Some customers think customer service employees have all the answers.

This man is recounting a call from a person who tried to mock him using a basketball analogy, but his comeback rendered the caller speechless.

Read the full story below.

Customer loves his analogy until I use it against him

This call was from a while ago, so I don’t really remember all the boring details, but it stands out to me because the guy I was talking to thought he was so clever until I used his own analogy to disprove his point.

Basically, he was complaining about how our software works with Microsoft. There was an issue on their end, but he wanted us to resolve it because he can’t reach Microsoft over the phone. That does not make it our problem, nor is it something we could fix even if we tried to.

After some polite reiteration by me that, unfortunately, there is nothing we can do, he went, “You guys always just wanna dump the problem on someone else. You know what that tells me?”

After a few moments of silence, I realized he is actually waiting for me to ask.

“What?” I said in a disinterested tone.

The customer used a basketball analogy, and this employee had the perfect comeback.

“That’s like if you’re a basketball manufacturer and your ball isn’t going through the hoop so you tell me to go talk to the guys that make the rims”

Kind of a weird analogy but okay. I usually stay away from analogies because some people don’t take kindly to them but I figured using his own analogy is the best way to put it in terms that he will understand.

So I responded, “Well, if the rim is 3 inches wide, that is a problem with the rim, not the basketball, right?”

He didn’t freak out, but I could tell he was annoyed at my response. I don’t even remember what he said after that, but he basically just complained a little more and then “accepted” that we can’t do anything more for him and hung up.

It felt good to shut him down because I was relatively new at the time, and that was my first real pushback to a customer clearly in the wrong.

Customer thought he was being clever. Now, that’s the perfect way to humble someone.

Let’s read some comments from other people.

This user likes the story.

Another user shares an analogy they often use.

Here’s a valid point.

This one is chiming in.

And this one finds the story relatable.

If you’re gonna use analogies, make sure they’re foolproof.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.