Can someone tell me why...

[myswtghst]

In addition to all my other fun, call center-y duties, I do backup for another group and take their overflow calls. I can do the most minimal trouble-shooting (did you restart?) and take down their information for a call back, then pass it along. And I'm noticing an annoying trend.

Why is it that if I'm honest, and tell them they might not get a call back til tomorrow because their issue is not an emergency, they get angry? They're the same people who got mad that I "lied" to them by saying someone would call them back "right away." Grr.

At this point, I've been telling people that tech support "will give you a call back just as soon as they can," and leaving all sense of actual time out of it.

[IHateStupidCustomers]

I used to get stuff like that when I worked for a catalogue call center. We had a few shipping options, and the cheapest was (i don't remember exactly) something like 5-7 days. We would usually give the customer the last date, and tell them that it may arrive sooner. They would bitch that they wanted it guarenteed sooner, but they didn't want to pay the rush shipping charges. On and on and on....finally I got in the habit of saying, "Ma'am, I will tell you whatever you want to hear, but the truth is, 5-7 business days."