For the last few weeks I’ve given you a little look into my call centre and the people that I work with. While they’re important and definitely the reason I go in every day, most of my time is really spent talking to customers. Some of the calls I receive are extremely interesting. A call I received a few months ago has stuck with me to this day. Here’s Mr. Green’s story.
“Mr. Green”
Mr. Green spent an hour on the phone with me telling me he needed to pay his bill and insisted he would pay it the following Friday if I would just give him an extension. I applied the extension to his account, and yet he still felt the need to give me his life story. Normally, I’m really good at keeping the calls on track and getting the callers off the phone in an appropriate amount of time. This man however, piqued my interest. He told me how he just got out of jail for something he didn’t do. He told me that his lawyer told him that it was in his best interest to plead guilty and do the time. What was he accused of? Killing a cat. I told him to find a new lawyer. He agreed with me and went on to say that he bought a new scooter recently and that it was now missing. I couldn’t resist, I had to ask why. He went into a long story about how a man asked Mr. Green to drive a car down the street for him, while he rode the scooter to the store. He gave the man the scooter, (took his phone number for security reasons, of course) and agreed to meet him at an arranged time and location to pick up the scooter. I couldn’t help but interrupt at this point.
Me: “Did you actually believe him?”
Mr. Green: “Of course! He gave me his phone number and said I could have my scooter back when I called the number. I’ve been calling for four months but he won’t answer and I still don’t have my scooter!
Me: “Mr Green, that car was probably a stolen vehicle and you’ll most likely never see that scooter again. You shouldn’t be so trusting in strangers”
Mr. Green “He stole my scooter? No way darlin’, I thought I was doing a good thing”
He was actually surprised that I questioned his ability to make decisions. He’s clearly been so successful making them in the past. He went on for a half hour more talking about how some crazy women came into his home and ordered a ton of adult pay-per-views. This call was so entertaining and lasted so long I was hoping that my manager would hear this call as well, just so someone else could hear this insanity.
When a manager listens to a call, they give you a score out of 100. This is a Quality Assessment. Many call centres use this as a way to monitor their employees. Each client outlines what they want their representatives to do during a call, and then the call centres monitor the calls. You can read more about Quality Assessment in call centres here.
Again, there’s never a dull moment in the call centre. Some of these callers I will never forget, others I can’t get off my phone soon enough. Even though the call only lasts an average of 3 minutes, some people definitely make lasting impressions. So much so that 4 months later I’m still wondering what happened to that Mr. Green’s scooter.
