It Takes A Certain Sort

Its Christmas Eve - We Love A Challenge

Its 10.00am on Christmas Eve. The office is lightly manned as everything that can be sold, ordered, maintained or winged about is done. This Contact Centre is a television and broadband supplier.

There are very few calls coming in. Some to wish the call centre staff a happy holiday from our customers, which is very nice and others that are business-related contacts. Given that the installation teams will be finished in two hours and the service department four hours later, we are all relaxing and settling down to watch the television, eat at our desks, bitch and chill.

Now, a tip to all customers out there who want to receive a caring ear and the help from contact centre staff remember these things:-

· We are human

· Deep down we care

· We are poorly paid and the bottom of the food chain

· We are knowledgeable about our product and services

· Up to the point you finish your first sentence, we are on your side. What happens then is up to you

· We only have to be polite and follow the company line

· We have the power to help you and go that extra mile

· We know how the company works and know how to make things happen

· When a call reaches us, we have all your details, including how long you were on hold for us!! Remember that one. Lies about how long you waited is to us what clicking your fingers is to a waiter.........

My headset announces a new call in my headset,

It's an install query. Not promising given the limitations of the day.

My computer screen is populated automatically so I have all the customers details and call history. The caller is a woman. She is in tears on the phone. Trouble, this can go either way!

I great her with the standard company greeting. Now I wait patiently for the lady to speak to me. We are not judged on call lengths here. She is obviously in distress and I am sure that this caller doesn't want to be crying to a stranger so I patiently wait for her to be ready to talk to me.

The first thing the lady says is that she knows this is not my fault but needs my help. My caller apologises in advance, but if she shouts at all its frustration and anger at a man in a van. Now that's how to do it guys! I am now totally on her side and I want to help. I suspect this may be a challenge and in a contact centre where most conversations are less than interesting, a challenge is the spice of life.

It turns out that this customer was buying a really nice smart TV for her daughter at Christmas from an electrical store who was away from the house Christmas Eve. Three months ago, she called our sales team, bless their cottons, and organised an installation of cable tv for today and paid the install fee,

So far so good. Now, the morons in the installation team are subcontractors and perform this service for a number of companies. Their guys in the van are paid peanuts and make monkeys seem like Einstein.

Our customer told me she saw the van stop at the top of her drive. It sat there for less than a minute and drove off! Was there any chance I could get him to turn around and come back please. A simple request! I asked her if she would be ok if I put her on hold while I called the installations department. That was fine.

My screen had an update. The installation was listed as failed due to nobody in at the house. I called the installs manger, (for the disbelievers, we really do these things) and gave them the job number. I was advised the technician called at the customers door, rang, and there was no reply. I advised him that I had the customer on the line and told him what happened from the customers point of view. I knew who my money was on. He put me on hold for a minute while he contacted the tech. Now, Christmas eve, do I believe that call took place. You tell me!

He came back to me, insisting that the tech had called and that he was out of area now and would not go back. He hung up before I could pass the customers call direct to him, and boy, would I have loved to have done that.

Now I had to open the line back up to my customer. This is the pits. It's also that 50:50 moment because I had an idea, but it meant calling in a favour that's owed me and I want to know it's worthwhile and will be appreciated. I told her what I had been advised. The line went silent. The woman said that she had booked this so long ago to be sure something like this wouldn't happen. We don't have a great reputation. To be honest we don't deserve our reputation, but this would not be the time to defend us.

There were more tears, then a quiet voice asked me so quietly if there was anything at all I could do for them, it would be so appreciated. My heart melted, this one was worth the favour. I asked my caller if she would mind if I put her on hold and that I may be a while. I could have called her back, but nobody believes that and in this situation I did not want to add to the stress.

I called the service departments area manager. Now the service guys are employed by us and they HATE the installation department and getting one over on them is a dream come true. Add to that and it is Christmas Eve after all.

"Brian" I said. "How would you like to get one over on installs?"

"What's the story Pete? I know I owe you one, I'll see what I can do"

To cut a long story short I told him the full story from the sale to the run away tech. Brian put me on hold for nearly five minutes. I was sure that my caller, if she was still there, would be hopping mad at this wait but I dare not lose the line to Brian.

Click, Brian was back. He had a service engineer finishing a call about ten minutes down the road. It was his lunch break, but he would go straight to the customer and carry out the install for me. He then added that as this was Christmas Eve and he would get so much mileage out of it, he was not counting this against the favour that he owed me. I thanked him and got off the line double quick before he could change his mind.

I got my caller back on the line and apologised for the delay. She was fine, but silent now. You could cut the air with a knife. I told her that I had spoken with our service department and that there was an engineer just up the road who was on his lunch break, but will be with her shortly to carry out the job. More tears, tears of joy this time. They were infectious and I had a little wet eye moment too.

Anyway, I finished off my call and left my notes on the account, well the notes I wanted seen if anyone ever checked up this case.

About two hours later my headset beeped. An internal call. One of my team said they had someone on the phone who wanted to speak to me. They gave me the account number and passed the call over. It was the lady from earlier.

She called me back because she wanted to thank me for all my help. The service man had called, a lovely guy apparently and had put a cable point in several rooms but only had her sign for one point as we bill by the point, had checked everything and installed and fitted the daughter's TV which was a pure bonus. She wondered if she may speak with the service manager. I called Brian and he took the call with a grin on his face I am sure.

Later on I had a sneak look at her account. There was a new note from Brian instructing accounts to credit this woman's account for the value of the initial sale and install fee. Santa was out early.

The best thing for us was a happy customer for sure, but on the sadistic front, the instillation company would not only not be paid for this failed install, but be fined and billed for the service call!

Result!!!

Oh and hohoho (it was Christmas after all)