

After reading so many posts regarding profanity, cussing, gay-bashing/name calling, it occurs to me a question. At what point do you just plain hang up?

I just read the posting regarding someone calling a cell phone service and wanting to cancel an account that was not theirs. The caller used every profanity in the book. Called the service person gay, etc. I personally would not have tolerated that for one second. The second a profanity came out of a person's mouth, I would thank them for calling and terminated the call.

Are we allowed to do that? I work in a nice public library, never had anything like that happen to me here. I would not stand for one word of profanity.

Where I work, it's tricky [call centre, health insurance - see my posts! ]
We get told that we do not have to tolerate abuse. No 'official' procedure with it, liek give two warnigns then terminate, just 'you don't have to take abuse'.
Ok, that's good.
But some of the folks here, where they have actually terminated calls when the customer has been pretty bad, the customers have called back to complain that the rep ended the call, and then the complaint goes through and is marked against them

So kinda contradictory really

I personally don't think anyone should have to put up with abuse on the job. I don't think I've ever done it where Ive give warnings and then say ok I am now terminating the call etc. I've had alot of calls where I've been rattled though. And I've had calls where I've ended it quickly with the whole 'ok the convo is not moving forward, if there is nothgn else I can help you with then thank you for calling ' *CLICK* kinda thing
Mostly these days I try and tackle those kinda abusive rude nutjobs by being passive-agressive lol toe-ing that find line between doing what is acceptable n the job so as not to get myself in any trouble, all the while kinda giving it back to them a bit and making them realise they are being di*kheads, and making them feel stupid
Eases the pain a bit LOL

[lobo94]

At my job, we are not allowed to hang up on a customer. Doing so is grounds for termination.

Though I have been known to do so if the customer goes silent, or doesnt hang up all the way, and only after I make three attempts to see if someone is there, then I will ask for the customer to call back if needed and then release the call. But that's not the same thing as just hanging up.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

We can terminate a call if there is no answer on the line after a certain amount of time. If it's at the start/end of a call or in the course of just talking, I usually say "hello?" or "is there anyone on the line?" several times, and then after about a minute I say "operator releasing due to non-response" and hang up. If a caller asks me to hold, I can hold up to about 5 minutes before I can release the call - after that they're just keeping me needlessly from taking other calls or doing other work.

[PepperElf]

I haven't had that yet exactly... I'd probably just give them to a manager though


let them be yelled at instead