Who was that?

[Peppergirl]

Background: After hours travel call center


~~~~~~~~~~~~


Me: "Thanks for calling Derp Travel, this is Peppergirl. Can I help you?"

Cust: "Yeah, hi. I this is Derp-de-derp. I just hung up with someone there. Can you tell me who that was?"

Me:

~~~~


He wasn't a jerk or anything and I'm sure SOME call centers would know immediately who you were speaking with, but our little center - yeah, no.

[Teskeria]

I love those. 'Yeah, I was just talking to ****. Can you connect me to him/her'
sorry They could be in any of the 6? (maybe more) call centers we have just in the States. Add the couple overflow centers and could be anywhere.

[MoonCat]

Years ago when we had about 30 people on the phones, sometimes customers would call in and say, "Yeah, I just talked to that other girl. Can I talk to her again?"

[BeenThereDoneThat]

The client I work for at our call center actually has three call centers. They own and run the other two, and then there's us. When a customer calls in, he or she may get an agent at any of the three - all centers are open the same hours even with the time zone difference. If they want to talk to someone in our call center and we happen to know who it is without them giving us an extension number, great. If they want to call someone in another center, that's usually OK if they know who they talked to, as we can call the other center and patch them through. Then there's the people who say things like "I just talked to Michael, my call dropped, can I talk to him again?"

Um...do you have any idea how many Michaels there are? What, you don't know your order number either or anything about your order so I can't look it up and see if that person possibly noted the order and I can find them through their username? No? I thought not...

To be fair to the customer, not all the agents are the brightest crayons in the box so it's possible they could have left the customer a message saying "This is Michael from High End Home Store customer service, please call me back" and not much else, or the call could have dropped before the agent had a chance to get much info from the customer or vice versa. But you can't give us ANY information about the order you almost certainly placed so that we can look you up? Even if it's not the SAME order, we might be able to get the information we need to look up ALL your orders and see if there are notes from the same day. Please...we really WANT to help you...believe it or not...

[Beki710]

I don't think it helps sometimes when you ring up call centres that they say "hi your through to [first name] and so if you do need to call back you only have that to refer to. I've definitely had that problem before!

[BeenThereDoneThat]

I don't think it helps sometimes when you ring up call centres that they say "hi your through to [first name] and so if you do need to call back you only have that to refer to. I've definitely had that problem before!

That annoys me too. When I take an order I always ask if the customer wants to write down his or her order number, even though (in most cases) it will be e-mailed to them as well. And if it's a customer service call, and there is a chance they will need to call back, I give them as much information as they will need to pick up where they left off, and sometimes extra info as well. Finally, if I make a callout to follow up with a customer and have to leave a voice mail message, I always give them my name, their order number(s) (or a customer number if they have no order), our callback number and my name...sometimes I give them my extension number if it's really my issue to handle. At High End Home Store the emphasis is on ownership of a customer's issues, so along with that comes "one call resolution". Not always possible of course, if we have to leave a message they have to call us back if they need to discuss something further, but at least if we're doing our jobs right, they know who they can talk to or they know that their issue has been thoroughly noted so another agent can help later.

[IamRed]

the worst pne was when i used to work for a power company lets call it twonkpower when i had a directry of everyone who worked there and it would go like this:

Customer: My case is being delt with by terry can you put me through?
Me: I'll search his number and give hom a call please hold.

.... 1.5 min later

Me: Sorry it looks like he's off work today but I've looked over your case, can I help?
Customer: Can you give me his number?
Me: I'm sorry these are internal codes only.
Customer: Well I'll only speak to him.
Me: I'm sorry about that I'll try to contact him when he's back.
Customer: well let him know that he's taking too many days off and this is taking too long.
Me: Well you could speed things up if you let me see if i could solve your problem.
Customer: No. *hangs up*

*Sigh* Are some people born without logic?

[Ironclad Alibi]

*Sigh* Are some people born without logic?

You have to ask that question on this forum?

Well, I do see you are new to the forum.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

*Sigh* Are some people born without logic?

Yes. Now, if someone calls into my call center and will only speak to a certain person, and wants to leave a voice mail if they're not there, that's fine and dandy with me, though I agree it's stupid for them to complain if they don't want my help instead.

Seems like all of us eventually get our own "fans" who always request the person who helped them the first time. In some ways it makes sense because they feel like if they talk to someone else they'll have to repeat the whole story, but usually we're good about noting the order or customer profile so someone else can follow along if needed.