Some funny but real Incidents in call centers
Just today only, I was thinking about my previous jobs at various call centers and few incidents made me smile and whenever I will think about such incidents at any time in my life, I am sure, I will at least smile.
So, I am going to share some funny but true incidents, which I personally experienced at various call centers.
My first call center was a domestic one, a mobile customer care (Then Hutch, Now Vodafone) where I worked for almost a year. First few months were without fun but later months were as crazy as me…. One day, I was supervising the floor (new batch had hit the floor and I was taking care of their concerns and queries while they were taking care of customers over the call). A beautiful gal came to me and it was very clear from her eyes, she was not comfortable and was about to cry. I asked her concern but she was little bit hesitant and when I encouraged her, she said, “ the customer over the call is saying I LOVE YOU and she didn’t know what to say”. I lost my temper immediately (not on customer but on her). I gave her solution. The stupid gal had put the customer on hold for more than 2 minutes without any reason and I was wondering, “ Why the gal approached me? Did she expect any kind of pre-written script for such crappy situation? What if she faces same kind of situation on streets? Why sometimes we fail to use our own sense and mind to over come any situation we are in. No wonder, some agents do sound like an answering machine over the call.” I couldn’t find the answer and I gave up. Perhaps that’s the way customer care sector works.. Who really cares??
We used to have our share of fun over the call too, messing up with the customers but mostly during nights. I used to call one of my senior colleague with whom I used to share the same cab as my Gurudev. I would make it sure I am not sharing my workstation with him in the same bay too. Having workstation closer or near to him would mean rounds of laughter and giggling and that’s used to be because the way he used to answer calls. He used to share his “stories” in the cab and we would roll in the cigarettes’ smoke filled cab laughing, holding our stomach tightly and then again rolling on each other with a number of high fives.
Once, he answered the call without any proper greeting (or opening as we say) and his first words were, “ Hello! McDonalds, your order please!!!” (We were working with Hutch) and the customer wondered how the call landed in McDonalds instead of hutch customer care, and the very first question he asked was, “ Is this number toll free?” to which my friend answered, “ No, its an premium number, rs6/ minute”. Needless to say, next moment, customer was gone.
Another call, again without opening, he started yelling over the call, “ Noida, Noida, Noida, Atta, Mayur vihar, kale khan, maharani bagh, medical, medical…..”(These are names of few places in and around Delhi) in a typical local bus’ conductor style and the customer again confirmed if this was customer care of Hutch or of DTC (Delhi Transport Corporation)?
………………………………Many incidents are untold……..
Now, lets move to my current call center…..
I received a call on my system and I was greeted with abusive and foul words of a lady, (F word for the service, for India and of course for me as well) and as per her, her net was down for the last two days and no resolution had been provided to her till date. I checked history of her concern and found the concern was really logged in two days back and technical team was supposed to visit her premises to have the physical inspection of the concern and it was still on the “open mode” due to weekends. I, thought of troubleshooting the problem online and when I probed about the modem she was using, she didn’t know what a modem or Hi-Fi was and when I probed further, I found her modem was switched off for the last 2 days!!!!! I felt like banging my head on the PC and she was very lucky she wasn’t in front of me…. had she been, only God would have known, what I would have done to her…. After the call was over, I was sure, I had a word with a typical Blonde….LOLZZZZ
Another day, Another F***king customer, this time a male…. started abusing without any reason, he let me knew, he had lost his job in USA due to this outsourcing some years back and was still unemployed and was just venting out…. After, a certain limit of tolerance, I too vented out assuming I had switched on the mute call, but unfortunately mute wasn’t on and he got to listen “F**k you” from me and he asked my name again and wanted to talk to my senior regarding same…I had no option other than to disconnect the call. Thankfully, he didn’t know my name and I hadn’t opened his Account in my system, had I opened his A/c in the system, my name would have been reflected in the “Interaction id” and I had one of the most narrow escape…….
N.B>:- the above mentioned incidents are few cases only.. We , even , made customers bent on their knees and made them to lick his own salvia….would you like to know about such cases in details? Do let me know…Might post a sequence of this post…..(such cases happened in the domestic call centre only, hehehehheeh)
With Love
ASADALI
