I would imagine that for the most part all of us have done some sort of customer service??? If ya haven't? Oh boy you don't know what your missing out on....
Had a customer the other day, yeah I know, I have customers every day. Ya'll know that I do credit card collections I think? Well my days are fraught with customers of all sorts, M.I.A., hiding, lying, bullshitters, sly, brain dead, smart, dumb, stupid and a few that are totally clueless. But anyway.......
I got an inbound call the other day, it was a branch of BOA calling to transfer a customer to collections to take payment on her account. They do this because technically after they have turned an account over to us they are not suppose to take a payment. If they do it can add 7 to 10 days before the payment gets credited to the account. Any way the BOA lady said she had customer so & so on the phone inquiring about why her card was denied? I thanked the bank lady and told her I would be happy to speak to the customer. I introduced myself and asked the customer for her phone number as that is how we pull up accounts 85% of the time. We can use first & last names by themselves sometimes, SS#, account numbers or any combination of this info. Had one heck of a time getting the lady to give me her home phone number! It's secret you know, unlisted. sheesh Finally got her number and pulled up the account to see what the problem was???? WELL DUH!!!! There hadn't been a payment on the card since March, so 4 pmts past due and of course her August pmt is due this month. And adding to the mess it was also over limit by about $848. This added up to a good sized chunk of pmt due cause they add 3% to the amount over limit as that will get them 3% under their limit. ~sigh~ Customer was very irate about being denied because she had intended to use the card to pay for dinner for herself and a couple of friends. She complained that it had been extremely embarrassing to her. I explained the problem to her and advised her of the pmt necessary to bring the account back under it's limit and to reactivate her card. Holy smokes she went off the deep end. Started screaming at me about the balance being so high and that she knew that she hadn't done it. So of course I had to explain to this ? adult woman ? the pitfalls and penalties of not making her monthly pmt, and the penalty of going over limit. Good grief you would have thought I was telling her I had to have her firstborn so that I could cook him/her and make sausage out them. Late fee per month for her account is $39 and when she went over limit it's another $39 for that, all in all a total of $78 she's charged each month for being in a past due, over limit state. Now mind she is not 'talking' to me she is hollering and she proceeds to call me a few choice names and accuse me of trying to rob/bankrupt her. I interrupted and told her that was not I nor the company I work for that accesses those fees to her account, that it is the bank that does it. She of course threatened me with getting fed gov after me and company for fraud and illegally charging her account and unfairly driving it up over the limit. She demanded that all the fees be waived. I told her that the contract she signed to get the card explained all the penalties and fees. That it was not illegal for the bank to charge her but that for her to not pay her payments as contractually agreed to when she signed for the card was illegal. I think she might have broken a window where ever she was with the screech she let out.
She then threatened to not deal with us thieves and only deal with the bank. ??? I felt very badly when I had to remind her that she did call the bank first and that they did the contract transfer her to us to take pmt. OMG! There went another window. She finally asked how much she had to pay to reopen her card?? Reminded her of the over limit amount and the little exta needed! It produced another screech. 
(ya know by this time i was totally exasperated but kinda enjoying the call) She finally agreed to pay on the account. But NOT all of the amount due, said she didn't have that kind of money to throw away? She paid her oldest past due amount, what we call a bucket. A grand total of $139 dollars. And that was only because I told her it was ready to go into the 120 day bracket. That's when they start to look at legal proceedings. You can not imagine what all went on when I asked her if she had her checking info handy so that we could set up the payment. She again started arguing with me and saying she didn't want to do that over the phone because she didn't know who I was and that it and I could all be a scam. I ended up reminding her that she was the one who started the whole phone call process when she called the bank. And that the bank was the one who transferred her call to us. I by this time had her checking account info up on the computer in front of me and told her to not worry about it that I had the info needed. ??? Sure did get awful quiet on her end of the phone. 
She just had to ask how I got that info? Told it was simple, that we share a computer system with the bank. She then got huffy and said that now we would just probably take all the money seeing as how we had the info. 
Told her no that we could not take any money out without her permission. That if we did it would be theft. I then reminded her that all the called were recorded to not only protect her but to protect us. 
Finally got the payment into the computer, gave her the confirmation number, told her that it would also be mailed to her. And then asked her about future pmts. Oh hell there went another window. While she was screaming at me and asking if I thought she was made of money, I interrupted, told her that if she didn't want to set up pmts that she could do it on her own, reminded her of her due date of 08/29/08 and the remaining amount due to bring her currant and under limit. Then I wished her a very pleasant day and hung up on her. 
And David wonders why Kelly and I come home drained???Any way. Kelly at some point sent me this link via a pm on yahoo messenger. She pointed one out that she found funny. I about died laughing when I read the one at the bottom of page 4. Hope you enjoy!!!
http://notalwaysright.com/tag/call-center
