Teaching Them To Be A Smart Cookie

(I am a supervisor in a call center for a large online accommodation site. I get an angry guest escalated to me because she is unhappy about something that has appeared on her screen while browsing our site.)

Me: “Hello. My name is [Name] and I’m a supervisor at [Site]. How can I help you?”

Customer: “I’m am just calling to let you know that I am never using your site! Ever!”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. What seems to be the problem?”

Customer: “I was just browsing hotels in California and p*rn popped up in a sidebar on your website!”

Me: “I’m sorry that happened, ma’am, but we have no control over that.”

Customer: “Well you better get control over it quick!”

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am, you’re misunderstanding me. The advertisements on the side of your screen are based on your previous browsing history.”

Customer: “I would never go on a site like that!”

Me: “I understand that, ma’am, but I’m just trying to explain the technical aspect of how they work. Being that I work at [Site], I am on our site quite a bit and because of that, all the advertisements on the side are for [Site].”

Customer: “Oh. Well, what do I do?”

Me: “I can walk you through how to get rid of them if you’d like.”

(I walked the customer through how to delete her cookies in her browser and she calmed down. She was very grateful for my help and stated that she was going to have some investigating to do with her husband and kids!)