NebulaJack wrote:James.k.Polk wrote:My turn to work rant.
A person brought in a phone today that had impact damage-- a concentrated area of broken glass. It looked like someone wearing heels had stepped on the phone or someone hit it with a ball peen hammer.
Ordinarily we do not work on such phones. we help the customer pay the insurance deductible and the replacement phone is sent fedex the next business day. This phone would not light up.
My sales/tech guy was helping the customer prepare the insurance claim. In this case it was going to require an affidavit. Sometimes the Ins. company wants the customer to verify their ID...
After he fills out the required paperwork the customer decides she doesn't want to pay the deductible. Against policy, the rep decides to take the phone apart to see if he can get it to power on. Maybe a connector is loose, who knows? He has the phone taken apart before I catch wind of what is going on. I chastise the guy because I know that trying to help a customer in this situation is not in our best interest. I inform him that this customer is guaranteed to try to punish him for having tried to help.
He puts the phone back together and miraculously enough, it powers on and works. he's delighted and takes the phone out to the floor to return it to the customer.
At this point the husband is also in the store. He is now loudly complaining about this process. My rep asks me to intercede because the husband is asking for a manager.
I ask what's wrong. his complaint as far as I can tell, is that the repair took xxxx amount of time, and that we shouldn't have filled out the insurance paperwork and THEN tried to repair.
I tell him my rep was trying to go over and above to help his wife and I don't understand why he is upset.
He says he is not upset, but that we were wrong to do what we did before doing the other thing we did.
I explain that physical damage requires the insurance claim and that my rep was actually doing well beyond what he needed to do to help. The phone, in fact, now works. What's the problem again?
Blah blah blah and now the customer is mad at me for my "attitude". I sweetly apologize and wash my hands of these assholes.
I hope their phones catch fire in their pockets.
It does. not. pay. to deliver extra service.
That's probably the 2nd best thing about working the sign waiving job, I barely have to deal with people at all. When I do, it's mostly A) People asking for directions or B) People offering commiseration for me having to put up with crappy weather. In summer, this sometimes comes in the form of offering me a cold drink, in winter I'll sometimes get offered a coffee.
I love that my current job has very little customer service, beyond helping employees. we do get some people in off the streets, and they are usually farmers who show up with a box of something and think we are going to test them or whatever for free, or people coming in to fill out job applications and are disappointed to find out that it's all done online, but it's rare. And I sometimes have to answer the phones which I hate (I think it's some sort of trauma related to working at the call center).