At what point do you hang up?

[tropicsgoddess]

I can hang up the call if there's nothing but dead air, but if the customer starts cursing at me and getting nasty, I have to transfer it to a supervisor. No hanging up on them, just warnings and then if they continue, on to the supervisor. In my previous jobs I was allowed to hang up on really nasty/abusive customers after two warnings.

[Sakka]

Fortunately at work, it's at our discretion. Depending on the kind of day, I may give someone swearing at me one warning then hang up, I may bounce the call to Tech Boss, or I may put it on speaker phone, put the phone down, and do other stuff until the person runs out of steam.
Picked up a few interesting phrases in russian that way.

Most of the time, once the person has run out of steam, I'll ask them if they want to behave like a civilized adult now, or do they still need a time out? Most of the time, that gets a laugh, an apology, then I get on with what I need to do.

Had a few times the person was swearing at me in english, then russian, then italian, then german, then a couple other eastern european languages. I got stunned silence when I interrupted the tirade to point out that they were just repeating themselves in each language. After several seconds of silence, customer sheepishly asked me if I actually understood what had been said. The silence when I identified the language, gave an english translation, then replied to each series of curses in the original language was great. (I stopped at german as I was guessing at the other languages)
After several seconds of silence, asked the customer if they had it out of their system yet, to be answered by a very quiet click as the phone was hung up.

For awhile, one of the competing stores was prank calling us and cursing out whoever answered. When I got that call, I was threatened with where I work being blown up, everyone shot, etc. Calmly told the person that I'd need to transfer them to a manager and to hold a minute. Owner had just put in a fancy phone system and I routed the call to the local police station. I got to listen in as idiot prank caller repeated the threats, added to them, identified himself, and all to someone who identified themselves as the local police detachment.
Less then two minutes later I heard over the police scanner for available units to go to competing business. Appearantly they were all caught by surprise by having their entire parking lot filled with police cars, lights and sirens going. To add to it, police station was within a stones throw.
They closed down shortly afterwards, I can't imagine why.

[Jay 2K Winger]

>Insert Awesome<

All of that, right there? Awesome.

But this:

For awhile, one of the competing stores was prank calling us and cursing out whoever answered. When I got that call, I was threatened with where I work being blown up, everyone shot, etc. Calmly told the person that I'd need to transfer them to a manager and to hold a minute. Owner had just put in a fancy phone system and I routed the call to the local police station. I got to listen in as idiot prank caller repeated the threats, added to them, identified himself, and all to someone who identified themselves as the local police detachment.
Less then two minutes later I heard over the police scanner for available units to go to competing business. Appearantly they were all caught by surprise by having their entire parking lot filled with police cars, lights and sirens going. To add to it, police station was within a stones throw.
They closed down shortly afterwards, I can't imagine why.

That right there, there has to be a term for it.

Oh, wait, I remember!

Epic Pwnage (eh-pick pohn-edge) - n. an event of pwnage that is of epic proportions.

[KellyHabersham]

Not sure what the official policy on this is in my library system, only that our branch manager has told us (this being during staff meetings) that staff working at our customer service desk does NOT have to put up with customers getting verbally abusive, and they're allowed to end the call.

[Rosakala]

Where I work now, the policy is warn them tree times politely their language will not be tolerated, and after those three times hang up on them. If I do hang up on somebody I note the time and date on my personal calender for reference. Our calls are kept for some time so if I get a complaint, I can tell my manager this is the date and time of call, you listen to it and see if I didn't follow procedure.

At my previous call center, the rule was they had to be vile at you specifically. If they were just being vile in general too bad. This is the job that spawned the complaint "Finance charges are the greatest sin akin to incest." at me. Still not sure how I didn't just laugh in his ear.

[Teskeria]

At my old call center job (Which I'm pretty sure was the same job the post you had in mind was), we weren't allowed to hang up on the customer under any circumstances except for dead air calls (When there's no one on the line, pocket dial etc).

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

Had a coworker a couple decades back who had the best answer to that. "aww, you're so sweet. No one has said that to me since I passed my 70th birthday.' Got a lot of Clicks with that. We stole it for obscene callers. Cause it reminds them a sexy voice may not have a young or sexy body attached.

[SavageChihuahua]

I feel bad for those who have to put up with it. When I worked for <insert popular electronics company> if the customer insulted the company we had to put up with it. If they insulted us directly, we gave them two warnings and then *click* Some CSRs didn't even give them that much.

[Dasota]

I can hang up at any point that they start to get rude. I do debt collections, so a lot of time I make 2 attempts to do the "let's start over, we got off on the wrong foot." Sometimes if they are being real jerks I play back with killing them with kindness/a smartass comment or two.

My favorite are the ones that insult my mom. She died back in January, and I tell them that and make them feel like an ass for abusing me