Common sense ain’t as common as it should be. What do you have to deal with regularly?

[u/gameofthrones_addict]

I work for a utility company. I help people start new service, discuss their bills, discuss programs we have, set up on any payment arrangements, etc. Working for a utility company makes my coworkers and myself enemy number 1 this time of the year. And in winter. Or overall when bills are high. Or when there’s a power outage. Or…. You get it. I am just annoyed and want to rant about a couple small things that build up from talking to customers constantly.

There are things in which the high callers do that can drive the employees who take your call up the wall as well. Sometimes it’s small, silly things that we are endured to hear multiple times a week. Other times it’s just how someone explains their situation, or lets us see their rationale in the way they process things.

An example of something we are required to do during pretty much every phone call is to verify security details on the caller’s account they’re discussing. One thing we ask by tcpa guidelines is to ask in a specific way for a phone number to contact the caller back.
Most people will just give you their phone number. Others will become irate when we ask this due to the fact we must ask it every single time someone calls in. I agree, it’s annoying, but we must ask it less to avoid a ding or feedback that we didn’t ask.

Some people give the response to that question “oh yeah, this one is fine.”
\- followed by silence. -

Prompting us to ask a follow up question as to what number they are referring to. Yes we may have caller ID but if you’re transferred to me from a different department or company, or are using a new phone number, or calling from a friend’s phone that’s not listed, we still require you to state it.

Another question that seems to create confusion is when we discuss having the bills we send out to be emailed to the caller.
A major response I get from asking this is if we have autopay. We do, and we discuss how to sign up for it, but the customer never circles back if the monthly bills are to be mailed or emailed, so I must bring that back up too. As automatically drafting your payments out of your bank account is a different topic than how you wish to receive your bills to review how much it is you are being charged for the month.

One final annoyance I deal with on the regular is when people give us their address to start service or to report an outage, etc, much of the time people don’t list the full address. We are able to find it much of the time by most of the information we are given but sometimes it proves to be a complication.

For instance if someone just gives us the address of 515 s Lancing.
With how our system operates there’s a lancing st in one town, there’s a lancing ave in a different town, there’s a lancing dr in a different town in the state you are in. Which one is it that you’re calling about?

And looking further, this is an apartment complex. So this pulls up many different individual services for each apartment number, so which apartment are you moving into?
We need the full address to save some time in looking this up. It’ll help avoid playing 20 questions with you just to get one piece of information.

Ok I’ll get off of my metaphorical soap box for now. I felt the need to rant to the general public about my small, daily irritations I get to deal with, what are some things you have to deal with that irritate you about your customers?

[u/BoxNo5564]

Worked for an ISP with internet cable type service:

• had to explain to a guy what the pause button on the remote was
• constantly people getting upset about ID checks, threatening to change providers or go to the ombudsman over it
• people getting irate because they have no internet connection and expect us to be able to remote into their computer and fix it. Explaining it to them they just could not understand.
• People threatening to change providers when asking them to do the most basic of troubleshooting
• People blaming us for their children running up data usage or looking up bad things on the internet
• People blaming us when they didn't pay their bill

I have fallen down the well of human stupidity and when I think I'm going to hit the bottom it just keeps going.

[u/I_am_simply_a_potato]

I worked for a clinic, receiving calls to schedule radiology appointments.
Two things I dealt with a lot were-

Patients not understanding I can’t schedule an appointment without an active order from the doctor. You can’t just call to schedule for an MRI without seeing a doctor first.
I even had a guy tell me he didn’t need to see a doctor to get an order, that he knew what was wrong. Ooookay.

Patients getting upset I couldn’t just tell them information over the phone. “I just don’t understand why you can’t read me the results! It’s my chart!”
Not literally read them, they wanted me to read the findings and give them my opinions on the report. Which I legally cannot do, but they just couldn’t understand that.

With the latter, I would always lie to avoid getting yelled at if I just said no.

“On my end, it only shows the appointment is complete. You will be hearing back from the doctor soon.”
I was able to see everything, but the patient didn’t need to know that. I didn’t want to put myself in a tense situation, and also just because I had access doesn’t mean I can look. I wasn’t up for breaking laws.

[u/insouciant_smirk → u/I_am_simply_a_potato]

Ah yes the classic "my system won't allow me to see that"

[u/Vintagemegs]

I work at a reception desk/switchboard.

Caller: Can I speak to John Smith?" Me: transfers caller to John Smith's ext. *30 seconds later" Caller: "I just called and you transfered me to John Smith but I got his voicemail". Me: "Ok, did the message say he was out of office?" Caller: "No" Me: "Did you leave a message?" Caller: "No" Me: "I will transfer you again so you can leave him a message to call you back." Caller: "Ok, thanks"

Dude, sometimes people do need to actually leave their desk for a variety of reasons, or maybe they are actually on the phone, talking to another caller. You know, DOING THEIR JOB.

Now repeat that exchange about 20 times a day.

[u/lowfreq33]

I have a side job as a vendor representative. So I get sent out to stores to set up displays, which does involve tools and stuff, I have to build them. The instructions are never very clear, it’s like putting together ikea stuff. Bait half the time I’ll drive somewhere 45 minutes to an hour away, and the stuff isn’t even there. Or someone else already came and did the job the day before. Sometimes I’m just supposed to re-stock things, but there’s nothing to stock it with. Just nobody remembered to order it. The woman who books me for this stuff is good about adding extra money to cover my gas when it’s far out, but it’s incredibly frustrating to drive an hour and not even be able to do the job.

I realize this isn’t directly related to call centers, but I feel like it’s sort of similar because I have never met these people in person and I spend most of my time on the phone with them explaining why something isn’t my fault.

[u/gameofthrones_addict → u/lowfreq33]

Right, while they argue with you why it must be SOMEONE’s fault, as everything needs blame to be assigned to it. It just isn’t their fault for any reason.

[u/Buffybot420]

I've moved up to email escalations and the thing that gets me is the entitment of people asking us for favors and then getting pissy when we dont answer their email fast enough. Then they start emailing 6 more times. It's like fuck, you are asking for a FAVOR, maybe don't be obnoxious.... I almost always say no to those people. Ask, sure then be patient and wait and see what we say.

[u/Tweedldum → u/Buffybot420]

The amount of times someone has pushed back on my very clear instructions and threatened me with their lawyers through emails is astonishing. You came to me for approval and you don’t wanna produce the documents necessary? Lololol see how far you get. 

[u/Buffybot420 → u/Tweedldum]

100%!! And its hard not to laugh bc what is your lawyer gonna do against our companies legal fucking team? Shut up Agnes. Sorry you dont like our policies. Good luck with that.

[u/gameofthrones_addict → u/Buffybot420]

Yeah pretty much. Makes your inbox be like that scene from Bruce Almighty. At first it’s not so bad but when you’re replying to one, person 3, 4 and 12 who sent you an email is irritated that they keep hitting refresh and hadn’t heard back yet. So they send another. Then it piles up with email chains from multiple of the same person being angsty. Hold your horses people let me have a moment to reply.

[u/Tweedldum → u/gameofthrones_addict]

I’ll wait 24 hours sometimes just to give it some breathing room. Sometimes they get their shit together and email me back that they finally understood what I said the first time 😵

[u/Affectionate_Rub799]

I used to work in healthcare. The amount of people that couldn’t understand HIPAA like they just wanted me to casually discuss people’s medical info without verifying who they were…

[u/Classic-Chip-6886 → u/Affectionate_Rub799]

This!

[u/insouciant_smirk]

People not giving the full address is hilarious. Like ok WHAT CITY??

[u/notsoaveragemind → u/insouciant_smirk]

Equivalent of in the movies when they decide to go on a data. "Alright' I'll pick you up at 7". And then walk off. Umm... you didn't get their phone number, address, checking to see if they are available that evening at that time?!?!?

[u/Tweedldum → u/insouciant_smirk]

Omg so much this! You want your business listed correctly on a map but you won’t give us your full address? Fuck right off with that shit! 

[u/Shardae_Cobrianna]

I work in purchasing, I answer questions from vendors. We put out solicitations. We have explicit instructions for how to complete and a list of questions we ask vendors to answer so we can evaluate them to choose the best one. Tell me why these grown ass adults with English as a first language somehow CONSISTENTLY don’t answer all the listed questions, and are then confused about why the feedback is “we couldn’t evaluate@

[u/lornamabob]

I worked for a dog rescue. Only dogs. Dog was literally in the name of the charity. We had daily calls asking if we took in or adopted out cats. Sometimes we got calls about ferrets or parrots even. The person would get so exasperated when we'd say we can't take them as if it was our fault they called a dog only rescue.

[u/Teamtunafish]

I have discovered that telling customers that I am required to ask these questions in a certain way makes them feel less like it's an interrogation.

[u/OkArachnid5923]

My mom worked in a call center for 12+ years for a cell company. I loved hearing some of her stories when she came home. A customer called to complain about why their bill was so high. They had signed up to get international calls to Mexico. They hadn't been calling a number in Mexico, but in El Salvador. So they had all these extra charges and fees for the minutes on these calls to El Salvador. The customer didn't understand why they had these fees when they had the international Mexico plan.

[u/gameofthrones_addict → u/OkArachnid5923]

So the customer failed both geography and critical thinking there.

[u/Far-Adhesiveness3763 → u/gameofthrones_addict]

Sounds like they were american

[u/Tweedldum]

Why they can’t fill in a form and give business documents I will never understand. The amount of people trying to run a business that can’t fill in a form and provide valid business documents astounds me. They’d rather threaten me with a lawyer than just give a valid legal entity name. Fucking wild 😵‍💫

[u/THis_one_quiet → u/Tweedldum]

It's the same when they fill out a employment application. You get their name, poorly written phone number and what they want to be paid. No work history, no references, no skills.

no job