Call centre workers: spill the beans

Mupette

Sorry to say the attitude of some customers,

the company and product i support encourages customers to log into their account and run it themselves, it is a very simple process, its aimed at parents who have logged into their accounts many many times before as i can see the logs I know they are more than capable of, and will save them money to do it themselves

reasons why they won't

I don't want to, I can't be bothered.

Or the ones that do call because they have screwed up but want to blame you, you explain politely after being shouted and abused and threatened that I have made the !!!! up and what am i going to do about it, that the changes were made by them

The compensation hunters, their accounts are FREE, the service we provide the parents is FREE, they do not loose money.

You've stolen my money and i want it back right now. Of course i'll just press my magic button, because we all have one. In the case of what we do we are the middle man, employer takes the money from the parents salary, we then give the parent the voucher they have purchased, all online, so when money goes from their salary they think we have stolen it, and if we don't give it back right now then someone will come and find us and smash our faces in, i do wonder should these parents be investigated by social services as a threat to their own children by their behavior over the phone.

You let the customer rant and rave over the phone, keeping quiet, bringing their account up (IF and only if they have been in control enough to do data protection with you), you then get shouted at because you have the patience to listen to all this, because you are not responding, well A, you've not stopped to draw breath, B, I'm listening to find out what the real problem is, whilst deciding what the best course of action is to benefit you.

The account holders spouse/partner who doesn't understand that we will NOT divulge any information to them due to the data protection laws in place to protect their information. We hold information about such delicate nature that to give information out could cause such distress to them, and in the worse case scenario put their children in danger, but instead of trying to explain the reason why we can't discuss the account to someone who is not named to talk to, we get the person on the phone throwing everything at you.

Ladies don't bother bringing on the false tears, seen it all before, and being female myself can see right through you.

The people that just want to ring up and be rude and nasty, have no purpose to call, they just want to antagonise you, to see if they can push your buttons.

When a customer has ripped you a new a hole, and at the end of the call realise that the problem was caused by them, it would be nice if you could have the decency to apologise, admit your wrong, because seriously most of you wouldn't do that to me face to face, without good reason to.

I would never go up to someone and start threatening to do this that and the other, just to get my own way, and blatantly lie, and think i could walk away unscathed.

So customers be nice, you are no better than us we are all the same, trying to do our job, we have been trained to do our jobs to the best of our ability, most of us (yes you do get some that shouldn't be in the job) will do everything in our power to help you,

spare a thought for some like me who are disabled, and still work, I have MS, stress makes me ill (yes i know why am i in this kind of work, well its the only work i could get, i need the money to live, not entitled to benefits to stay at home, where in all honesty the way i feel atm i should be).

Demanding to speak to a supervisor / manager and refusing to engage with the us on the phone, isn't helping you or me, our supervisors will not take a blind call, so we really do need to do data protection with you, otherwise we cant bring your accounts up, to see what history their is to start helping, If i have such calls and tell my supervisor, they refuse to take the call no matter how many times the customer refuses to engage.