Tuesday, July 25, 2006

They Just Don't Get It

So I call up a business. A guy answers. "Jello? How may I help you?"  Before I can say a word, another phone rings and he says to me, "Yust a minute, please."  He puts me on hold.

At this point I wonder whether he's going to tell the other people to wait, or do what some people do and make ME wait. ME, the person who called first. Who should be taken care of first. Who will be honking p.o.'d if he leaves me hanging.

He leaves me hanging. The Muzak plays, I watch TV, finally forgetting why I'm on the phone in the first place because I wait so long. 

I call this portion the zen of waiting to rip somebody a new asshole.

Finally the phone begins to ring on his end.  Apparently the store has enough high tech telecommunications equipment to ring back when someone has been left on hold TOO LONG.

"Jello?"  That is not a misspelling.

"You left me on hold. The only reason you're talking to me now is because I'm so pissed off that you helped out the second person who called INSTEAD OF ME first that I waited to see if you would come back so I could get your name and talk to your superviser."

"But we are very shorthanded today."

"Being shorthanded has nothing to do with helping people in the order they called."

"What do you want?"

"I want to talk to  your superviser."

"He is on break."

"What is your name?"

"That is not important."

"Okay, then, bye."

He thinks it's over. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shopping for a new cellphone?

Anonymous said...

Sounds like SOP in today's world.  All names and supervisors are top secret.  I hope it's not over.  Keep us informed.

Anonymous said...

At least you got a person, and not one of the automaton menus that take 10 minutes to wade through and still get you the wrong person...who transfers you to an extension where you are promptly disconnected and you get to start all over again.

Good customer service is a dying art.
Anna

Anonymous said...

LOL...............get him!  

Anonymous said...

I called the cable company last night to get hooked up in the new place - I called before midnight, and finally decided to go to bed at 1:20 am and hung up. In the meantime, I read a lot of alerts, took the dogs out, went to the bathroom, got dressed for bed, brushed my teeth, and read about 100 pages of my current book. I called again this morning after assembling enough busy work, and someone answered without even getting voice mail. Last night I never reached a human in over 100 minutes. It drives me nuts, too. Voice mail in general raises my blood pressure. I feel your pain (anger)!

xoxo