It’s hard to put customers first when the rules keep you from doing your job.

In the following story, we’ll meet one tech support worker who knew that all too well.

At his company, workers were expected to keep calls right around the four-minute mark, which didn’t leave them much wiggle room for fixing problems.

So when a customer called for the fourth time about the same problem, he knew he’d need more time to help. Luckily, calling the man back meant he wouldn’t have to worry about how long they talked.

Unfortunately though, a quality assurance reviewer noticed the disconnect, and wouldn’t let it go until his manager called the customer to find out what happened.

Read on to see how this whole situation unfolded.

A successfully skirting of all rules, with a very cooperative customer.

In this story, you’ll meet: Me: Duh; Dude: The customer; QA: Quality Assurance Reviewer; DM: Dumb Manager

When this happened, I had just been fired from Blockbuster, so I took the next available position, a third-party call center for a large ISP. You know the one, the one everyone loves to hate.

It was brutal. Crap rolls downhill, and we were at the absolute bottom of the hill. The company went out of business dang near 10 years ago, so I hope this isn’t still happening to customers.

So, we’re first-line support. Customers have to go through us in order to talk to someone who works for the company they pay out the nose for. Customers first was plastered all over the hallways.

It all started with a troubleshooting call.

Now, I had the dream shift of 4×10-hour shifts, split two days on, one off, two on. It was amazing at the time, but near the end of a ten-hour shift, it got a little grating.

We also had “totally attainable goals and metrics”… no more than 4 minutes sign-on/off outside your shift, no more than 15 minutes for breaks, 4 calls “qualitied” (reviewed by a QA person) per week, and the kicker… a 4:15 average call time. Can you fix someone’s connectivity in less than 4 minutes? I’d like to see you try. Anyway… now for the call.

Dude: Hey, before you say your thing, please say you actually work for $company.

Me: (Per script) Yes, I represent $company. How may I help you?

Dude: Jesus Christ, still not a real employee. Can I be real with you? This is my fourth call, and my router isn’t the problem. I don’t need someone to come out, and I don’t want to be put on hold. I run IT for a small company and have two identical laptops. One can connect to the internet, the other one can’t. Are you down for trying to find the problem with me?

He wanted to make sure he could actually help the guy.

Me: This sounds like an interesting problem, but it is out of the scope of your service’s terms and agreements. My official word on this matter is that I cannot support third-party hardware. However, in the case that we get disconnected, may I have your phone number in the unfortunate case we are disconnected?

Dude: Huh… interesting. My number is ___.

Me: Just making sure I have this right (I repeat the number and unplug the phone… more on this later ).

When the phone reboots, I call the customer back.

Dude: Hello?

The guy was shocked that he called back, but happy to start troubleshooting.

Me: This is $me with $company. We got disconnected.

Dude: Holy cow, you actually called me back. That’s a new one. So what’s the deal?

Me: Let’s troubleshoot this…

We go through all the standard troubleshooting step by step:

Can we ping out on both? – Yes

Can we reach $company website on both? – No

At this point, he was ready to give up.

Internet options exactly the same on both? – No. A few minutes later and a reboot, yes. Still no dice.

Got him to download another internet browser on the working laptop, move it to disk, and install it on his other laptop – No go…

We get into adapter settings to make sure we’ve got exactly the same adapter models – Yes, we do.

Not only are the settings and options set the same on both laptops, they are identical down to the hardware. The motherboard serial numbers are 1 single digit apart. These things might as well be the same machine.

Me: Honestly, we’ve been on the phone for a while, and I’m at a loss. The one laptop proves we’ve got an absolutely perfect working connection. It’s not hardware, it’s not settings, I’m literally at the end of the line on what I can think of.

Suddenly, the customer had an idea.

Dude: You have actually been the most thorough, educated, and helpful person I’ve been on the phone with.

Me: The only thing I can think of next would be to…

Dude: Yeah, it’s time to reinstall Windows.

Me: Yup, I know it’s extreme…

Dude: I’ve got the disks handy, but before I do that, I want to try one thing with you. The one that doesn’t have internet has this dumb weather app. Do you think that could be it?

Me: That seems so incredibly dumb. What $app is it?

Luckily, his cubemate had the same app installed.

Dude: It’s this annoying weather $app. It keeps, like, the 10-day forecast and makes ladybugs appear randomly when you accidentally click on it.

Me: The guy sitting next to me has that installed. He was just telling me about all its cool features. Gimme a second.

I go to my cubemate: When’s your break? Now? Can I use your PC while you’re on it? Heck yeah, dude.

Me: I’ve got access to that app. Want to walk through the settings with me? Keep in mind that we’ve been on the phone for a while. It’s totally up to you to see if it works.

Dude: Holy crap, really? Let’s do this. Don’t hang up on me. I want you on the line through this whole thing. There’s no way I’d call back and get you again.

–Furious usage of strange weather app ensues—

Then, they uninstalled the app.

Me: Everything I’ve got on this end matches what you’ve got on your end, and still you can’t connect to the internet. The computer I’m on is working just fine.

Dude: We’ve been at this for a long time. Do you want to give up and kick me off the phone?

Me: In all honesty, you were cool, so after I got your callback number, I unplugged my phone in order to end the call. I called you back because our outgoing calls don’t count towards our metrics, so you’ve got me as long as you want to talk. (Told you there was going to be more on this later. Did you think I forgot?)

Dude: You sure? That’s brilliant, by the way. This call would have tanked your metrics. I want to try and uninstall this stupid weather app.

Me: Let’s do it.

–One long uninstall and reboot later—

Suddenly, it was working perfectly.

Me: So, skip to the meat of it. Can we get to $company website?

Dude: Holy ****, we did it. It was that stupid weather app this whole ******* time.

Me: Anything else I can do for you?

Dude: I’d love to speak to your supervisor… this has been an epic journey, and I would love to put in a good word for you.

Me: That’s not needed, and it usually takes more than an hour to get one on the phone, even if I can physically see them walking the hallways.

Dude: Okay, cool. Have a good day.

Then, he got the second call.

Now, oddly, four days later, I had to deal with part two.

“All calls are recorded for call quality and training” isn’t fake. The call system automatically recorded calls up until (surprise!) that 4:15 average call time limit. Any call past 4:15 was automatically deleted. Apparently, there just wasn’t space on the servers for anything longer.

Because of the 4×10 shift I was on, it was hard for the 5×8 quality team to find me, somehow, because I came in before them, left after them, and was there for 4/5 of the days they worked. Whatever.

I’m normally REALLY long on calls, partly to avoid the QA team because they kind of suck, but also because call time is the one metric I can’t get fired for. The calls under 4:15 have to be perfect, but it’s a game to me.

Quality assurance was really trying to catch him in the act.

So my nearly 3-minute phone call with this guy, up until I yank out my phone cord, is what gets reviewed.

QA: That’s quite a suspicious cutoff on the call. It sounded like you were messing with your phone, and then the call ended. I think you pulled out your cord.

Me: You can see from the notes that I properly logged the phone call as being disconnected and managed to call him back.

QA: Also suspicious. Calling out isn’t counted towards your metrics.

Me: Really? I didn’t know that!

Suddenly, QA rolls eyes at my fake surprise and calls in DM.

Fortunately, the DM was just worried about the customer.

DM: What’s up?

QA: $Me pulled the plug on his only QA call for the period.

DM: Did he get a callback number?

QA: Well, yeah, but…

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DM: (To $me) Did you call him back?

Me: Yes, and I resolved his issue.

To clear everything up, they called the customer.

DM: (To QA) Is that what the ticket says?

QA: Yes, but…

DM: Let’s call the customer and settle this. Write down the number from the recording and head TO THE CONFERENCE ROOM!

DM: Hello, $dude, this is $DM from $company. You had a call with $me a while ago. It looks like it got cut off. Did $me end up calling you back?

Dude: What? $me? I called $company about a pair of laptops. Maybe I talked to a $me.

DM: Most importantly, did your problem get resolved?

Needless to say, the customer loved him.

Me: It’s $me. For context, we’re talking about the issue with $app.

Dude: HOLY ****, $ME… YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE SAINT. THAT WAS THE MOST ABSOLUTE ******* PROBLEM EVER.

DM: Seems $me certainly helped out $dude.

Dude: Yeah, I was on the phone with $me for like two hours. It was epic. $me deserves a ******* raise if you do that sort of thing around whatever company you work for, because we all know you don’t get that kind of service from $company.

DM: Uh, thanks?

DM: (After the call was over) So, that settles it. Full marks for customer rapport and making it a one-call resolution.

Apparently, the district manager didn’t know what else to say.

Me: Thanks, and do I get a customer comment card reward for his feedback?

DM: No, actually, your call time…

QA (now with a twinkle in their eye): Which was outbound, so it doesn’t count.

DM: *Cough.* Your following protocol for telling the customer we don’t work for $company…

QA: Which he never did. The customer came to that part himself. We have that part recorded.

DM: *Cough.* Your, uh, um… fine. You get the customer comment award this week.

Wow! Now, that’s crazy. But what amazing customer service!

Let’s see what the fine folks over at Reddit have to say about this story.

This makes total sense.

It does seem like that.

According to this reader, the app is a virus.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a grocery cashier who gets into a standoff with a customer who hasn’t paid for everything in their basket.

That sounds stressful.

That’s such a crazy policy!

If the company really wants to put their customers first, they need to give their help center enough time to actually solve problems.

Either way, it’s a good thing this employee really liked helping people. Otherwise, the customer may have never figured it out.

Imagine if everyone in customer service cared this much. It would be amazing!