Working customer service tech support in a call center, most calls are the garden variety, "I forgot my account password/security questions", or "It won't turn on" or "I forgot my passcode to my device and locked myself out", etc.
Then there's the "special" ones, the ones that I mentally term the idiot know-it-alls. Most of you probably know the type: "I know everything; I know it better than you do," but reality is that they have so much of no clue that it must be in the negatives.
That was my idiot customer of the day yesterday, though I think Mr. Know-It-All stands a very good chance of winning idiot customer of the week award for me.
Goes like this: Customer is asking for troubleshooting assistance for a product released only the day before. As tech support, I would get a slightly advanced peak before release so that I can have a clue how to support it on release date, though not usually by a lot, but I do get training in advance.
I ask the customer if he has a specific setting turned on since that setting is required to use the feature he's calling about.
Customer "informs" me that the setting has nothing to do with it.
I gently explain to him that the feature is designed to work only if this setting is turned on.
"That's not true," says customer.
"Sir," I say, "that is how I was trained."
"Well then, your training was wrong," replies customer.
....Wait... what? I was dumbfounded. I could have showed him the article from our support database that would tell him the same thing if he would have given me the time of day, but that wasn't going to happen. It took everything I had at that moment not to come back with a snarky, "Oh really? Where did you get your training?"
I still couldn't help myself entirely and managed to tone it down to, "Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize you knew more than I did."
"I do," replied the customer. "Now is there someone there who knows more than you do?"
I so wanted to come back with, "Well, you do apparently." Instead, I told him to wait a moment while I got a senior advisor. Technically if we have the customer on hold for 5 minutes and haven't gotten someone on the other line yet, we're supposed to check in with the customer, but with this idiot know-it-all, he had been such a jerk that I decided I was just not going to deal with him any more than I had to and just let him sit on hold.
When I finally got the senior advisor on the line and explained the situation to him, then brought the customer on the line, the customer still had the nerve to additionally say to me that I should stay on the line to learn something, never mind that the senior advisor is also going to tell him that having that setting turned on is required for the feature he's trying to use. Seriously, who in their right minds calls in to tech support for assistance with a newly released product/feature and then proceeds to tell tech support that they don't have a clue and that their training is wrong?
Then there was another stupid idiot, neighbor, after I got home... but that's another story for a different area.
Then there's the "special" ones, the ones that I mentally term the idiot know-it-alls. Most of you probably know the type: "I know everything; I know it better than you do," but reality is that they have so much of no clue that it must be in the negatives.
That was my idiot customer of the day yesterday, though I think Mr. Know-It-All stands a very good chance of winning idiot customer of the week award for me.
Goes like this: Customer is asking for troubleshooting assistance for a product released only the day before. As tech support, I would get a slightly advanced peak before release so that I can have a clue how to support it on release date, though not usually by a lot, but I do get training in advance.
I ask the customer if he has a specific setting turned on since that setting is required to use the feature he's calling about.
Customer "informs" me that the setting has nothing to do with it.
I gently explain to him that the feature is designed to work only if this setting is turned on.
"That's not true," says customer.
"Sir," I say, "that is how I was trained."
"Well then, your training was wrong," replies customer.
....Wait... what? I was dumbfounded. I could have showed him the article from our support database that would tell him the same thing if he would have given me the time of day, but that wasn't going to happen. It took everything I had at that moment not to come back with a snarky, "Oh really? Where did you get your training?"
I still couldn't help myself entirely and managed to tone it down to, "Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize you knew more than I did."
"I do," replied the customer. "Now is there someone there who knows more than you do?"
I so wanted to come back with, "Well, you do apparently." Instead, I told him to wait a moment while I got a senior advisor. Technically if we have the customer on hold for 5 minutes and haven't gotten someone on the other line yet, we're supposed to check in with the customer, but with this idiot know-it-all, he had been such a jerk that I decided I was just not going to deal with him any more than I had to and just let him sit on hold.
When I finally got the senior advisor on the line and explained the situation to him, then brought the customer on the line, the customer still had the nerve to additionally say to me that I should stay on the line to learn something, never mind that the senior advisor is also going to tell him that having that setting turned on is required for the feature he's trying to use. Seriously, who in their right minds calls in to tech support for assistance with a newly released product/feature and then proceeds to tell tech support that they don't have a clue and that their training is wrong?
Then there was another stupid idiot, neighbor, after I got home... but that's another story for a different area.
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