Thursday, May 9, 2013

Dirty Liar and a Negative Survey

I answered a call on Monday from a woman who started screaming at me the moment she heard my voice. She was upset because the automated phone system didn't give her a menu option to make a payment and instead asked her to hold for a representative. Lucky me!

I apologized for the inconvenience and explained that I would be happy to process her payment; there is no additional charge for that service. Not good enough. She wants to know WHY. "WHY can't I make a payment through the automated system? WHY do I have to talk to YOU? WHAT is WRONG with your system? Is there a PROBLEM with my account that I need to know about? WHAT is the PROBLEM? WHAT is wrong with my account? WHY did I get transferred to YOU?!

There wasn't anything wrong with her account and there isn't anything wrong with our phone system. Sometimes, accounts are routed to a rep for any number of reasons. In my department, it's normally because they're considered to be a valuable customer because of their positive relationship with the bank. We're trying to give these people excellent customer service, but let's be for real: we know when they have outstanding debt with another bank. We want to transfer that balance over here, and we're willing to do it for 0% APR for up to 18 months.

But I digress. I couldn't get a word in edgewise with this nutcase. It was seriously unnerving to be screamed at like that for absolutely no reason. Did the bank mess up her account? Did we charge her a late fee? Lose her payment? No. She completely lost her shit, simply because the phone system routed her to me.

I finally said, "I don't know!" I did know, but fuck that. I was not about to try to make a sale with someone so unhinged. I just wanted to process her payment and end the call! "I don't know why the automated system didn't give you the menu option to make a payment. I don't have an answer for you. There is nothing wrong with your account. Would you like me to process your payment, or not?"

Suddenly she got very quiet and said yes. I took care of her payment and asked her if she had any other questions about her account. She said no like that was an insane question. I asked her if there was anything else I could help her with, and she answered no again. So I wished her a very nice day and she hung up the phone.

When I got to work today, I had an email from my manager. Guess who got a fucking survey?

That bitch gave me a 1 in every category. In the comment section, she claimed that she asked me several times why she got routed to a rep and I wouldn't answer her. She finally asked to speak to someone else. Then I admitted that I didn't know. "It was weird!"

Liar, liar, pants on fire! Her score brought my customer satisfaction average down to a 75%. I hope it burns when she pees! 

2 comments:

  1. Sigh. This is why random surveys (or just customer surveys in general) kind of suck. Without taking a good representative sample they might as well be flipping coins to figure out how good their reps are, and good luck getting a representative sample when only the angry customers care enough to take the survey (they want to stick it to the man, you see).

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    1. To add insult to injury, we found out recently that we're going to be scored on a new category. They're asking the customer to rate their satisfaction from the time they made a selection in the automated system until the time they get a rep on the phone.

      So now if customers are unhappy with our phone system, that's another score to be held against us, no matter how well we handle the call once we answer the phone.

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