So I'm a few months into my job as a CSR and I have a few choice nuggets of wisdom to say to the rest of the world. Just a few things I picked up over the last, truly enlightening weeks:
If you are old and are used to the old 5 station only tv's (channels 3, 5, 13, 45, and 54 or whatever): Fvck you!
I try to teach you how to use something you've never touched before and all I hear is stories about how all this new (as in 20 years old in the consumer world) technology is soooooooooooooooo hard to learn, and how things were soooooooo much easier back in your day.
If you cannot speak a word of english: Fvck you!
We have people that can speak every single language on the planet to you... even the <click><click><raspberry><finger snap> language from those people in far off lands like canada or ethiopia from south park. We can't ask if we can transfer you to someone who speaks another language because it would seem discriminatory or like we don't care about you. I REALLY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU. Ask for someone who speaks your language so instead of wasting an hour of both of us having to repeat things 20 times before I actually get through to you you can be off the phone in 30 seconds.
If you are a support person from another completely different type of company: Fvck you!
YOU called ME for help... Let me help you! I could care less what you think it is, I have yet to have any person aside from fellow dish network employees calling about their employee accounts or direcTV employees calling about their accounts accurately assess their systems. We know exactly what's going on in these closed-box systems. In total, there's only about 15-20 possible things that can go wrong. I can assess this in 30 seconds and tell you. Having to fend off the "I already did this" complaints for 10 minutes doesn't help! You didn't memorize what was on that next screen so shut the fvck up! I need to know this to get your tv back on! If you call me: shut up, tell me the problem, let me walk you through steps to fix it or find out what we have to do to fix it, and don't say anything else unless we're waiting for something to go through and we're making small talk. Otherwise, don't call me!
If you're calling from work and your dish is at home: Fvck you!
Sit back and think about this... how in the hell am I supposed to fix your system if you're 50 miles from it??? If I had a magic button that I could press when you tell me "it doesn't work" (and can't tell me anything else like a single symptom... is your screen showing snow, black screen, blue screen, porn, what???) then I'd push it before you fvcking called me and wasted my time!
I swear to god when I work mornings 75% of my calls are these calls.
If you're hardcore religious and have teenagers in the house: Fvck you!
No, our system didn't glitch, it shows right on the bill that someone physically ordered this from the remote that is addressed to your reciever in your house, in your child's room. Yes, your 15 year old boy who "would never do anything like that at all" really did purchase $500 worth of PPV XXX porn through the remote control (although all I can say is "I don't know who ordered it, all I know was that it was ordered from your house" while I put you on mute and get the other guys around me to listen in on what is about to become a hilarious call). Deal with it! If you wern't so controlling and let your kid get on the internet or something maybe he wouldn't have to spend all your money getting his rocks off. YES you still have to pay for all those charges too! I can reverse *1* movie over the lifetime of the account. And when you tell me you refuse to set up locks on the PPV channels so they can't buy any more so I offer to save you money by setting this channel up as a monthly charge of $20 (that's the cost of 2 out of the 50 movies he orders) WTH do you get mad at me??? I'm trying to save you hundreds of dollars a month because I'm feeling bad for you!
If you're someone who ordered porn and has to call in to me about your bill: Fvck you!
I don't care that "you don't know who ordered it but you don't want to talk about it." I'm a college student! I watch more porn than 4 generations of your family combined! When I see that you ordered a XXX PPV one night or a couple of nights, or that you order it by the month, my eyes don't even flinch. We offer it as a service to ALL our customers, so obviously for it to be profitable someone other than you has to order it. Don't argue with me that it wasn't you, I don't care!
If you can't understand simple instructions: Fvck you!
I told you to push a single button on the remote or the box itself, not unplug it or remove cables.
I said to push the menu button on the remote and then 6, 1, and 1. Not cancel, power, and select.
JEEBUS PEOPLE! When your boss says, "I want a TPS report done by next week," do you say OK, punch yourself in the face, run into a wall, and slice the tires on your car???
If your system is wired up so precisely and to specific cable lengths that removing one cable will require 3 weeks, a crane, 4 men named Carlos, a truckload of dynamite, and your immortal soul: Fvck you!
If you're not getting signal from the dish, that means we may have a problem in the wires somewhere. Obviously, something will need to be disconnected at some point! Don't bitch and moan to me that you didn't leave any room to move stuff around. If you want TV back, YES you need to disconnect that cable.
If I tell you a simple solution to a problem and you want someone to come out to do it and get mad when I tell you it'll be a cost to you: Fvck you!
Our techs need to be paid too. Yes, cable does it free. SO DO WE if you sign up for the same "lease the equipment from us instead of buying it" plan. We offered it to you when you first signed up. I can't help it if you were too cheap to sign up for it! Now when it comes back to bite you in the ass, you have the nerve to go off on me? Yes, you didn't pay the $5 per month to lease the equipment from us, so now YOU own it and if you want it fixed, it'll cost $$$. If you'd signed up for the other plan it would be much easier for both of us to fix. I'd be THROWING a technician to you within 3 minutes of the call.
If you don't understand that shipping costs money: Fvck you!
If your car or house were to be hit by lightning and is now laying in a smoldering lump of materials, do you think you could go back to the seller and ask for money back? Hell no! We will give you a new one, but you're damn well gonna pay the UPS costs to get another new one to you. If you don't like it, then guess what? At least when I go home tonight I can still watch TV.
***OTOH***
If you are drunk when you call in: I <3 j00
As much as I feel bad later, when I tell you to press a button on the front of the reciever, and you take 5 minutes while you think it's a good idea to crawl behind the home entertainment center and knock the entire thing over while I'm on the phone... and then I hear this gigantic crash... then you come back a few seconds later and camly give me a "I'll have to call you back, I think I just screwed something up." I have to hold in my gut busting laugh until you get off the phone before I can almost suffocate myself since I'm laughing so hard. Random stuff like that makes my night
And to the people that call in that are so mad at the company because something went wrong and you were without service for 10 minutes and feel the need to yell and curse at me for 30 minutes nonstop without letting me get a word in: I <3 j00
You know what I do in that situation? I keep reading my book or playing my GBA until you shut up, then I purposely try to say a comment that will send you off the handle again ("I'm sorry sir, what was it that you were calling about again?") as many times and as long as possible until you scream about wanting to cancel your service or hang up. You are now allowing me to be paid for nothing. Watch Office Space again... the main characters speech about his job motivation? That's me. I could keep you or lose you, I could sell you all the things that make this company a profit or I couldn't. Guess what, I get paid the same either way. Only management sees the actual benefits of what I do. And all phone support positions have such a high turnover rate because of guys like you causing stress that I'm now a "senior" at my job. I'd have to punch my manager in the face to get fired now. You telling my boss that I'm a bad CSR makes him look at me, roll his eyes, and get you off the phone saying "we'll do something about it." Yeah, we laugh at you when you hang up... that's it. Do I get reprimanded? Hell no, I've been there for months, they hope I'll be there for more months! I knew you wanted to cancel 10 seconds into the phone call, why should I try to convince you otherwise... that's the job of our cancellations department, and I'm just a tech. I can get more reading or playing done in that time you are bitching to me than I can in the next 3 hours. Thank you!
****
You know what the sad thing is? I can make all of your problems dissappear. I can make that $99 for a tech to come out be $0. I can make the $15 shipping for that new piece turn to $0. I can make the $200 to fix your reciever be nothing. If you werern't the way you are. I do it all the time, many times a day. If you are curteous to me I will pull out all the stops to help you. I'm wired that way... if I can save you money and like you I will. I have sent and will send technicians out to someones house to change the cable inbetween your reciever and tv. This would have cost you $3 and 2 minutes of your time listening to me talk you through this on the phone ($100 charge to us) and I charged you nothing... if I liked you.
OTOH... I also have the power to make that $0 charge for a tech BE $99. Or that $0 shipping all of a sudden BE $15. Or the repair bill for that reciever which should be $0 BE $200.
Sorry for the rant guys, but I had a really bad day at work... usually I see a few of the above scenarios a day... today, every person was one of the above scenarios, aside from the "I <3 j00" scenarios
If you are old and are used to the old 5 station only tv's (channels 3, 5, 13, 45, and 54 or whatever): Fvck you!
I try to teach you how to use something you've never touched before and all I hear is stories about how all this new (as in 20 years old in the consumer world) technology is soooooooooooooooo hard to learn, and how things were soooooooo much easier back in your day.
If you cannot speak a word of english: Fvck you!
We have people that can speak every single language on the planet to you... even the <click><click><raspberry><finger snap> language from those people in far off lands like canada or ethiopia from south park. We can't ask if we can transfer you to someone who speaks another language because it would seem discriminatory or like we don't care about you. I REALLY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU. Ask for someone who speaks your language so instead of wasting an hour of both of us having to repeat things 20 times before I actually get through to you you can be off the phone in 30 seconds.
If you are a support person from another completely different type of company: Fvck you!
YOU called ME for help... Let me help you! I could care less what you think it is, I have yet to have any person aside from fellow dish network employees calling about their employee accounts or direcTV employees calling about their accounts accurately assess their systems. We know exactly what's going on in these closed-box systems. In total, there's only about 15-20 possible things that can go wrong. I can assess this in 30 seconds and tell you. Having to fend off the "I already did this" complaints for 10 minutes doesn't help! You didn't memorize what was on that next screen so shut the fvck up! I need to know this to get your tv back on! If you call me: shut up, tell me the problem, let me walk you through steps to fix it or find out what we have to do to fix it, and don't say anything else unless we're waiting for something to go through and we're making small talk. Otherwise, don't call me!
If you're calling from work and your dish is at home: Fvck you!
Sit back and think about this... how in the hell am I supposed to fix your system if you're 50 miles from it??? If I had a magic button that I could press when you tell me "it doesn't work" (and can't tell me anything else like a single symptom... is your screen showing snow, black screen, blue screen, porn, what???) then I'd push it before you fvcking called me and wasted my time!
I swear to god when I work mornings 75% of my calls are these calls.
If you're hardcore religious and have teenagers in the house: Fvck you!
No, our system didn't glitch, it shows right on the bill that someone physically ordered this from the remote that is addressed to your reciever in your house, in your child's room. Yes, your 15 year old boy who "would never do anything like that at all" really did purchase $500 worth of PPV XXX porn through the remote control (although all I can say is "I don't know who ordered it, all I know was that it was ordered from your house" while I put you on mute and get the other guys around me to listen in on what is about to become a hilarious call). Deal with it! If you wern't so controlling and let your kid get on the internet or something maybe he wouldn't have to spend all your money getting his rocks off. YES you still have to pay for all those charges too! I can reverse *1* movie over the lifetime of the account. And when you tell me you refuse to set up locks on the PPV channels so they can't buy any more so I offer to save you money by setting this channel up as a monthly charge of $20 (that's the cost of 2 out of the 50 movies he orders) WTH do you get mad at me??? I'm trying to save you hundreds of dollars a month because I'm feeling bad for you!
If you're someone who ordered porn and has to call in to me about your bill: Fvck you!
I don't care that "you don't know who ordered it but you don't want to talk about it." I'm a college student! I watch more porn than 4 generations of your family combined! When I see that you ordered a XXX PPV one night or a couple of nights, or that you order it by the month, my eyes don't even flinch. We offer it as a service to ALL our customers, so obviously for it to be profitable someone other than you has to order it. Don't argue with me that it wasn't you, I don't care!
If you can't understand simple instructions: Fvck you!
I told you to push a single button on the remote or the box itself, not unplug it or remove cables.
I said to push the menu button on the remote and then 6, 1, and 1. Not cancel, power, and select.
JEEBUS PEOPLE! When your boss says, "I want a TPS report done by next week," do you say OK, punch yourself in the face, run into a wall, and slice the tires on your car???
If your system is wired up so precisely and to specific cable lengths that removing one cable will require 3 weeks, a crane, 4 men named Carlos, a truckload of dynamite, and your immortal soul: Fvck you!
If you're not getting signal from the dish, that means we may have a problem in the wires somewhere. Obviously, something will need to be disconnected at some point! Don't bitch and moan to me that you didn't leave any room to move stuff around. If you want TV back, YES you need to disconnect that cable.
If I tell you a simple solution to a problem and you want someone to come out to do it and get mad when I tell you it'll be a cost to you: Fvck you!
Our techs need to be paid too. Yes, cable does it free. SO DO WE if you sign up for the same "lease the equipment from us instead of buying it" plan. We offered it to you when you first signed up. I can't help it if you were too cheap to sign up for it! Now when it comes back to bite you in the ass, you have the nerve to go off on me? Yes, you didn't pay the $5 per month to lease the equipment from us, so now YOU own it and if you want it fixed, it'll cost $$$. If you'd signed up for the other plan it would be much easier for both of us to fix. I'd be THROWING a technician to you within 3 minutes of the call.
If you don't understand that shipping costs money: Fvck you!
If your car or house were to be hit by lightning and is now laying in a smoldering lump of materials, do you think you could go back to the seller and ask for money back? Hell no! We will give you a new one, but you're damn well gonna pay the UPS costs to get another new one to you. If you don't like it, then guess what? At least when I go home tonight I can still watch TV.
***OTOH***
If you are drunk when you call in: I <3 j00
As much as I feel bad later, when I tell you to press a button on the front of the reciever, and you take 5 minutes while you think it's a good idea to crawl behind the home entertainment center and knock the entire thing over while I'm on the phone... and then I hear this gigantic crash... then you come back a few seconds later and camly give me a "I'll have to call you back, I think I just screwed something up." I have to hold in my gut busting laugh until you get off the phone before I can almost suffocate myself since I'm laughing so hard. Random stuff like that makes my night
And to the people that call in that are so mad at the company because something went wrong and you were without service for 10 minutes and feel the need to yell and curse at me for 30 minutes nonstop without letting me get a word in: I <3 j00
You know what I do in that situation? I keep reading my book or playing my GBA until you shut up, then I purposely try to say a comment that will send you off the handle again ("I'm sorry sir, what was it that you were calling about again?") as many times and as long as possible until you scream about wanting to cancel your service or hang up. You are now allowing me to be paid for nothing. Watch Office Space again... the main characters speech about his job motivation? That's me. I could keep you or lose you, I could sell you all the things that make this company a profit or I couldn't. Guess what, I get paid the same either way. Only management sees the actual benefits of what I do. And all phone support positions have such a high turnover rate because of guys like you causing stress that I'm now a "senior" at my job. I'd have to punch my manager in the face to get fired now. You telling my boss that I'm a bad CSR makes him look at me, roll his eyes, and get you off the phone saying "we'll do something about it." Yeah, we laugh at you when you hang up... that's it. Do I get reprimanded? Hell no, I've been there for months, they hope I'll be there for more months! I knew you wanted to cancel 10 seconds into the phone call, why should I try to convince you otherwise... that's the job of our cancellations department, and I'm just a tech. I can get more reading or playing done in that time you are bitching to me than I can in the next 3 hours. Thank you!
****
You know what the sad thing is? I can make all of your problems dissappear. I can make that $99 for a tech to come out be $0. I can make the $15 shipping for that new piece turn to $0. I can make the $200 to fix your reciever be nothing. If you werern't the way you are. I do it all the time, many times a day. If you are curteous to me I will pull out all the stops to help you. I'm wired that way... if I can save you money and like you I will. I have sent and will send technicians out to someones house to change the cable inbetween your reciever and tv. This would have cost you $3 and 2 minutes of your time listening to me talk you through this on the phone ($100 charge to us) and I charged you nothing... if I liked you.
OTOH... I also have the power to make that $0 charge for a tech BE $99. Or that $0 shipping all of a sudden BE $15. Or the repair bill for that reciever which should be $0 BE $200.
Sorry for the rant guys, but I had a really bad day at work... usually I see a few of the above scenarios a day... today, every person was one of the above scenarios, aside from the "I <3 j00" scenarios
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