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Part of my job deals with web hosting. To me, these are the worst kind of calls to take, only because ninety-nine per cent of them are businesses, and any time something happens, the consumer is usually in a foul mood.
I dealt with a man yesterday who called to make some DNS changes to his site. Any business who makes a change, or wants to disconnect service, they are required to submit this is writing via fax with no exceptions. The reason for this is because in the past, when my company was lenient on this rule, we had a person who called for their log in access to make changes to their site. It turned out it was a business competitor, a really nasty one at that, who later on signed into this person's web site and messed it up so bad, it was nearly unrecoverable.
In any case, this man spent probably fifteen, twenty minutes arguing with me about how other businesses don't require a fax, and what do we do for those who don't own a fax, etc. This was time that he could have spent faxing in his request, and it could have arrived by the time he relented to this rule. Now, before someone out there says, "Well, what do you do for those that don't have a fax?", we sometimes do allow an e-mail request, as long as they are not requesting password information, or other sensitive info. This man also spends $300 or more a month on his service with us, and pays it every month on time, I might add. Not once did he tell me he did not own a fax, just argued about whether or not we treat everyone like this.
Our policy is if it is a business, we have documentation from the customer stating they made a certain request. To conclude, the other part of our conversation was another change he made three months before, which he then had problems with afterward. Yet, he denied all knowledge of the request, but we still had his faxed in request on file.
To me, all businesses should have this rule in place so assholes like this can stop hiding behind the rule of "The customer is always right!"
I dealt with a man yesterday who called to make some DNS changes to his site. Any business who makes a change, or wants to disconnect service, they are required to submit this is writing via fax with no exceptions. The reason for this is because in the past, when my company was lenient on this rule, we had a person who called for their log in access to make changes to their site. It turned out it was a business competitor, a really nasty one at that, who later on signed into this person's web site and messed it up so bad, it was nearly unrecoverable.
In any case, this man spent probably fifteen, twenty minutes arguing with me about how other businesses don't require a fax, and what do we do for those who don't own a fax, etc. This was time that he could have spent faxing in his request, and it could have arrived by the time he relented to this rule. Now, before someone out there says, "Well, what do you do for those that don't have a fax?", we sometimes do allow an e-mail request, as long as they are not requesting password information, or other sensitive info. This man also spends $300 or more a month on his service with us, and pays it every month on time, I might add. Not once did he tell me he did not own a fax, just argued about whether or not we treat everyone like this.
Our policy is if it is a business, we have documentation from the customer stating they made a certain request. To conclude, the other part of our conversation was another change he made three months before, which he then had problems with afterward. Yet, he denied all knowledge of the request, but we still had his faxed in request on file.
To me, all businesses should have this rule in place so assholes like this can stop hiding behind the rule of "The customer is always right!"