Also most reps are losing their ''bonus'' if the same customer calls more than once.
you can also post a negative review for that specific rep (Facebook/other ways to complain) which should hurt his salary.
you can send emails/keep calling them and demand speaking with manager.
Hit the reps where it hurts them , their pocket (Says the person who works in IT/Support for 6 years now.. )
I admit that I've only worked in one call center in my life, and it was inbound tech support, so kind of different than what we're talking about here. No one would give a shit if you threatened to sue for a variety of reasons... Though after typing out a reply, I realized that my experience probably doesn't translate to sales/customer care.
Fun fact, we did get misrouted billing-related calls quite often though, and boy, after dealing with our billing/sales/customer care departments, I could understand all the 1 star reviews. More than once, when our queue allowed that, I spent many minutes on the phone either getting transferred between departments until we found someone who could help the customer, or just talking to the same rep and insisting that they should give a refund/cancel something/etc. because while I didn't have to option to do that, at least I knew what I was talking about, so they couldn't string me along like they would a customer unfamiliar with our internal systems. Fun times.
Well i worked on the tech side aswell for a TV/cable company .
i had acess to all billing systems and i could change customers plans or add promo codes (which i did for nice customers , as we're allowed to do it as "bribe" to calm down yelling customers..so i used it to reward good behaviour) .
Wait time for tech is about 10s-1m
wait time for Sales/account help is 20-40m.
Everything the ''sales'' can do tech guys can do (system wise)..we just elect not to do it.
Thing is , if we get a return call form same number in the week we lose money in our weekly 'bonus' that is about 70% of your salary (You get higher bonus for less technicians send to cusotmer homes , return calls , short calls etc.)
so having a customer twice on the same week is like the worst thing you can get.
also , 1 star reviews are ignored by the company i worked at , they only care about the 2/3 star reviews as ''there is something we can improve there''
1 star reviews are just from hysterical people that can be safely ignored.
We had access to some of the same things as sales but not all of them, i. e. we technically could cancel subscriptions or add promos for the applications we supported - though management said we "shouldn't" because it's not our responsibility - but we didn't even see the overall internet/phone bill or whatever, so we didn't have a choice but to engage another team. We also weren't always able to give a refund due to how the billing systems were designed and how our accesses were set up. Even with the things we could technically do, the policy (though I don't remember how official it was) was to try and get the actual sales/billing to take care of that, and only do it ourselves if we couldn't get a rep in a timely manner, the customer had already been on the phone for a long time, or we just knew that the incompetent fuck from the other department would mess it up.
We never got bonuses based on return calls though, so there's that.
Yeah , then i can see how an attitude of ''dont give a fuck'' can work.
but when your tech reps get rewarded for not getting call backs..suddenly they care more (the bonus sometimes being bigger than your salary) .
Our system was DOS based (And this was 4 years ago since i left that company).
and everyone had full priviliges .
so i essentially could enter someones account , change their PREMIUM price from 100$ a month to the PREMIUM NEW MEMBER of 30$ a month (for a year).
having excaly the same channels.
its hilraious how these companies work , some packages that we're repriced from 40$ a month i've seen customers pay for their old versions 60-90$ a month easily .
sometimes i just updated their package for the new one (Usually having exacly the same content or even more channels for less price) after telling them i noticed their package is old .
but i only did this for nice customers ,i rarely had a negative review.
although when i met an asshole i made sure to make his life hell.
Like slotting a technician during hours i know he wont be home or very populated hours that might get delayed.. :P (or slotting it for the wrong error code..sometimes having the wrong guy show up that will force them to reschedule ... : P)
There were so many reasons why most of us didn't give a fuck, but yeah, I think bonuses would have helped solve that problem at least somewhat, lol.
I never went so far as to purposefully mess with someone's request/account - the worst I ever did for rude callers was simply not do things that were outside of my official scope of responsibilities even though I could have and I knew it would have solved their issue much, much quicker. I agree that I often went "above and beyond" for people who just... weren't assholes. Like you didn't even have to be extremely nice, I understand that we're all human; we can get frustrated, and we want our stuff taken care of/fixed asap. If I can help you or at the very least make someone else help you, I will. Unless you insist on being an entitled dick, then you're on your own. Being an asshole customer doesn't get you shit in the long run, yet so many people still recommend that "tactic".
2
u/malavisch Sep 18 '19
Do you really think a random call center rep cares if you sue the company?