Customer Service Horror Stories – From The Service Rep’s Perspective

Featured, Rant — By Elizabeth on October 27, 2010 4:45 pm

There are plenty of websites out there that talk about people’s horrible customer service experiences from THEIR side – the customers speak out and most of the time, the stories are worth hearing so that people in the customer service industry can learn what NOT to do and so that managers can know what to guard against when hiring customer service personnel.

What we don’t hear about a lot are the horror stories ABOUT the customers themselves.  Whether it is simply a bad customer, or whether the customer service rep lacks the power to fix the customer’s situation, a lot of times customer service reps have an extremely hard time of it.  And we’re not just talking about telemarketers catching people in the bathtub.  We’re talking horror, pure and simple.  Read and learn, and have some sympathy for a customer service rep who DOES care, who has had some pretty awful experiences.

The Background

The customer service rep in question worked for a title insurance agency.  While her main duties were executive assistant, she also assumed the responsibilities of “Customer Advocate,” which meant that anybody who was a customer to any of the company’s lines of business could call with complaints.  Most of the time, the “Consumer Advocate” merely had to get the customer to the right place in the chain of command, and overall she did very well at her job.  Every now and then, however, the job was simply impossible.

The Saddest Story First

At one rough time in the company’s history, several customer’s money was lost because of a snafu with several customer accounts.  A man called, complaining that the company had misplaced $70,000.00 of his money.  He demanded to be paid immediately.  Unfortunately, many other customers had lost money, the company was only filing claims at that point, not actually paying people back, and our customer service rep had to inform the man that she could take down his information, and that she would expedite the processing of the claim, and that she would stay on top of his claim, prioritizing it above all others.  With this particular customer service rep, the “consumer advocate” these were not empty promises.  These actions were not acceptable to the disgruntled customer, who proceeded to cry and shout at the customer service rep.

If this wasn’t a bad enough situation, the customer then informed the rep that because this money was “misplaced,” his wife had “blown her brains out” two days ago.  He said, “I don’t know how you people can sleep at night,”  The customer service rep replied, “Don’t worry sir, I can tell you that I won’t be sleeping tonight.”  And she didn’t.

The Most Frustrating

A female person called one day, stating that there was property for sale by someone else, but that the property actually belonged to her.  After several weeks of research, including old property records, liens, and the works, the customer service rep came up with the proper documentation and discovered that owner of the property for sale had misinterpreted their property lines, and that a good acre of property did, in fact, belong to the caller.

After getting people in the company up to VP level involved, the customer service rep finally got the caller an appointment with a local rep (the property was in Michigan) to sort things out.  When the customer service rep called a few days later to get some notes to close the file, she was informed that the caller was not, in fact, the owner of the mismarked property.  She was the sister of the owner, so could not claim the property on behalf of her sister.  When asked where her sister was, the original caller said she didn’t know.

As it turns out, her sister was in the backyard, under a tarp, and had been dead for weeks.  So much work to try to do the right thing, and all the while you’d been helping a killer?  Great.

The Weirdest

Another female caller called to dispute property lines because of land being sold.  As it turns out, the property did NOT belong to the caller, and while this was proved within an hour of the first call, the caller kept calling back, trying to talk to OTHER customer service reps.  Since this situation fell clearly within the “Consumer Advocate” realm, there was nobody else she could talk to.

Fast forward six weeks, when our erstwhile heroine has been hard at work.  Every day.  EVERY DAY, she talked to this woman who claimed that she was the rightful owner to this particular strip of land in Nevada.  Every day, the customer service rep told her the facts – that the woman’s family HAD owned the property, many years ago, and that the entire property was sold in 1972.  The caller refused to believe it, and kept calling.

One day, after six weeks of this, the customer service rep had all she could take.  She finally asked the caller, “Why is this so important to you?  I can see you’re calling from California, why exactly is this strip of land in Nevada so important to you.”

The caller replied, “Where else are the aliens going to land?  I told them they could land on MY land.  Now they won’t come.”

Great.

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