Current Events > Have you ever had to tell a customer they were wrong?

(+) Yeah! (+)

What was the context and how did you go about it?
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They tried to return a nintendo that they had bought at target. I was working at walmart at the time. They had no receipt and when I ran the serial number it showed that it was purchased at target. So then she got upset with me and after 20 minutes I realized my line was getting backed up and said "I have actual customers that I need to help out." And to me there is nothing wrong with telling a scam artist that isn't a customer that she knows what she's doing is wrong and I have legit customers behind her. Management disagreed and said "you can't talk to customers like that." And it was like we were going in a never ending circle because again, she wasn't a customer. That's the day I realized customer service isn't for me.
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All the time when I was at pizza places.

People don't like to be told they're wrong, and especially don't like to be told it was their fault.

My 2 favorites were as followed....

"Ordered my pizza with no onions, you gave me onions, cuss word cuss word, bla bla, angry angry."

"Uh yes ma'am, the order came through with extra onions."

"Angry angry angry cuss cuss cuss yell yell yell."

"We can remake that for you and send it out."

"How dumb are you idiots messing up my order, I want the next 5 pizzas free."

And then....

"I ordered over an hour ago, where's my order, I want it free."

"Yes ma'am, says your order came in at 6:15 it's now 6:52, driver left, be there in a minute."

"Yell yell yell angry angry free pizza."

"Have a great night thank you."
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Yes.
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SauI_Goodman posted...

They tried to return a nintendo that they had bought at target. I was working at walmart at the time. They had no receipt and when I ran the serial number it showed that it was purchased at target. So then she got upset with me and after 20 minutes I realized my line was getting backed up and said "I have actual customers that I need to help out." And to me there is nothing wrong with telling a scam artist that isn't a customer that she knows what she's doing is wrong and I have legit customers behind her. Management disagreed and said "you can't talk to customers like that." And it was like we were going in a never ending circle because again, she wasn't a customer. That's the day I realized customer service isn't for me.

Yeah this reminds me of a time I was helping a nice couple with the a case open in the electronics department of my local big box store. This crazy ass motherfucker comes up and starts giving me the burn through my skull look in the middle of helping this couple finding a DVD player for their headrest (kids in the back, etc). I tell him I'll be with him after I'm done helping with the case and he starts grumping really loud. Like disturbingly loud. Maybe not even 30 seconds later he starts pounding hard on the table next to the register and looks like he wants to murder someone. He marched away and bitched about me, manager gave me this warning (if you get enough you get fired). The couple came by later to check out at my register, I told them about it and they cleared my name. The manager ended up apologizing. It was a whole fiasco, but it shows how fucking fast managers will turn on employees in retail/customer facing situations.

That was a bit more long winded than I'd anticipated. But yeah, screw working CS.
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Occasionally. Most are fine with it, but then they're usually researchers and are quite open to adapting to new evidence.

Every now and then, maybe once or twice a year, someone will come in with a genuinely silly request and won't accept it when we point out they're not likely to find what they want to find.
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"the customer is always right" is a half-truth.
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Yes. All the time. My job includes a bit of consulting.
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Lotta moms think it's clever to say there's a special, like we're too apathetic to care to check so we'll just give em whatever nonsense deal they made up.

They were right about the apathy. but I dislike that kind of manipulation, so I was always strict with them.

Anyone remotely cool with me got free stuff, though.
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All the time.

Hunger makes people stupid and evil.

And they will flat out bold face lie to you and not bat an eye.

The best times are when you have physical evidence and they have no comeback.
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Yes. In a tech support environment you end up doing this all the time.
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If a customer get their order wrong and we make it correctly, what does that mean?
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All the time

One of the more fustrating things to do
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You cannot call out a customer, because you'll get into trouble.

And they know this.

corporate fosters rudeness.
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My first month or so working for VZW this guy called in right before my lunchbreak and ended up having an almost two hour argument with me. Normally people who are that aggressive and pushy make me angry, but this guy more shocked me because I don't think I've ever, or will ever again, see a person that will lie to me as hard as this guy was. Just to give the cliff notes version:

-He, at the time, had had his phone shut off for non payment. Looking at the notes of the account he had run into this situation almost every month since the previous year and had always talked customer service into reconnecting his devices and waiving reconnection fees just by talking to them until they gave up, got sick of it and just wanted him off the line. He advised me he had never before been late with a payment.

-He claimed that he was upset because his area was "under investigation" by tech support for being a poor service zone. There was one support ticket from months back that had come back with a resolution of no problems seeming to be existing in that area with a note that he had been informed of it.

-Claimed he was supposed to have a 600 dollar credit applied to his account. When I asked him for what he initially seemed shocked and confused that I would actually investigate and didn't seem to know what for. After a bit of stammering he eventually put together a story about how someone had offered it to him for being in a poor service area.

So we fought for more than a hour and a half over this, with him telling me all these bizarre clearly untrue stories and ranging between being confounded and absolutely furious when I advised him nothing he was saying was being supported and that he appeared to have just made an impossible amount of reconnect bargains with customer service and hadn't paid a bill in months. Eventually one of the trainers that walks the floor came by and advised me she'd been listening to the call and suggested I just escalate it because at that point I was two hours past when I was supposed to go to lunch so I made the offer and turned it over to her.

Just in case you ever think of doing what this guy did next, keep in mind that whenever customer service people get you to transfer them to a manager, nine times out of ten unless they're sending you over to a specialized escalation call queue, the supervisor is actually coming over and sitting with you and hooking into their voip phone while the original person is listening on mute for training purposes.

She plugged in and the guy proceeded to change his attitude dramatically once he was talking to a woman, calling her "sweetheart" and "honey" (she visibly looked incredibly disgusted every time) and started telling her that I had offered him a sizable credit to put on his bill and that I had said all I needed to do was put her on to confirm it. When she said that wasn't the case, he immediately started to move down the path of being angry that I had supposedly told him this and trying to demand a credit for me "lying" to him. She was a -lot- less patient than I was though, and immediately shut him down because she'd been listening in and knew he was full of it, spent just a few minutes explaining to him that he was entitled to absolutely nothing except service for paying his bill, and once he sounded completely beaten and dejected, sent him on to financial to get his shit turned back on and pay for it for once.
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I just tell them what's up. We're shortstaffed, the ice cream machine has to cooldown,I have limited authority and ability, I can't solve that particular problem.
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ultimate reaver posted...

My first month or so working for VZW this guy called in right before my lunchbreak and ended up having an almost two hour argument with me. Normally people who are that aggressive and pushy make me angry, but this guy more shocked me because I don't think I've ever, or will ever again, see a person that will lie to me as hard as this guy was. Just to give the cliff notes version:

-He, at the time, had had his phone shut off for non payment. Looking at the notes of the account he had run into this situation almost every month since the previous year and had always talked customer service into reconnecting his devices and waiving reconnection fees just by talking to them until they gave up, got sick of it and just wanted him off the line. He advised me he had never before been late with a payment.

-He claimed that he was upset because his area was "under investigation" by tech support for being a poor service zone. There was one support ticket from months back that had come back with a resolution of no problems seeming to be existing in that area with a note that he had been informed of it.

-Claimed he was supposed to have a 600 dollar credit applied to his account. When I asked him for what he initially seemed shocked and confused that I would actually investigate and didn't seem to know what for. After a bit of stammering he eventually put together a story about how someone had offered it to him for being in a poor service area.

So we fought for more than a hour and a half over this, with him telling me all these bizarre clearly untrue stories and ranging between being confounded and absolutely furious when I advised him nothing he was saying was being supported and that he appeared to have just made an impossible amount of reconnect bargains with customer service and hadn't paid a bill in months. Eventually one of the trainers that walks the floor came by and advised me she'd been listening to the call and suggested I just escalate it because at that point I was two hours past when I was supposed to go to lunch so I made the offer and turned it over to her.

Just in case you ever think of doing what this guy did next, keep in mind that whenever customer service people get you to transfer them to a manager, nine times out of ten unless they're sending you over to a specialized escalation call queue, the supervisor is actually coming over and sitting with you and hooking into their voip phone while the original person is listening on mute for training purposes.

She plugged in and the guy proceeded to change his attitude dramatically once he was talking to a woman, calling her "sweetheart" and "honey" (she visibly looked incredibly disgusted every time) and started telling her that I had offered him a sizable credit to put on his bill and that I had said all I needed to do was put her on to confirm it. When she said that wasn't the case, he immediately started to move down the path of being angry that I had supposedly told him this and trying to demand a credit for me "lying" to him. She was a -lot- less patient than I was though, and immediately shut him down because she'd been listening in and knew he was full of it, spent just a few minutes explaining to him that he was entitled to absolutely nothing except service for paying his bill, and once he sounded completely beaten and dejected, sent him on to financial to get his shit turned back on and pay for it for once.

And they say moms are bad. Sheesh.
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Guide posted...

And they say moms are bad. Sheesh.

Far and apart the most difficult cutomers were either middle-aged southern women or old men. At least, that was my experience.
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Every day, since I work at a hardware store. People generally thank me for my honesty and for correcting them, though, because it prevents them from doing something wrong and fucking their house/project up.

When I worked at a grocery store, though, it was mostly arguing over prices and coupons. Thats an entirely different story.

when i worked retail some woman asked me where the mackerel was and we didnt have any on the shelf, so i looked out back for her and we didnt have any, and she called me a liar and told me i 'didnt give a fuck about it'

she was wrong about me being a liar so i was just like 'okay well there still isn't any mackerel'

really weird tbh

Yes, all the time. I work in a billing call center and people don't believe me when I tell them they haven't paid their bill for two months. *shrug*
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