It’s insane how some companies have the dumbest policies!

Imagine working in a customer service position in a call center when a customer gives you a really bad rating on a customer satisfaction survey. Would you expect the survey to have negatives consequences for you even if the recorded call proved you did a great job, or would you think the recorded call should void the survey?

This guy shares what happened to him when a horrible customer gave him a bad review on a survey.

Check out the full story.

You want to escalate to tier 3 support? Okay, there’s a process for that, let’s do it.

I worked in customer support for a tech firm, and if I may say so, the company is good at it and I am good at it.

We have customer satisfaction stories and data to prove it.

Our customer support is what gives us a competitive advantage in our marketplace and makes us very profitable.

This is where it gets bad…

One day, I get a phone call from a customer. I say “hello, my ” and his response is, “I want to talk to 3rd tier support”.

“Okay. We have a process for that. What seems to be the problem?”

“No, you don’t understand. I don’t want to talk to you, I want to talk to 3rd tier support”

“Actually, I *do* understand. You want to talk to 3rd tier support. I’m setting that up. But there are a few questions I have to ask you and if I don’t know the answers to those questions. then they aren’t going to call you, they are going to ask me to call you back and get those answers. So, what seems to be the problem?”

He kept on going…

He explains to me the problem.

“Have you tried this?”

“No, you don’t understand. I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to 3rd tier support, you know, the guys who aren’t working from a script”

“I assure you, sir, I am not working from a script. Have you tried this?”

“Yes, I did, now may I talk to 3rd tier support?”

The customer wasn’t ready to listen!

“Have you tried that?”

“Yes, I did, now may I talk to 3rd tier support? My problem isn’t on your script”

“There is no script for this problem. I am asking you this question because I thoroughly understand our device and I know, from previous experience, that that might solve your problem”.

“Have you tried this other thing?”

“What makes you think that this other thing is going to solve the problem?”

“Well, I’ve been doing this work for a couple of years now, and I have a pretty good idea of how these things work. So I thought this other thing might solve the problem.”

That’s INSANE!

“Look, I have a master’s degree in computer science. I want to talk to somebody in 3rd tier support”.

Now, I do not want to disrespect computer scientists, because CS is hard field to get into.

But everybody should understand that there is a big difference between computer scientists, computer programmers, system administrators, database administrators, network administrators, cyber security analysts, program managers, and customer support people.

Computer scientists do research on artificial intelligence, algorithms, compiler design, large databases, and other theoretical topics. Those are important topics.

Computer programmers, by way of contrast, write computer programs. They need to know about computer science topics, but computer science is a means not an end.

UH OH…

The same is true for all of the other specialties that I mentioned. He may be a really good computer scientist, but that doesn’t mean he a network administrator or a system administrator – those are different specialties.

Somebody who says, “I have a master’s degree in computer science, I don’t need to talk to you” knows a great deal about what he knows, but doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

I’ve been around long enough to know that there is a great deal I don’t know.

“Just try this other thing, and if that doesn’t work, then I will give you to 3rd tier support”

“Promise?”

“Promise”

That’s so MEAN!

I can hear him typing away in the background, swearing, and cursing. I can hear when he hits the return key because he hits it hard. Then he picks up the phone and says:

“it’s working now”.

“Great. You still want me to escalate to 3rd tier support?”

Then I get a torrential outpouring of expletives. Since this is a family channel, I won’t give the details but rather leave it to your imagination, gentle reader. Then he hung up on me.

Wouldn’t you know it? He got a customer satisfaction survey and I got straight zeroes.

I got called into my boss’s office and we had a conversation about the call. He was upset, and I can’t say I blame him because he also gets graded on our survey scores.

They did what they could to prove him right…

He called in some 3rd tier support people to listen to the recording (“For training and quality assurance purposes”) and they said I did everything right – he (me) did not deserve that rating.

They also said that there was no way I deserved that abuse and that the survey should be tossed out. Unfortunately, the rules are the rules and that score counted.

So I lost my quarterly bonus, a couple of thousand dollars. However, the big boss felt awful about the whole affair, so he and his wife took my wife and me out to dinner at the most expensive restaurant in town.

We had a lovely time.

The boss tried his best!

At the end of the evening, I noticed that he paid for the meal with his personal, not his corporate credit card. I asked him about that.

His response was golden: “I’m in a position where I could probably get away with it, but that wouldn’t be right. What happened to you wasn’t right either. This dinner is my way of making it up to you as best I can, and I figured if I am going to do that, I might as well take my wife and your wife along. Why not?”

(He knew I was married because I have the ring). I love that guy. Worked for him for years.

I would have liked the couple of thousand dollars, but the acknowledgment that I had been messed with was a good second place.

What a horrible customer and a wonderful boss!

Let’s find out what people on Reddit think about this story.

This user thinks there’s no point recording calls when the company isn’t doing anything about it.

This user knows the recording should have proved this guy innocent.

This user knows this company is no good!

This user thinks the company needs to have another set of policies.

This user thinks this guy oversold his company!

These company policies are pretty messed up.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.