Quick To Find Fault With Being Quick To Finding Fault

Me: “Hello. IT Help Desk. [My Name] speaking. How can I help?”

Caller: “Yes. I logged a job the other day. It’s been resolved already, so I’d just like to close it.”

(I proceed to take the reference number. I load the job up, thinking this will be a quick and easy call.)

Me: “Okay. That’s all sorted for you. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

Caller: “Yes. I’d just like to ask. When I phoned the other day and logged this fault, someone came and fixed it five minutes later.”

Me: “Well I’m… glad to hear that?”

Caller: “No, but—why, when I wasted all that time trying to get through to you, did no one tell me it had already been logged?”

Me: “Unfortunately, ma’am, we have a dozen staff taking hundreds of calls from thousands of users. If you tell us there’s a fault to log we can only take your word for it.”

(This clearly wasn’t the right answer. The user gets more and more agitated.)

Caller: “Yes, but, don’t you keep track of these things? Can’t you keep track of all these jobs? Why couldn’t someone have told me?”

Me: “Ma’am, if you’d told us you didn’t know whether or not it was logged, we could’ve investigated. We could have spent time trying to ascertain if a call had already been made to us regarding the issue. We certainly couldn’t do that as a routine matter for every call we receive.”

Caller: “I just don’t understand why the person I spoke to didn’t know! My time is very valuable. I’m a very busy person. I wasted a lot of time on that call!”

(This goes back and forth for a while. We’re reaching the 10 minute mark.)

Me: “I can only apologise again that we were unaware your fault had already been logged before you called. However, with all due respect, you didn’t know either. It is your printer. Also, even if we had told you, your complaint was about the length of time it took you to get through. It was time you would’ve wasted whether or not we logged your duplicate call. Finally, ma’am, your complaint is that you wasted your valuable time speaking to IT unnecessarily. Yet you’ve been going around in circles about this with me for 10 minutes now. I’m sorry, but I don’t know how else to answer your question. I am happy to hear that we were able to resolve your issue so quickly, though.”

Caller: *click*