Let's see how you like dialup
Short form: Cable company rep supporting internet and phone meets 3rd time winner Worst Customer of the Year award.
Just before lunch I got a call that started:
"I just had a technician out here and I don't know why."
That's never good. Best case scenario I just have to explain to someone that a tech was being proactive or had detected some ingress. Worst cases scenario, the customer knows perfectly well why, but is just being funny. Guess which one this guy is?
So I'm trying to establish the chain of events here, and I'm beginning to look over his account. He said he had a trouble call set up for later today because his wireless signal was not getting out to his computers. Immediately I look to see if he's one of our home networking customers. We support our home networking routers, but not third party routers. He has the codes for the home networking service and the gateway, which is the modem with the router built in, so first check passed. To verify, I say, "I see that you're one of our home networking customers."
"No I'm not," he shoots back. "You don't do home networking." And we're off to the races. His beef is, he has our home networking service and it's not working properly. He had a trouble call scheduled for late afternoon. A tech called that morning and asked if he would like him to come by early. The tech came out, checked the connection, and replaced the gateway. The customer was upset because this had not solved his problem.
Now I'm making this sound very calm and reasonable. I don't know if I can do full justice to this guy's attitude. "What good is it going to do to replace a modem that doesn't work with another one of the same model that doesn't work, has never worked, is guaranteed not to work? What is the point of that? Are you all stupid? You're a multi-billion dollar company. Your execs are paying themselves multimillion dollar salaries by cheating and lying to people. You say you're going to provide a service and then you don't. That's lying in my book. That's asking for a great big class action suit. You keep sending out incompetent techs. Well, maybe I should send you some competent lawyers. Do you know what those are? Your execs are lining their own pockets and paying people shit. I'll bet they pay you shit. You don't have any retirement benefits. You're lucky if you get a 401k. Your scumsucking company should be destroyed. I realize I'm not being very nice to you here, not that you deserve it."
Later, speaking of one of the techs he'd previously dealt with, "I'd like to cut his organs out and see how he likes going around with parts missing."
"What are your execs doing now? Draining the blood out of babies and selling it to the blood banks?"
Fairly soon into this ride, I realized arguing with him or attempting to explain anything or deescalate him was a waste of time. I was just along for the ride until he either gave up, passed out, or demanded a supervisor. Pretty much all I could do for him in any case was schedule an escalated trouble call. I mentioned that, and it seems he's already had dealings with the field supervisor in his area. "He's a worthless moron."
I kept saying to him, "Do you want us to come out there and try to fix this?" and he would not say yes or no. He'd say, "I want you to fix it, not _try_. Don't send me a parade of retards. Do you actually provide service to anyone? I'll bet not even a quarter of your customers are happy with your service, and the rest of them hate you as much as I do."
Eventually he asked for a supervisor. I transferred him, and I got to overhear her end of that conversation since she sits right next to me. Seems fair -- she and everyone around me had heard him yelling, and had been listening to me repeat myself like a broken record for twenty minutes. I didn't have to brief her on the call, just apologize for being the one to bring this ray of sunshine into her life.
Fortunately her time with him was short. She asked him the same thing I did, and after a few minutes he called her a fucking retard and hung up.
It turns out he's the same person who talked to another supervisor two teams over the other day. She'd referred him to an escalation team. Usually that team deals with lighting a fire under various departments to expedite things for customers who have gotten mangled in our system, but in this case they are building a case to fire him as a customer.
Later in the day I checked the notes on his account. He'd called back in two more times, one time to demand a promotional rate on service. Earlier notes indicate he'd already had his fair share of promtions, which had run their course, but he keeps calling back in trying to get us to reinstate them indefinitely. He's been told no every time.
Soon he's going to get the ultimate bill reduction -- it's going to go down to $0 permanently. Of course, he's in a semi-rural town, so his choices for replacement are limited. I hope he enjoys using his home network over a dial-up connection.
Just before lunch I got a call that started:
"I just had a technician out here and I don't know why."
That's never good. Best case scenario I just have to explain to someone that a tech was being proactive or had detected some ingress. Worst cases scenario, the customer knows perfectly well why, but is just being funny. Guess which one this guy is?
So I'm trying to establish the chain of events here, and I'm beginning to look over his account. He said he had a trouble call set up for later today because his wireless signal was not getting out to his computers. Immediately I look to see if he's one of our home networking customers. We support our home networking routers, but not third party routers. He has the codes for the home networking service and the gateway, which is the modem with the router built in, so first check passed. To verify, I say, "I see that you're one of our home networking customers."
"No I'm not," he shoots back. "You don't do home networking." And we're off to the races. His beef is, he has our home networking service and it's not working properly. He had a trouble call scheduled for late afternoon. A tech called that morning and asked if he would like him to come by early. The tech came out, checked the connection, and replaced the gateway. The customer was upset because this had not solved his problem.
Now I'm making this sound very calm and reasonable. I don't know if I can do full justice to this guy's attitude. "What good is it going to do to replace a modem that doesn't work with another one of the same model that doesn't work, has never worked, is guaranteed not to work? What is the point of that? Are you all stupid? You're a multi-billion dollar company. Your execs are paying themselves multimillion dollar salaries by cheating and lying to people. You say you're going to provide a service and then you don't. That's lying in my book. That's asking for a great big class action suit. You keep sending out incompetent techs. Well, maybe I should send you some competent lawyers. Do you know what those are? Your execs are lining their own pockets and paying people shit. I'll bet they pay you shit. You don't have any retirement benefits. You're lucky if you get a 401k. Your scumsucking company should be destroyed. I realize I'm not being very nice to you here, not that you deserve it."
Later, speaking of one of the techs he'd previously dealt with, "I'd like to cut his organs out and see how he likes going around with parts missing."
"What are your execs doing now? Draining the blood out of babies and selling it to the blood banks?"
Fairly soon into this ride, I realized arguing with him or attempting to explain anything or deescalate him was a waste of time. I was just along for the ride until he either gave up, passed out, or demanded a supervisor. Pretty much all I could do for him in any case was schedule an escalated trouble call. I mentioned that, and it seems he's already had dealings with the field supervisor in his area. "He's a worthless moron."
I kept saying to him, "Do you want us to come out there and try to fix this?" and he would not say yes or no. He'd say, "I want you to fix it, not _try_. Don't send me a parade of retards. Do you actually provide service to anyone? I'll bet not even a quarter of your customers are happy with your service, and the rest of them hate you as much as I do."
Eventually he asked for a supervisor. I transferred him, and I got to overhear her end of that conversation since she sits right next to me. Seems fair -- she and everyone around me had heard him yelling, and had been listening to me repeat myself like a broken record for twenty minutes. I didn't have to brief her on the call, just apologize for being the one to bring this ray of sunshine into her life.
Fortunately her time with him was short. She asked him the same thing I did, and after a few minutes he called her a fucking retard and hung up.
It turns out he's the same person who talked to another supervisor two teams over the other day. She'd referred him to an escalation team. Usually that team deals with lighting a fire under various departments to expedite things for customers who have gotten mangled in our system, but in this case they are building a case to fire him as a customer.
Later in the day I checked the notes on his account. He'd called back in two more times, one time to demand a promotional rate on service. Earlier notes indicate he'd already had his fair share of promtions, which had run their course, but he keeps calling back in trying to get us to reinstate them indefinitely. He's been told no every time.
Soon he's going to get the ultimate bill reduction -- it's going to go down to $0 permanently. Of course, he's in a semi-rural town, so his choices for replacement are limited. I hope he enjoys using his home network over a dial-up connection.