Dealing with clients can be super rewarding, and that’s one of many things that might occasionally put a smile on client-focused employees’ faces.

When you have the sense that you’ve helped make someone’s day, you’ve fixed an issue that was frustrating them endlessly, or they simply wish you a pleasant weekend – all these things are very nice.

But at the same time, it can be super frustrating when, more often than not, clients just refuse to listen.

That’s exactly what happened for the employee in this story, who tried hard but still could not make this client happy.

Read on to find out what happened.

Client refuses to listen and puts ticket in perpetual limbo

I work for the state doing IT work for other state government offices, and specifically my team handles phone support.

Usually it’s pretty bland stuff, but yesterday afternoon I got a ticket that this one office needed updates to their call tree (where you call a number and you get the option to press 1 for x, 2 for y. It can get a little more complicated because you can press 1 for x, and then it can prompt you to press 1-5 for abcde).

This ticket, tragically, was not a simple update to names and numbers on the account for new and leaving employees.

Instead, it was a full blown overhaul.

Let’s see how this situation went down.

I did the parts I am able to do (update names, remove/add blind transfers, etc.) but there were three sections I couldn’t do, where they wanted specific blind transfer lines rebuilt into miniature call trees.

That is done by High Point. No problem, I put a ticket in for HP, and they responded that they would need main menu recordings from this office for those three new call tree branches before they could proceed.

I go onto the original ticket and explained to the employee that HP is working on the remaining sections, as that is handled by them and not our office.

I explained what they needed, and that she could email the recordings to me and I would send them to the HP tech we were working with.

But this wasn’t as simple as the call centre employee had been expected.

I’m pretty sure she just straight up ignored what I said, as she instead began demanding a “list” of what their call flow looked like because I gave them one before.

The whole reason I sent her a screenshot of the call tree on her last ticket was because she wanted a section that did not exist on the call tree to be updated, and was flipping out about me making things difficult, when in reality she gave me the wrong call tree to be updated.

I told her that the call tree end result wouldn’t look any different from the template she attached for what she wants done, and explicitly told her that this is not complete, that sections xyz are being handled by HighPoint and they are waiting for the main menu recordings from her.

That was end of day yesterday. I logged in today, hoping that things will be better. What a fool I was for that.

Read on to find out how much worse this got.

I logged in to find out that she’d sent me multiple emails before I even got to my desk complaining about how the call tree wasn’t finished, how she needed sections xyz updated to look like so and so, and asking why I am sending her this if it’s not complete, blah, blah, blah.

She was complaining about everything I told her was being handled by HP. So I reiterated to her, for the fourth time, that I couldn’t make any changes to those sections.

I continued that there was a ticket in with HP to update those in accordance to the template she sent us, but that they would not proceed until she sent in the new main menu recordings. We were literally in limbo on this ticket because we were waiting on her.

There’s been no resolution yet since she hasn’t gotten back to me (or answered my calls) since then, but this is just going to be a long circus dealing with her.

Yikes! Some customers really are impossible to deal with.

In this instance it seems like the client simply wants something done immediately, but refuses to actually read the information that has been sent to them.

Moreover, she just wants to blame this on everyone else.

Let’s see what the Reddit community had to say about this.

This person thought that they really needed to spell it out.

While others had similar experiences that they shared.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that the situation should be pushed higher up the chain.

One thing is for sure: this situation doesn’t seem to be getting resolved any time soon.

It wouldn’t be that hard for the customer to supply the information required to get the case sorted, but first she needs to stop passing the buck onto everyone else.

These kind of situations are so frustrating for everyone involved.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.