Customers. I love them. On the whole the people I have to deal with are friendly, personable and understanding members of society. They understand that I am not a disembodied voice without feelings and I think the same of them.
Unfortunately it has often been my experience that you always remember the odd horrid caller because it sticks out in one's memory. These are the ones who make you grumble about your day come vodka O'clock.
I know it can't be all bad, I've been doing this job for over six years now. But it's conversations such as this which get me down.
Female caller "Hi, I'm calling to chase an order for trial products placed with you."
Me: "No problem. Do you know on what date they were ordered?"
FC: "Um... I have an order number here?"
Me: "Okay. The number is...?"
The caller reads out a number to me which is not a number I recognise. It should be 8 digits long, beginning with a 2. I explain this to her.
Me: "Do you know roughly when the order was placed? Perhaps in the last week? This month?"
FC: "This month, definitely."
Me: "Okay, let me just look up May's orders. The consumer's surname is...?"
FC: "Jones."*
Me: "I'm sorry, there aren't any orders this month for that name. Which product was ordered? Maybe I can locate the order that way."
She tells me the product, parameters and pack size.
Me: "Unfortunately there aren't any orders on your account for that consumer name or item. Would you like to place an order with me now?"
I hear a bit of a scuffle as the female caller passes the receiver onto her male colleague, whom I recognise as the owner of the store.
Owner: "Why is the order not on my account?! I have an order number here for it, I was offered free trials for the product as I was told the revenue boxes were out of stock!"
Me: "I apologise. Let me double check for you. Please can you tell me the parameters again?"
The owner tells me and I see that there are no trial or revenue packs which match the consumer name or parameters and I explain this to the customer. He repeats that he was offered trials because he was told the revenue packs were out of stock.
Often a caller will snap at us because they are trying to save face in front of their consumers. As politely as I could, I explained to this caller that the product in question is our most popular item which rarely goes out of stock in either revenue or trial packs. Unfortunately on this occasion it makes the owner flip. He then snaps at me and refuses to believe that we generally do not have out of stock issues with this product.
Tellingly, though, he says he will call back and slams the receiver down rather than placing an order with me. I have interpreted this as he cannot get away with a complete about-face with me regarding the way he has just lost his temper, but will be able to act as nice as pie with the next person he speaks with here and will place a seemingly regular order for the trial product.
I have a bit of a catch for him. It is not unusual for my colleagues and me to send a group email out to one another warning of a potentially irate caller on the warpath. I have done this because it's pretty much all I can do. It takes an extraordinarily nasty caller to have a team leader telephone them back and give them what for.
*It's not Jones.