Business Phone Call Don’ts
Mar. 31st, 2017 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2nDpKne:
* the one where I have to guess why you’re calling, and you tell me an aggrieved story about this thing you have that’s wrong, and you just want to know, you know, if there’s some other– well the thing i have, it’s wrong, see, and it’s just– it’s too A, and too B, and too C and why do people even, and I went on this trip with my son– who’s a lawyer, he’s very good with computers too– and we went on this trip, and this object I have, it was just– it was so unsatisfactory– really ruined the whole– and it takes me ten minutes to get you to ask me if there’s some other object that could possibly fill the void in your heart and do the opposite thing from the unsatisfactory object you have.
Bonus points if you already called our other store and they have it in stock and they’d told you my location might have the accessory pack, which was really what you were calling to ask.
* the one where you call and ask if we perform a standard service, which in fact, we do, but first you have to describe this standard service as if I’ve never heard of it before and nobody in history has ever before wanted such a specific thing (bonus points if you misuse a technical term in a really confusing way so it sounds like you’re talking about something else entirely)– and then you have to tell me at great length about why you want this standard service, which really, is the main thing that we do here– and ask me several questions that are so basic as to be meaningless, and i get that you don’t know that this is literally what we do here, except how did you know to call us except that it says right in the phone book that that’s literally what we do here?– and then at the end you make sure to get my name and tell me what time you’ll be here, like you’re making an appointment, to come to my store, and do the exact thing we do here, except actually I don’t work in the department that does that and I just got the phone because the retail clerk was busy, I work in online sales and you won’t see me, so I’ve told you my name but I’m also going to tell you to ask for Literally Anyone Who Works Here to set you up at the self-serve kiosk that we have for the customers who want the standard service that is in fact the main thing we do here.
These aren’t really don’ts, these are just the phone calls I’ve answered in my first fifteen minutes of work today.
Bonus round of one I had a couple of weeks ago:
* the one where you call and I pick up the phone and do the standard [businessname], [myname] spkg, c’nhlpu slur that i do mindlessly every time the phone rings, and you say, excuse me? i didn’t get that? and so I repeat the business name in case it was that you weren’t sure you dialed the right number, because you don’t know me from Adam so why the fuck would you really care what my name was, and you say, snippily, I know what I dialed, i would like to know to whom I am speaking, and so I say my name again, slowly, bewildered, because why, do you know me? and you say hm as if that means something (spoiler: we retail workers know what this means. it means that you are the type of person who likes feeling powerful, and so you are going to look for something to be offended by so you can complain to a manager later, there’s literally no other reason to give a fuck what my name is at the beginning of a conversation) and then you begin a meandering story about a standard service we offer and the extremely unique way in which you intend to use it which is exactly like every other person that uses the service, and I have to pause and cough so I say “excuse me” and cough, but you keep talking and I missed something, so I ask, “sorry, you mean, like the thing, the main thing that we do? of course we can help you, we’d be delighted,” and you get huffy and say “well then I’ll take my business elsewhere!” and hang up on me.
Whut. I mean, the demanding my name at the beginning was a hint it’d go this way, I just expected to have to work harder for it. [Um also good luck taking this elsewhere, I mean, it’s a standard service we offer, but literally nobody else within 100 miles does it. You could call our other location, though, they send it to us to do, but then we wouldn’t have to talk to you so I’d be super down.]
(Asking someone’s name at the end of a conversation, if you didn’t catch it, makes sense if you’ve really discussed something unusual, and want to be able to refer back to the conversation! It’s not unreasonable. I called and spoke to X, you say, and X told me you could take a look at my weird problem, and the clerk knows who X is and one hopes has been forewarned by X that a dude with a weird problem is coming in. Sensible! But you don’t need to say I spoke to X and determined that you do what it says you do in the phone book, please pull her away from whatever else she’s doing to come and wait on me while I fail to attempt to use the self-serve kiosk to do what literally everyone who comes here wants to do!)
Like. I get that people are people and everyone wants human understanding and such. That’s chill. But the amount of actual fucking therapy people want from goddamn retail clerks is sort of out of hand.
* the one where I have to guess why you’re calling, and you tell me an aggrieved story about this thing you have that’s wrong, and you just want to know, you know, if there’s some other– well the thing i have, it’s wrong, see, and it’s just– it’s too A, and too B, and too C and why do people even, and I went on this trip with my son– who’s a lawyer, he’s very good with computers too– and we went on this trip, and this object I have, it was just– it was so unsatisfactory– really ruined the whole– and it takes me ten minutes to get you to ask me if there’s some other object that could possibly fill the void in your heart and do the opposite thing from the unsatisfactory object you have.
Bonus points if you already called our other store and they have it in stock and they’d told you my location might have the accessory pack, which was really what you were calling to ask.
* the one where you call and ask if we perform a standard service, which in fact, we do, but first you have to describe this standard service as if I’ve never heard of it before and nobody in history has ever before wanted such a specific thing (bonus points if you misuse a technical term in a really confusing way so it sounds like you’re talking about something else entirely)– and then you have to tell me at great length about why you want this standard service, which really, is the main thing that we do here– and ask me several questions that are so basic as to be meaningless, and i get that you don’t know that this is literally what we do here, except how did you know to call us except that it says right in the phone book that that’s literally what we do here?– and then at the end you make sure to get my name and tell me what time you’ll be here, like you’re making an appointment, to come to my store, and do the exact thing we do here, except actually I don’t work in the department that does that and I just got the phone because the retail clerk was busy, I work in online sales and you won’t see me, so I’ve told you my name but I’m also going to tell you to ask for Literally Anyone Who Works Here to set you up at the self-serve kiosk that we have for the customers who want the standard service that is in fact the main thing we do here.
These aren’t really don’ts, these are just the phone calls I’ve answered in my first fifteen minutes of work today.
Bonus round of one I had a couple of weeks ago:
* the one where you call and I pick up the phone and do the standard [businessname], [myname] spkg, c’nhlpu slur that i do mindlessly every time the phone rings, and you say, excuse me? i didn’t get that? and so I repeat the business name in case it was that you weren’t sure you dialed the right number, because you don’t know me from Adam so why the fuck would you really care what my name was, and you say, snippily, I know what I dialed, i would like to know to whom I am speaking, and so I say my name again, slowly, bewildered, because why, do you know me? and you say hm as if that means something (spoiler: we retail workers know what this means. it means that you are the type of person who likes feeling powerful, and so you are going to look for something to be offended by so you can complain to a manager later, there’s literally no other reason to give a fuck what my name is at the beginning of a conversation) and then you begin a meandering story about a standard service we offer and the extremely unique way in which you intend to use it which is exactly like every other person that uses the service, and I have to pause and cough so I say “excuse me” and cough, but you keep talking and I missed something, so I ask, “sorry, you mean, like the thing, the main thing that we do? of course we can help you, we’d be delighted,” and you get huffy and say “well then I’ll take my business elsewhere!” and hang up on me.
Whut. I mean, the demanding my name at the beginning was a hint it’d go this way, I just expected to have to work harder for it. [Um also good luck taking this elsewhere, I mean, it’s a standard service we offer, but literally nobody else within 100 miles does it. You could call our other location, though, they send it to us to do, but then we wouldn’t have to talk to you so I’d be super down.]
(Asking someone’s name at the end of a conversation, if you didn’t catch it, makes sense if you’ve really discussed something unusual, and want to be able to refer back to the conversation! It’s not unreasonable. I called and spoke to X, you say, and X told me you could take a look at my weird problem, and the clerk knows who X is and one hopes has been forewarned by X that a dude with a weird problem is coming in. Sensible! But you don’t need to say I spoke to X and determined that you do what it says you do in the phone book, please pull her away from whatever else she’s doing to come and wait on me while I fail to attempt to use the self-serve kiosk to do what literally everyone who comes here wants to do!)
Like. I get that people are people and everyone wants human understanding and such. That’s chill. But the amount of actual fucking therapy people want from goddamn retail clerks is sort of out of hand.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-31 06:41 pm (UTC)