She Stayed Calm With A Customer Who Wouldn’t Listen, And The Customer Finally Said Sorry

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Imagine being a supervisor at a call center, but it’s an extra busy day. If you were helping out in the general queue, what would you do if a customer asked to speak to your supervisor? Would you let them know that you are, in fact, the supervisor, or would you save that as a surprise?
In this story, one employee is in this situation, and she decides to let it be a surprise.
While she finds it amusing, I’m sure the customer didn’t. The customer definitely deserved to wait, though.
Let’s read all about it.
You’d like to speak to the supervisor?
I used to work at a pizza restaurant call centre, and due to my exceptionally calm and courteous demeanour and the fact that I never lost my cool under pressure, I was eventually promoted to the position of escalated transfer supervisor.
For those of you who don’t know, the escalated transfer supervisor (ETS) is the end of the line when a customer is sent to customer service.
Typically customers were only transferred to me when they were being so unreasonable that the regular customer service rep (CSR) couldn’t deal with them anymore.
But sometimes, OP helped out when the queue was extra busy.
In any case, on especially busy days like Christmas eve and new years Eve the CSR team will step in and assist the ordering reps process pizza orders
On just such a night, I hopped into a particularly large queue to help clear some of the order calls.
The customer was rude right off the bat saying that it was unreasonable for her to have waited 20 minutes on hold.
Keep in mind it was dinner time on new years Eve. I explained this to her in my nicest customer service voice.
The customer seems pretty unreasonable.
She brushed me off with a “whatever”.
No big deal. She then proceeds to ask for a special that is offered by one of our competitors.
I explained to her that we don’t offer that special as it is one offered by another company, but offered something very comparable, again in a cheery and pleasant voice.
She flipped out, claiming that the customer is always right and that I was being so rude. She then asked to be transferred to customer service so she could have me fired.
It’s not going to work out the way the customer had hoped.
I happily obliged, adding her into another 20 min queue. I then made sure that her call would come right back to me as I took over a CSR desk.
When I answered, she seemed confused and asked “wasn’t I just speaking to you?”
I told her that she was indeed speaking to me and that occasionally customer service reps step in to ease the stream of calls on busy days.
She just flipped out, insulting my mother, my intelligence, and anything else she could think of. She then asked to speak to my supervisor and told me I would regret messing with her.
I’m sure this was very satisfying for OP.
So I put her into my ETS queue and helped ebb the flow of orders before going into my office and taking her call.
As soon as she heard my voice, she cried in despair “don’t tell me you’re the supervisor”.
I told her I was, and that I would be delighted to take her complaint.
She sheepishly told me that it wasn’t necessary, apologized to me for the way she had been acting and commended me on my professionalism, placed her order and hung up.
I have never felt so gratified in my life.
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Yikes! The customer really did seem upset about nothing. If she thought waiting 20 minutes was bad, I wonder how long she ended up waiting in the end. An hour?
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
This is a good point.

Another person liked the story.

It is pretty cool that the customer actually apologized.

A former call center rep weighs in.

An apology at the end- that is a dream come true!
That was a lot of drama over ordering pizza!
You’d think the lady on the phone would’ve just placed her order instead of complaining so much. You either want the pizza or you don’t!
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