(I’m working tech support with one of my friends. A slightly annoying, but not particularly unpleasant task comes up that needs done.)
Coworker: “Would you like me to do it, or shall I?”
Me: “Well, if you really want to do it that badly, go right ahead.”
(She realized what she said after a couple seconds and we had a good laugh and she went to take care of it.)
(I am about to reset a customer’s modem and I want to know if it will disconnect our call when I do.)
Me: “Are you using a cell phone right now?”
Customer: “I have a laptop.”
Me: “…Are you using a cell phone to talk to me right now?”
Customer: “I’ve got a laptop.”
Me: *giving up* “What I’m doing will reboot your modem.”
Customer: “That’s okay. I’m on a cellphone.”
Caller: “Hi, the program I use to give demos to customers has stopped working.”
Me: “Okay, what is the program that you use?”
Caller: *names third-party free trial program that our company doesn’t use*
Me: “And what’s the problem?”
Caller: “It’s asking me to pay to use it.”
Me: “Okay… there’s nothing I can actually do about that. That is a third-party paid service. Our company does not have any accounts or contracts with that vendor, so we don’t have a company account we can use.”
Caller: “But it worked before.”
Me: “They have a free trial, but once that trial is over you would need to pay for an account.”
Caller: “It’s not working. They told me to call Help Desk.”
Me: “I’m afraid this is not a technical issue that we can help with. This program requires a paid account to use it, and our company doesn’t have one. You’d need to work with your department head to put in a purchase order for an account for this program. That doesn’t go through us.”
Caller: “But all my coworkers use it, and they don’t pay for it!”
Me: “Better not mention that to Legal.”
Caller: “Hey, I can’t connect to my home wifi when I’m not at home.”
Me: “Sir, it won’t, as your wifi has a range limitation.”
Caller: “Well, I was in the mall and I wanted to know what the gas prices are.”
Me: “Sir, do you have a data plan on your cell?”
Caller: “I DON’T KNOW! I WANT TO CONNECT TO MY HOME WIFI! YOU’RE NO HELP AT ALL!” *click*
(One of the few good policies is that we can hang up, with no warning, on customers if they start cursing at us.)
Technical Support Representative #1: “[Company] tech support. What may I help you with?”
Caller: “Your [bleeping] piece of [bleep] is not [bleeping] working.”
Technical Support Representative #1: “Sir, if you don’t stop cursing and tell me what the issue is…”
Caller: “[Bleep] you, just fix the [bleep]ing piece of [bleep].”
Technical Support Representative #1: *click*
Technical Support Representative #2: *same thing*
Technical Support Representative #3: *same thing*
(By now we are sharing the customer number and start answering:)
Technical Support Representative #6: “If you curse, we hang up…”
Caller: “[Bleep].”
Technical Support Representative #6: *click*
(A few more rounds of this and he finally gets to me.)
Me: “Shut up and listen. We are here to help you. You curse, I hang up. Now tell me what’s wrong and I’ll help you. Your call, curse or help?”
Caller: *in a rather meek voice* “Okay, but I’m a bit frustrated.”
Me: “Don’t worry; I’ll walk you through it.”
(He cursed once in the conversation, paused and apologized. It took only ten minutes and was a really a simple fix.)
