A Little Patience Has Some Pretty Results

I work in a call center for a big financial institution in the resolution group. I have to call this guy because his check is too low. He’s very frustrated by the unsolicited call. I give him my usual spiel to call back through the main customer service line and ask for me. Per his account, he’s elderly, and per my short interaction, likely a little hard of hearing.

He gets back through and screams at me for a while. No big deal — I’m used to that. I let him get it out.

Me: “Okay, sir, here’s why I’m calling. Your check is too short.”

I explain what could happen if he doesn’t remedy the situation.

Me: “We just need an extra [amount]. It needs to be a new check for the entire amount. We’ll return your first check.”

This results in a bunch of nonsensical yelling. He also can’t hear me well. Finally:

Customer: “I can’t write that small! Look, I tried to write the full amount, but I can’t write that small anymore!”

Okay, now we were at the root of the problem. Poor guy.

We discussed options. Could he get to the bank to have a check printed? Yup! Okay, let’s do that.

He got to the bank later that week and called me in a panic. There was a bank fee to have the check printed and he’s on a fixed income. I told him we’d cover it; he just had to save and send in proof of the fee.

He sent the check to my group’s mailing address which auto-sorted it to our specialty processing group. It was picked up by my favorite ol’ reliable processor and the bank fee was reimbursed.

In our group, we handled cases from beginning to end, so he could call me whenever he wanted. Obviously, he was very concerned about tax implications, so he called me maybe three times in the week it took to receive the check and process it. He was a nice old man — quite pleasant, actually.

That Christmas, my boss walked up with a silly grin. He had an envelope in his hand. In the envelope was a Christmas card with a developed photo of a pretty flower and a note from my favorite client wishing me a merry Christmas. He wanted to show me the flower in his garden. It’s been eight years since that interaction, and I’ll never throw that card and photo out. It meant a lot.