Asking for a manager

[Hyndis]

How do you handle people demanding to speak to a manager RIGHT THE HELL NOW!?!?

I do tech support. I work for a small company, however people seem to think that I work for a huge company with tech support outsourced to India or something. I very, very commonly have people demanding to speak to a manager.

The manager is almost always busy with other stuff, or simply not available because he's handling some other crisis. The entire department is made up of 4 people. And most of the time people demand a manager because they are unhappy with the policy. The manager will most certainly not change the policy. I have 95% the power of the manager and there are very, very few things that he can do that I do not have the authority to do.

I just go with the "he's not available" route, because most of the time he's not available, he's busy dealing with something else. When the person pushes and pushes for a manager I repeat that a few times, then reiterate the policy. I can be extremely, extremely stubborn when I want to.

This almost always ends up enraging the person to the point where they begin using obscenities, at which point I have justified reason for ending the call.

Note that I am tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, customer service, and the complaints department. Corporate? There is no corporate. There are only 4 people who answer phones. We all sit next to each other. Want to go over my head? There's just the manager who knows whats going on because he overheard my conversation, and by now is probably in a very bad mood. He's the head of the entire department.

I find that people often times are utterly confused and baffled at how their usual tactics for call centers simply do not work. Most departments in the company I work for are only a single person. That person is out of the office or on lunch? Too bad, leave a message, there's nothing I can do.

My stubborn approach has generally worked well and the only times I get in trouble are when I am insufficiently stubborn. This usually involves much yelling and screaming from the customer, but we aren't there to give them money.

My job is essentially to bleed money as slowly as possible while keeping complaints to an acceptable level.

[freeatlast]

I always tell those people that my manager is not available and that she will call them back when it is convenient for her. If they insist that it has to be "right now" I tell them that I am the only one they can speak to right now. At my job, those who demand my manager are usually deadbeats who are trying to avoid being forced to pay in full to avoid having the contents of their storage units auctioned off. They will certainly not get any different answer from my manager. And, since these are customers who are perpetually delinquent I am not worried about offending them. If they continue to refuse to pay we will just sell their stuff. And any remaining balance after the auction proceeds are applied to the account is sent to a collection agency.

[Android Kaeli]

Well, I usually just cut to the chase and give the customer what they want regardless if there's a manager there to approve or not. Out of the five managers there, only two will actually say, "Tough shit, GTFO" and not have less then a jellyfish for a spine. Another manager won't even bother to come up, she'll just call and say, "Just give it to them and don't bother me with stupid things like this".

Depending on what the complaint is, I know which managers I can count on to actually stick to the policy as much as possible. That is, if they aren't swamped with twenty customers and five phone calls -- usually the manager is the *only* other person on the floor at night, if there's another person on the floor or not.

I call the managers up if I can't handle the customer, or if the customer get's more then a little pissy with me.

[Dips]

Sounds a lot like where I work. Only 13 employees (11 full time) and only 4 of us answer phones.

There is no corporate.

We usually pass callers demanding a manager to each other; the owner made each of us the manager of something or other so we can all technically claim the title.

Since we all do stuff off the phones as well as on, there's usually somebody not on a call who can take over in a pinch. We simply tell the other manager what we said and new manager repeats it. Sometimes all it takes is somebody else saying the same thing a different way in a different voice and the caller calms down. Not always, though.

But that wouldn't work if everyone else is unable to take over a call such as where you are. It sounds like they way you are handling it works pretty well. It's very similar to what we do when someone decides they don't want a mere manager, they want the owner.

That's not going to happen.

ETA: We're also not shy about telling a caller how small we are when they don't seem to be getting why we don't act like a large call center. It sometimes works to deflect some of the suckiness.

[MoonCat]

I've had TWO calls like that already today and I've been here less than two hours! In my experience people ask for the manager when they don't like what the call center person told them. Most of us have been here 3 times longer than our immediate manager, but of course we "don't know what we're talking about."

The most frustrating thing is when the manager isn't in his office and the customer won't accept that. We have fewer managers than we used to (still too many, in my opinion) and they aren't sitting around doing nothing just waiting for some entitled PITA to call. A lot of customers have this weird idea that we couldn't possibly be working without a manager present. Well, that happens a lot. If one's on vacation and the other is out sick, plus the overall dept. manager is off that day...guess what, we're working without a manager. And we still get our work done.

And no one is going to get "corporate" because the owner (veryveryvery rich investor) lives in another state and the parent company doesn't deal with these petty complaints.

[KellyHabersham]

If it's at the library job, I just tell the person that they will need to speak to someone at the reference/circulation desk, because those staff members are more able to help them than I can. And the customers are, for the most part, fine with this - the one time I can recall a woman got snippy with me had to do with logging into a public computer......basically, she assumed that every staff member would (or should) know usernames/passwords for logging into all computers.

[TheMike]

hehe, I usually tell them the manager only works ungodly early hours on weekdays, and they can call him then... of the 10% that do bother they get a very grumpy - no coffee yet - manager who can then just quote HO policy and tell them to call them (long distance of course.)