Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

One of our most senior agents, perhaps our most senior (her career with the company dated back two decades and about five mergers), sat next to me during one of our darkest times, when almost every caller was calling to cancel their, something they had usually tried several months in a row. (The entire sales department had been fired for mispresenting the product).

The problem was that the billing system was so automated that the next bill was already being processed by the time the customer received the last bill, the next one was already being printed. In fact, the accounting system was so slow that if we applied a credit to the account today, there was no way it would appear on the next bill. A customer complaining about charges on their bill could be guaranteed that the same charges would show up on the next bill.

I overheard this senior agent telling every customer, "I apologize for the trouble, Your account has been canceled and credited in full. No, you won't receive any more bills."

HA! I thought.

Finally I said to her, "Wait a minute, Jacque. Didn't you know that they will get another bill? They always get one more bill after the account is canceled. And are you sure you want to tell them you're canceling the account right now, when you don't even have a password for the computer system that cancels accounts?"

Jacque just blinked her eyes at me. Apparntly I hadn't had enough call center experience. I didn't know the best way to get a customer off my phone is by telling them what they wanted to hear, even if it meant lying to them. Jacque wasn't worried about getting caught. With hundreds of customers, what were the chances she would have to face this one again?

Telling a half-truth may get an angry customer off your phone, but it won't keep them from winding up on somone else's phone, even angrier.

Tomorrow, for what it's worth, I'll tell you what I did whenever I got one of Jacque's customers.

How does your call center deal with accountability? Are customers allowed to ask for the original agent, who promised to make it right but didn't? Or should they abandon all hope of ever talking to the same agent again?

Further reading: Steve Hamrin in India, About Trust