Unfiltered Story #279564

I work for an office that is part of a global franchise. We use a paid system that connects our phones to a call center after hours, so callers never have to leave a voicemail and wait for someone to respond. However, the call center definitely leaves some things to be desired… My favorite two examples are as follows:
First, [Agent 1] had multiple calls come in for him one weekend. The only reason we even found out about this was because one of those callers tried again during regular business hours. When our normal receptionist answered, the caller started off by saying they were concerned that [Agent 1] would leave our company so abruptly without informing them, and asked where he had gone. We responded that, no, of course he is still part of this company as he has been for over 20 years. Apparently, the call center had told the caller that they had no idea who [Agent 1] was, what he did, or who he worked for (in pretty much those exact words), despite him clearly being on the contact list that we had provided the call center with. It took multiple calls to the call center and multiple versions of our contact list sent over before this stopped happening.
More recently, a call came in for [Agent 2] after hours. Specifically, the caller wanted to know if our office was open on the weekend so they could come in and drop off a check for [Agent 2]. The call center told them that they didn’t know (despite us also providing them with our regular hours of operation and the fact that, you know, they answer our calls all weekend) but that they would reach out to us and have us let the caller know. Well, instead of asking us, they somehow got us confused with a totally unrelated office of the same brand, located on the complete opposite side of the country! A representative from that office, thinking the check in question was for one of their agents, contacted the caller and let them know that they are open all weekend so they could come drop the check off anytime. As with the last scenario, we did not know any of this had happened at first, until [Agent 2] confronted the owners, upset that someone would have told his client that we were open on weekends when we aren’t and never have been.
I haven’t heard about any more recent incidents like this, but the owners are still working to find a better alternative to our lackluster call center.