Life-Threatening Levels Of Stubborness

CONTENT WARNING: Car Accident (Involves an infant. Everyone ends up okay.)
Like many call centres, the energy company I worked for had a policy that if we found out the caller was driving, we had to terminate the call. This was largely because driving while on the phone is illegal in the UK, and we couldn’t be seen to be encouraging illegal behaviour, but it was also for customer safety.

One day, I got a call from a woman, and as we were going through security questions, I heard the tell-tale sound of an indicator (turn signal/blinker).

Me: “Madam, are you currently driving?”

Caller: “Yes.”

Me: “Then I’m very sorry, but I must terminate this call. Please call back when you are either out of your vehicle or have pulled over.”

The woman started screaming at me, but I hung up as per company policy.

A few minutes later, I heard a colleague give the same call termination spiel. Then, a few minutes later, the same customer came through to me.

Caller: *Growling* “Stop hanging up on me!”

Me: “Have you pulled over or are you out of your vehicle?”

Caller: “I don’t have time to pull over!”

Me: “I am very sorry, but I am terminating this call.”

Caller: “If you f****** hang up on me one more time—”

I terminated the call.

I then spoke to my colleague and confirmed my suspicions that the customer they had spoken to moments earlier was the same one I had already spoken to twice. We informed our manager, who sent out a quick flag email to our team informing them of the situation.

The customer continued to call, getting angrier and angrier as the team had to disconnect the call. She did not even attempt to pull over. She kept screaming that she didn’t have time. After a solid twenty minutes of this, she got through to one of my colleagues who I’ll call Mary. Just as Mary was about to disconnect the call, the customer got into an accident.

Mary heard some horrible sounds such as bangs, crashes, groans, screams, and worst of, all a baby crying. The customer had had an infant in her car. Thankfully, we later found out that nobody was seriously hurt. Even so, an accident happening — especially one that involves an infant — is an awful thing to hear. Mary ended up crying in the bathroom, and in the end, she had to be sent home for the day. Even when she found out everyone was fine, she was still traumatised by the whole ordeal and ended up going on long-term sick leave due to mental health issues.

To top it all off, the customer lodged a complaint, blaming us for her accident. In her mind, if we had just taken her call, she never would have crashed. She tried to hold us responsible for the damages caused to her car and the car she hit, but the call recordings proved that not only had we told her to call back when it was safer and she had refused, but it also proved that she had been wilfully breaking the law. Unsurprisingly, she was deemed to be at fault by the police and her insurance company.

Are you wondering what she wanted in the end? It must’ve been something urgent, right? She was calling to find out when her next bill was due — something she could have done online or via our free-phone (toll-free) twenty-four-hour automated phone service.