Unfiltered Story #95722

I work at a well known supermarket delivering groceries to customers at home. I have recently started training for a supervisor role and this requires me to communicate with our central customer service hub regarding orders. The staff at this hub have an unfortunate habit of promising something before they know if its possible to do this. Here is one such interaction.

Me: Hello Dot Com, [my name] Speaking

Customer Serivce: Hello its [Name] here from [central customer service hub] I’ve got a customer on the line says, they were expecting shopping today at 10am but its 5pm now and there is no sign of it.

Me: One second lets try to track this down have you got the order number?

They give me the order number and I look it up.

Me: Ok I’ve got it here, it say’s that the order was stored due to a failed transaction. Unfortunately it was brought back to store.

Customer service: Ah ok, well the customer really wants their shopping today can you get it on a van now and send it out to them for 6pm?

Me: I’m sorry but that’s not possible, they haven’t paid and at this point the shopping was returned to the shelves so even if they did pay there would be nothing to give them.

Customer Service: Ah can you not just go and get the items again?

Me: No, there are over 50 items in this order I have no way to be sure that the ones that were originally picked are still in stock so I cant substitute and finally I have no spare vans to put the order onto.

Customer Service: Well that’s not quite good enough, I’ll need your name and I will talk to the store manager.

I proceed to give my name, ten minutes later the store manager comes in asks for my explanation, then gets onto the phone to the customer service team and explains that 1) There is not shopping 2) There is not pick team 3) there are no vans. At which point this customer service rep admits they promised to get the shopping out by 6pm and now has to explain they can’t.

We get at least 4 calls a week like this