There are times when being a Customer Service Rep for Ginormous Worldwide Telecom is downright boring. Changing rate plans, selling phones, adding and subtracting features until it not only meets the customers’ needs but also their pocketbook. Those are pretty standard calls. We also have the folks who call up screaming their heads off because their “phone is broke and I just bought it and…” Nine times out of ten that can be fixed with a simple, “You know, at this point, cell phones are basically little computers. Do me a favor and turn it off…wait about five seconds and turn it back on…is it working now?” “Ummm, yeah, what’s that do?” “It reboots it. If the same problem happens again, try that first.”
Every now and then though I get great satisfaction out of helping a customer that no one else has seemed to be able to help out before. Now a lot of folks call in, over and over and over again, hoping they’ll find some sap to listen to their sob story and credit them back the ridiculous amount of overage that they accrued over the holidays. Most of the time, I’m going to tow the company line an advise them, just like the last four reps did, that those are valid charges and there’s no way we can credit them. Every now and then though, I get a customer who, for some reason or another, no one has LISTENED to before. That happened right before my night ended tonight, and I feel pretty good about it. Earlier the customer had called in and the rep had told him that he had oodles of minutes remaining for the month. However, the customer went over by over 200 minutes when the cycle actually closed out. When he called in to dispute it, he was told, “Those are valid overages.” Once, twice, three times. He wanted to cancel and was sent to cancellations (or SAVES, the folks who do their best to keep the customer) who once again told him those were valid overages and wouldn’t refund him anything either. He cancelled service, pretty much fed up with us. The man was quite tenacious and had a strong feeling that he’d been wronged and called in one last time to see if I could help him. And I could.
Once all was said and done and after I’d simply played with the database a little, it was easy to see that at the time he was told he had oodles of minutes left, he was already over. A little further digging and I found out where that customer service rep had found that oodles of minutes number…from his previous month’s bill!!! That’s clearly our error and I was able to fix it for him, making him so happy that he had me restore his service immediately. Three lines. That’s potential profit the company was going to lose because no one would listen.
And like I said, I got a great deal of satisfaction out of that. Three previous reps AND a “SAVES Specialist” missed the simple fact that we gave him the wrong information from the wrong month’s bill. I’m very much in an, “I SO rule.” mood right now. I’m also disappointed in four of my coworkers, one of them deemed “The best of the best.”
As much as other reps are going to hate me for saying this, if you’re a customer, and you KNOW something’s wrong, keep calling until somebody hears exactly what you’re saying to them. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll have someone on the other end who’s willing to dig a little deeper and say, “Sir/Ma’am, that’s clearly our error, and I’m going to fix it for you.”