Working From Home, Self-Supervised

The entire customer service team for a rather expensive and popular clothing chain — maybe fifty or so agents — is working from home. There are team leads but the system has no ability to transfer calls, so everyone has the capability to do pretty much anything we want to a customer’s order; changing shipping, adding discounts, and changing orders or addresses.

We are told that, if a customer asks to speak to a supervisor, we have all the same abilities as a supervisor. A more difficult customer is insisting I transfer her to a supervisor. I give the “I have the same abilities as a supervisor” spiel and, for some reason, this woman believes I somehow instantly transferred her to a supervisor and said supervisor was already fully updated on the situation.

The customer instantly becomes nicer and compliments my service, while talking badly about the “other agent’s” ability to help her.