Ever Worked In A Call Centre? Tell Your Funny Stories Here!

the_syco

dlofnep wrote: »

The worst kind is the know-it-alls. They call in, and when you ask them to do something - they get narky with you telling you how stupid you are and how it won't work.. and then when it does actually resolve their issue, they go dead-silent and then hang up.

Aye, got that a lot. Also got a load of the f**kers telling me they were a doctor... as if it somehow made a difference. They were ringing me cos their animal had pissed on the laptop (according to the lads in the warehouse, when they got the laptop in), that they knew their rights, and that we should give them a full refund.

dlofnep wrote: »

Mostly from ignorant cockney ****.

Did the company you worked in rhyme with clienthell, and was located in Swords, Dublin?

I worked in a hotel reservation company - but not as a call centre type person. The guys had a file where they kept details of all the stoopid things people did/said.

One that I remember was an idiot woman insisted that we ring the hotel to tell them that she would be bringing her own porridge! weirdo.

Blush_01

The closest to funny, come to think of it, was the man who rang three times in a row looking for "the sex" and got me each time. The people who hit on you on the phone are odd. There were a few marriage proposals thrown out.

Not funny, but there was a Sunday afternoon when a man in his 50s rang thinking he was calling Eircom. He spent 15 minutes telling me how Eircom had billed his dead mother for her phone usage (from beyond the grave), he had just lost his job, he had a heart condition and so on. My supervisor was listening in and by the end of the call she was in tears. That was a bit tough.

source

Yeah i've had many the person calling in giving out about eircom, what i could never understand, is that they went through the automated queueing system, so they would have heard the company name at least 7 times before i gave the standard greeting,and they still thought they were calling eircom.....brilliant!!!!:D:D:D

Berty

Something funny something funny.

I was threatened with pain, misery and death from customers on a daily basis. Not others peoples silly phone issues/networking. I was fcking up peoples lives by not paying their mortgage payments through insurance and loans and stuff.

The receptionist calls me from London one day saying a guy is standing in front of her being restrained by security and wants me to come down in person to explain why I will not pay his insurance claim. I grudginly accepted to take the phone call to which I asked by the customer to come and see him.

I said I was not in fact in the country. I was in Shannon. This started the usual problem with "but your phone number is a UK number".

End of conversation was him saying "Your fcking lucky your not in the country" to which I replied "could you put me onto the receptionist sir"

"Hello reception, Anna speaking"
"Chuck him out"
"Of course"

Click*

source

Concussion (usually on military and Limerick forum) used to work out there too, gave a few funny accounts of people shouting "you give me cash money" down the phone to him.

Sofaspud

I was reading this earlier on my phone while at work (directory enquiries), and while I was reading it I got 2 pranks from the same person.
The first was asking me for something in Navan called "Brottle", he didn't know how to pronounce it so spelled it to me, obviously expecting me to say I don't have a brottle(sic) in Navan, when I didn't say that he just asked me how it was pronounced.

Next one was asking for "Icup" in Navan, this time he didn't know how it was spelt, after I searched it he asked me to tell him how I was spelling it. Smartarse that I am, responded "I for indigo, C for Charlie, U for Uniform, P for papa", he just said "you smart little bastard" and hung up.

The weirdest call I ever got was a few weeks after I started there. Some very very drunk (or otherwise inebriated) called looking for newstalk, cos there was a piece on the radio about online dating, and older women getting with younger men, and she ended up changing her mind about what radio station she wanted, until she eventually settled on RTE, cos "I just wanna get me bit!"

X-Calibre

Working in a breakdown assistance call centre I had this one call, the woman was mentally unstable. Started telling me how people had broken into her house and "moved everything around", but they werent in the house anymore. I politely told her it was a matter for the gardai and that we only deal with broken down cars. She said the gardai told her it wasnt an emergency. Her story then changed to "MY CAR IS BROKEN DOWN, THERES SMOKE COMING OUT OF IT AND IT'S POLLUTING THE AIR, POLLUTING THE AIR!!"

I just had myself on silent and listened to her rant for about 10 minutes before hanging up because there were calls holding. Funniest call I've ever taken :pac:

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

So this is what ye all do when you're not taking calls, hang out on boards.ie

Pyr0

Well not really.. We hang out on boards during calls too :pac:

Jamfan

the_syco wrote: »

Some things don't change :cool: Was on the home user market back in 2007: was great fun.

The customer is never right. And in most cases, the customer was ringing me cos they f**ked up and needed my help. That, or they dropped their laptop, and it cracked.

Funnist story: some loon broke their power adapter. Cool, says I, post it in, and we'll send out a new one. Do I need a box, they ask? No, I say, it's only the power adapter that is broken, so put the power adapter into a plastic bag, and mail it in. The loon posted their laptop (minus a power adapter) to us, in a plastic bag. It was smashed to bits. The loon could't figure it out, as it wasn't dmaged before he gave it to the couier (who was driving a van)... :rolleyes::D

...back in 2007? Working for Gateway? huh?

Anyway hi there ex-colleagues!

I used to work on the German Major Accounts line. Nice handy one. lol

Funny stories... OK, once we were working on December 24 and we were getting calls in from Germany. Now, December 24 is Christmas Day itself in Germany so some of the German lads were disgusted at the 'culturelessness' of this. So they started patching the calls through to swingers clubs and other PC manufacturers hotlines. hehe. They called Gateway and were put through to Dell. That taught 'em!

I'm sure there were loads of other funny incidents, but I just can't think of any offhand.

alexandros

Setup: This is in Austin Texas (US) one week before Easter in 1998- during a random weekly Quality Control monitoring session of sales-reps selling long distance plans for MCI/WorldCom.
*Sales-reps are not aware that they are being monitored.
*Sales-reps wages are dependent on commissions from selling service upgrades.

Sales Rep: Hi my name is Douglas and I am calling in behalf of MCI/WorldCom; do you have a minute do discuss your long distance phone plan?

(voice of a little boy - approximate age 8-10)
Boy: What??

Sales Rep: Hey there young man; are your parents home?

Boy: No

Sales Rep: Are you home alone?

Boy: No

Sales Rep: Is there an adult there that I can speak with?

Boy: No

Sales Rep: Uhumm..ok.. Hey do you know who Jesus is?

Boy: Yeah

Sales Rep: You know that Easter is coming up next week right?

Boy: Yeah

Sales Rep: Do you know what would be really great?

Boy: [silent]

Sales Rep: If you got your parents a gift for Easter.. It would make them so happy.. do you want to get your parents a gift for Easter to make them happy?

Boy: Yeah!!

Sales Rep: Ok.. good! I am going to set-up a new phone line in your house that dials directly to Jesus.. it’s our Easter Special here… So all you have to do is pick up the phone and talk directly to Jesus… doesn’t that sound cool?.. think your parents would like that???

Boy: Yeah!!

Sales Rep: Ok then.. all you have to do is stay on the phone and some other man is going to come on the line and start talking to you.. (this process is called third-party-verification) and he is going to ask you a couple of questions to make sure you ordered this line to Jesus but he is going to call it a “service upgrade”.. all you have to do is say YES to everything he says. It will be quick and easy.

Boy: Ok

Sales Rep: Ok good.. and remember don’t tell your parents about it until Easter. It’s a surprise.

Boy: Ok

--END CALL--

It took the company over a month to find & terminate the sales-rep.
There were 3 drive-by-shootings targeting the front lobby of the call-center in the 6 months that I worked there. (no injuries)
MCI/WorldCom filled for bankruptcy in July of 2002.
Good times!:)

starflake

Ultimate Chin wrote: »

Maybe hes just really appreciative?

YEah plus I do have a lovely voice.... :P

Lockstep

Sofaspud wrote: »

Next one was asking for "Icup" in Navan, this time he didn't know how it was spelt, after I searched it he asked me to tell him how I was spelling it. Smartarse that I am, responded "I for indigo, C for Charlie, U for Uniform, P for papa", he just said "you smart little bastard" and hung up.

Swish

starflake

beertons wrote: »

Getting back to that love you comment, ever been hit on by a customer that you took a payment for, solved a query, reconnected them, even ceased a line?

Yeah ya always get people makin sleazy comments... our customers are in the UK and they're always making comments like "oh... lovely irish colleen" and stuff like that... People are constantly asking do you have facebook and when you ask for their phone number to access their details you sometimes get "oooh that's very forward" and stuff mostly old guys guys !

Sleipnir

I had a guy called Mary trying to chat me up while I tried to fix his backup drive. (Ooh er)

HashSlinging

User - I got the internet on a floppy disk, but it wont work.

me - have you got a modem.

User - But the internet is on the disk, why would i need a modem (irate)

jim o doom

I unfortunately have worked in a few call centres down the years.

This story relates to a time I was working for an internet payments service which many people use to pay for items bought over a well known internet auction site..

My job at the time was more or less the sh!tty end of the stick; people rang us when locked out of their accounts, or they had basically been ripped off, or their items had not arrived or whatever - in many cases we could help, but in plenty, the customer was simply f*cked due to our "consumer agreement" which everyone HAS to agree to, to make use of the service.

One call I received, was from a fully deaf person - and to contact us via phone they had to make use of a special internet service for deaf people -where they are basically using a "chat room" to talk to an operator - and that operator makes a phone call for them - while they are "chatting" to the operator. This obviously enables them to make the call - this in itself was unusual to me - because I had never come accross or heard of the (admittedly useful to deaf people) service beofre.

In this case, the customer had been the sad victim of a fraudulent transaction and had lost a relatively small amount of money -which I explained in many different ways, that unfortunately; nothing could be done.

The phone call lasted a FULL hour and a half - with the deaf person via an operator making threats against THEMSELF; they thought I hated deaf people, that I wanted him to kill himself, that he was going to hurt himself if we didn't give back his money, etc etc.. clearly none of the above going to work, because rules are rules, even for crazy deaf people.

What made the call amusing and bearable for me, was that I also managed to have a banter with the operator who was "passing on" this mentalists woes about what a fruitcake she had on her hand - I'm sure both myself and her might potentially have gotten in trouble for the "aside" conversation that the customer was never aware of - but it was worth it; having to put up with an hour and a half of mad abuse, you need some sort of outlet!



That being said - I dealt with a blind man a week later & did my best, but failed to solve his issues; but I was ringing him back so constantly and was so nice to him, that he said; "even though you haven't solved the problem you've been so nice I'd give you a hug if I was there in person".. so not all phone calls were utterly horrible, some of them were good too

homerjay2005

beertons wrote: »

Getting back to that love you comment, ever been hit on by a customer that you took a payment for, solved a query, reconnected them, even ceased a line?

yep, ive worked for 2 diffent companies (both jobs involved me giving my company email address), one irish based and one english based, and had a few calls were english woman would stay on the phone just cos they loved the irish accent. one woman asked me about 10 times one day to say " you fu*cking c*nt" down the phone as she had been watching a irish film that day and loved the accents and the way it was said. needless to say, as much as i wanted, i couldnt! some of the english names that we got were halarious, i wont put them here as they could end up in google search!!

one particular lad, we will call him Geoff Johnsen (not real name) rang in one day and had had a sex chance and from now on wanted to be called lady jennifer. this went on for about 2 years and eventually this made up name started appearing on crime reports and the lad was a big fraud.

in the irish based jobs, one particular girl used to email me every so often to help fix this and that for her and more often than not, there was nothing wrong.

one woman complained that i called her a stupid bitc* to my boss who sat beside me and was listening to the call and then had to listen to the woman swear blind that i did it until she played the entire call back to her.

theres endless stories, generically its just people ringing up and theres madness in the background. one woman had about 20 kids and the dog ran in while she was on the phone and went for a sh*t on the carpet. i could go on and on.

another lad abused person after person over something stupid and claimed he was a big film director. google showed he was a nobody with some low level casting in some little village in the south of england.

i aint worked on phones in about 3 or 4 years now but my current job is indirectly based on it and i still hear some stories. lads getting messages on face book from customers, getting pictures of customers send to their emails, pictures of their dogs/kids etc etc :eek: have to say, ive checked out fb or bebo profiles of people that ive called!!!

Pyr0

I wouldn't say I get "funny" calls but I do get a lot of headwrecking calls ! The tolerable stuff would be not knowing where control panel is or how to set up wireless networks etc The headmelt ones are the customers that can't find the X to close anything down, or internet explorer, don't know how to delete and address from the address bar or highlight anything.

The annoying ones are when people get snotty at you because they have to plug the modem in to get BB, they just can't seem to understand that the modem needs power to even turn on before having a chance to get BB access. They then have a strop when you explain the modem then needs to connected to the phone socket on the wall and bang on about false advertising :rolleyes:

A guy here had a call that went something like this :

Him :"Hello welcome to XXX how can I help ?"

Customer : "Hello, I'm having trouble closing down anything on my pc"

Him : "Okay, what you have to do is click on the little X in the top right corner of the screen and that should close anything you want"

Customer : "I've been doing that but it's not working !!"

Him : "Are you left clicking or right clicking ?"

Customer : "No, I've been tapping the screen with my finger for 10 minutes !"

Him : "...*face palm*.."

I can remember one time I had to explain to a customer what the internet was, how it worked, what google was used for, how google worked. She was lovely about it and wasn't biting the head off me but that didn't make it any less painful than it was.

jim o doom

Pyr0 wrote: »

I can remember one time I had to explain to a customer what the internet was, how it worked, what google was used for, how google worked. She was lovely about it and wasn't biting the head off me but that didn't make it any less painful than it was.

haha yeah I had a good few, where people using *online payments service* - who had managed to set up the service, use *online auction site* - use said service to pay for item & at a later date had lost their password.

The way you get our password is simple - click lost password, fill in email addres; it gets emailed to you.

Literally every day of the week I had to guide someone on how to use hotmail.. (how they managed to use the service in the firstplace without knowing email is beyond me). "Yes Ms Joe blow.. do you see the big white line on the top of the screen? yes that's the address bar, just type in "www.hotmail.com". Are you at the hotmail screen yet? You don't know? *slaps head off table*.

Carpaydiem

A few years ago when I was working for one of the directory enquiries services (11850) while in college, I had a very interesting (and long) conversation with an absolute nut-job one saturday afternoon.

She had called requesting a number for RTE's complaints line.

She wanted to complain to RTE that the GAA Championship semi-finals were fixed, thats why there were so many replays!

I briefly informed her that I'd doubt RTE would have much to do with match fixing, and that her query would be better directed towards the GAA! Needless to say, she was very thankful about pointing out her error, and proceeded to waffle contstantly about it, then insisted on trying to meet up with me for dinner for being so helpful, and I sounded like a 'lovely lad'!

My team leader logged into the call after about 20 minutes (calls are usually 20 seconds!) and the two of us took the absolute p1$$ out of the woman! It was hilarious (although now, it seems a lot funnier than reading what I've just typed!).

I also remember, we used to have to answer the phone "good morning/afternoon/evening eleven-eight-fifty information [name] speaking" so one day I thought it would be funny if we changed it slightly to see if anyone would notice.

We then started answering "......eleven-eight-filthy-information..." you could almost hesr the confusion of people on the other end when they weren't quite sure what they just heard us say.....

Lockstep

The best call centre story was something someone posted on boards a while ago. They had a coworker who was very deaf and would have the customer repeating everything down the phone endless;ly. Then one day, they got a call from a guy with a stutter. The phone call lasted foreever:D

starflake wrote: »

People are constantly asking do you have facebook and when you ask for their phone number to access their details you sometimes get "oooh that's very forward" and stuff mostly old guys guys !

Old people have facebook these days?
Oh dear.

Dord

I worked in a call center before, and I happened to be trained in on a few services they handled. So, because of this they switched me day to day when they needed an extra person.

Now, anyone who works in a call center and has to do the whole introduction thingy will know that it becomes second nature after a while. You don't even think about saying it. "Hello welcome to blah, blahblah speaking how can I help you?"

So, one time when I was moved from doing calls for a utility company to a phone company I mistakenly did the introduction for the utility company.... que slightly confused customer who began to talk to me about their utility company bill. I made some excuse and ended the call.

the_syco

Jamfan wrote: »

...back in 2007? Working for Gateway? huh?

Aye. Gateway had a small support centre. Was populated by a few lads from Gateway (as in the actual Gateway plant), and others who had joined the company that supported Gateway customers. 3 lads supported the legacy lines (for the old computers in Ireland), and the rest supported the Gateway/eMachines that were bought in the UK.

jim o doom wrote: »

That being said - I dealt with a blind man

Reminds me of when I was in Eircom, talking to a blind woman, setting up her internet connection.
Me: is there anyone else in the house with you?
Woman: yes, my husband
Me thinks "hell yes, he should be able to do this in a few minutes"
Me: can he see
Woman: no, he's blind also

The call lasted a while. Turns out that there were alone in the countryside, with the nearest neighbours half a mile down the road...

=-=

Got someone to reboot their machine by down a hard shut down. They then started it up again, and it came on pretty fast. Odd, I thought

Me: what button did you press?
Woman: the one on the computer
Me: the box where the screen is, or where you put the CD's into?
Woman: the box with the screen
Me: ...
Me: do you see the box where you put the CDs into? can you hold the power button down for 10 seconds...

Dord wrote: »

I made some excuse and ended the call.

Also works for abusive w@nkers: I'm just going to put you on hold...
(CLICK)

Dord

the_syco wrote: »

Also works for abusive w@nkers: I'm just going to put you on hold...
(CLICK)

Nah, the best thing for abusive w@nkers is to act REALLY nice to them. It pisses them off even more.

preilly79

I used to work for an airline and got to hear about the stupid calls to reservations. One customer wanted to know if we could stop off at a town in the middle of the country to pick up his friend.

ZiMZuM

Best one i ever heard was when i was working for an ISP and around the time of the big floods in Sheffield 2 years ago a college beside me got the following call:

Agent:welcome to $&% my name is "£" how can i help you?

Member:(Irate)MY WIRELESS WONT WORK....rant

Agent:Ok Sir,well can you go to your router for me please?

Member:No i cant!

Agent:Ok,why cant you?

Member: Because its downstairs under 4 feet of water!!

Agent: ...............*face palm:pac:

Wagon

I taken crap off an incredable amount of arseholes in my time of working in call centres. I've worked in two, and I'll never go for the work again. Soul destroying. And I feell ive done my time in them.

On the other hand it can also be hilarous. I heard of one bloke calling up and told us the cup holder on his PC was broken and when he pressed the little button on the case, it wouldn't come out.

beertons

Or how about the couple that are in the process of divorcing, and both ring up at seperate times asking for us to monitor all the calls made, record them, and inform if certain numbers are called. Also to monitor the calls of the other person they were calling. They couldn't understand when you said no, then asked to speak to a supervisor, you know how it goes. I usually ended the conversation by saying that the other partner asked me to let them know when the other one called and what they wanted. That usualy shut them up!