I hung up on a customer today! 😮
First time I had a caller that I just did not want to deal with. The guy had bought himself a self install broadband kit and obviously knew absolutely nothing about computers or networking. He’d been apparently experiencing some difficulties an by the time he got on the phone he was angry and aggressive right off the bat. I let him rant a little – as you do – and then started to try and find out what the problem was. Sounds like he probably had a stupid username and password issue that wasn’t allowing him to complete his install, but he was so frustrated he was just going off his nut.
He didn’t seem to be able to stop himself from raging, and he kept on ranting on about ‘fucking Goliath’, and how he was ‘sick to fucking death of fucking Goliath’ and ranting about how he ‘should’ve fucking known better than to sign up with mother fucking Goliath broadband’. At which point I asked him politely to ‘please stop swearing’, that I was ‘sorry that his install was proving more difficult than he anticipated’ and I would ‘prefer that he would please stop swearing at me over the phone, and tell me what the problem is.’
Which I thought would have caused a normal person to reassess their attitude, but this guy then turns on me directly and starts in on me! ‘All you people care about is getting our fucking money … none of you fucking idiots on the phone ever help, and it’s never anything but problem after fucking problem with you lot!’
Now….. I’m not particularly enjoying my job of late, and I think this is largely stemming from the fact that the call centre is closing down, and we are all losing our jobs, and most of my colleagues whom I could stand for more then 5 minutes together have all abandoned the sinking ship…. so when I normally would have tried to talk him round…. I found myself saying rather tersely ‘Would you kindly refrain from resorting to profanity when addressing me, if you are indeed in any way shape or form capable of doing so. Should you continue to rail against me in this manner, I will cease to assist you and terminate this call.’
Okay… I admit, had I uttered my threat in a variant of the English vernacular that this moron could comprehend, he might have wound his head in, but instead I got a ‘Don’t you fuckin’ talk to me like…’
Sigh…… Click!!!!
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