I may be a dumb eskimo; But seriously ,Patience has some rewards…losing it has some better ones.
I have always thought of myself as somewhat of a patient person… that is at least to a point. In the following call I display one of those few occasions, (I can see the eyes rolling now) where I lose it.
Me: Thank you for calling the *****’s call center this is Andrew speaking how can I help you today?
Caller: Hello… (After 6 seconds of quiet)
Me: Yes this is the *****’s Call center Andrew Speaking how can I help you today?
Caller: Yes my name is Carlos my compooter is broke.
Me: Okay sir the first thing I need to know is what your unit number is?
Caller: My id number?
Me: no sir your restaurant number… (Starting to lose some patience but I’m still alright)
Caller: Yes I am calling from a restaurant.
Me: Yes sir I need to know what your restaurant number is.
Caller: Oh my phone number?
Me: (at this point I am slamming my head on the desk) sir pull up a receipt and at the top it shows *****’s # and then a 4 digit number what is that number?
Caller: oh it is XXXX
Me: okay I’m not showing that umber in our system are a **** restaurant?
Caller: Yes (he says this in an inquisitive tone)
Me: (at this point I’m done with this guy I look up his restaurant in our database and sure enough he’s not on our supported restaurants list they use a different company) ok sir it looks like here that you guys use the ******* system you need to contact their helpdesk in order to help you.
Caller: I have tried (meaning you just lied when you said you use our **** system) but they are closed. Why cannot you help me?
Me: Well sir first your system is different than what ours is so I would not be sure to what procedures they would like me to take and secondly your franchisee chose to hire the ******* system for your needs so you will need to contact them.
Caller: but I just told you Mother F@#$%$ they are closed you need to help me we are your company.
Me: sir I would appreciate you refraining from using that kind of language while speaking to me and again we are not able to help you, you use a different system then we support you will need to contact your Help desk and leave them a message or call your area manager.
Caller: F&*% your system Mother F&*$#$ It is Sunday and our busiest day I cannot wait for them to open.
At this point I hang up the phone and send off an email to the caller’s area manager, I include an audio recording of our conversation.
5 min after my email has been sent.
Me: Thank you for calling the *****’s call center this is Andrew speaking how can I help you today?
Caller: Hey Andrew this is Paul the Area Manager for Unit XXXX, I just wanted to call and apologize for the behavior of my
Manager, I have just called another manager to go in and he will be terminated by morning.
Me: Thank you sir, I appreciate your help, I can understand how frustrating it could be to have to work with a restaurant that has a computer issue when your helpdesk is closed.
Caller: Yea actually I’m going to be calling the franchisee after this and strongly suggesting we switch over to you guys for all his stores , maybe this way we won’t run into this kind of problem again.
Next day…
Boss: Hey Andrew, heard you had quite a night last night, the AM sent in a bottle of wine we left it on your desk.
… sometimes it pays to lose your patience.
John The Aussie 