I'm now working in a call center for a major Canadian wireless provider (who also hawks cable, internet, and home phone packages, but I'm only trained in the wireless side), and there are days when I can fully grasp just how entitled people are.
For example...
Last week seemed to be filled with calls from people with high cell bills, claiming to be single mothers and demanding that I give them a break on their bill. Why? Because as single mothers they just can't afford how high their bills are!
I will admit that I told one of these callers that as a single parent myself (which I have been for most of my kids life, and he's 26 now) that I would never have signed up for something quite so expensive if I knew that I would be struggling to pay for it, and that high-end cellphones with massive data plans were never a necessity in my life. This after seeing that this particular caller had one of our $150+ shared plans with three extra lines that she just had to have so that she could keep track of her kids. When she asked me if my kid had a cellphone I admitted that my kid does but they've got my old cellphone and it's pay-as-you-go, that if the kid wanted something better that they could figure out how to pay for it. I didn't tell them how old my kid is, but that's besides the point...even at 15 yo my kid got my hand-me-down phone with a $10 card put on it each month. And it was a flip phone, no less!
And let's not forget the people who figure that by cancelling their account that they will get out of paying their bills. Especially if they have massive data overage or long distance charges that we can very clearly see are valid charges. Today alone I had one guy lose his shit when I told him that he could certainly go ahead and cancel his account but that he would be on the hook for the $1000+ bill and the remaining subsidy on each phone on their account, and that if he didn't pay then he would get to deal with collections and the massive hit his credit score would take. That got me called every name in the book before I cut him off and transferred him to retention.
I do get the odd really nice caller who is just grateful that I can decipher their bill for them, especially after they've made multiple changes to their price plan and add-ons during their billing cycle. But so many callers expect us to kiss their asses and give them credits they don't reserve, figuring that threatening to cancel their accounts will make us do their bidding. Or that asking for a manager will somehow get their every whim catered to, but what they don't expect is to be told that the manager can't wave a magical wand that makes all the changes the customer wants either.
It's one thing when a customer requests something reasonable or has a valid reason for wanting a credit. But for a customer to demand a credit just because they've been a 'loyal' customer for however many years, is just so much bullshit. Sure, we may have a loyalty offer we can make, but we can't pull them out of our butts just because a customer demands it, and, yes, I've actually told a customer this.
And when a customer calls us to demand the same deal that a buddy of their's got...oh my fucking god. No matter how you try to explain to them that loyalty offers are tailored to each customer, or that as a new client there aren't any offers available for them, or how the different plans work, they just won't listen. Sure, your buddy may have a plan that costs them $60/month, but they also only have 500mb of data, and 1000 anytime minutes, and unlimited Canada-wide texting...but you've got 6GB of data, and unlimited Canada-wide calling and texting so there's no way you're going to get all that for only $60/month.
I will agree that our wireless plans really suck, unless you can get in with a decent promo offer, but such is the way for most Canadian wireless providers these days. I'll stick with my own pay-as-you-go plan...I've got all the data, minutes, and texts that I need and it's significantly less than even our lowest post-paid plan.
For example...
Last week seemed to be filled with calls from people with high cell bills, claiming to be single mothers and demanding that I give them a break on their bill. Why? Because as single mothers they just can't afford how high their bills are!
I will admit that I told one of these callers that as a single parent myself (which I have been for most of my kids life, and he's 26 now) that I would never have signed up for something quite so expensive if I knew that I would be struggling to pay for it, and that high-end cellphones with massive data plans were never a necessity in my life. This after seeing that this particular caller had one of our $150+ shared plans with three extra lines that she just had to have so that she could keep track of her kids. When she asked me if my kid had a cellphone I admitted that my kid does but they've got my old cellphone and it's pay-as-you-go, that if the kid wanted something better that they could figure out how to pay for it. I didn't tell them how old my kid is, but that's besides the point...even at 15 yo my kid got my hand-me-down phone with a $10 card put on it each month. And it was a flip phone, no less!
And let's not forget the people who figure that by cancelling their account that they will get out of paying their bills. Especially if they have massive data overage or long distance charges that we can very clearly see are valid charges. Today alone I had one guy lose his shit when I told him that he could certainly go ahead and cancel his account but that he would be on the hook for the $1000+ bill and the remaining subsidy on each phone on their account, and that if he didn't pay then he would get to deal with collections and the massive hit his credit score would take. That got me called every name in the book before I cut him off and transferred him to retention.
I do get the odd really nice caller who is just grateful that I can decipher their bill for them, especially after they've made multiple changes to their price plan and add-ons during their billing cycle. But so many callers expect us to kiss their asses and give them credits they don't reserve, figuring that threatening to cancel their accounts will make us do their bidding. Or that asking for a manager will somehow get their every whim catered to, but what they don't expect is to be told that the manager can't wave a magical wand that makes all the changes the customer wants either.
It's one thing when a customer requests something reasonable or has a valid reason for wanting a credit. But for a customer to demand a credit just because they've been a 'loyal' customer for however many years, is just so much bullshit. Sure, we may have a loyalty offer we can make, but we can't pull them out of our butts just because a customer demands it, and, yes, I've actually told a customer this.
And when a customer calls us to demand the same deal that a buddy of their's got...oh my fucking god. No matter how you try to explain to them that loyalty offers are tailored to each customer, or that as a new client there aren't any offers available for them, or how the different plans work, they just won't listen. Sure, your buddy may have a plan that costs them $60/month, but they also only have 500mb of data, and 1000 anytime minutes, and unlimited Canada-wide texting...but you've got 6GB of data, and unlimited Canada-wide calling and texting so there's no way you're going to get all that for only $60/month.
I will agree that our wireless plans really suck, unless you can get in with a decent promo offer, but such is the way for most Canadian wireless providers these days. I'll stick with my own pay-as-you-go plan...I've got all the data, minutes, and texts that I need and it's significantly less than even our lowest post-paid plan.
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