customers - love em / HATE em

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Arrrgh!

So busy. Just me in today as manager left and colleague sick and loads of probs...

Been working extra hours etc etc

To top it off, I just had a customer tell me to "prioritise" Grrrrrrrrh!!! That is what I do, that is my job - would love to punch her, but had to be really polite and friendly down the phone "of course I will - no problem at all"

She called up 1 hour ago regarding lotus emails going into her junk email folder. I had a quick look then, and no new rules have been set up - figured it'll be something to look at on the server, so may take a while, but not a huge problem as she can still see the emails...

She calls back 10 minutes ago...have you fixed it yet?

"no - sorry - I will look into it asap, but I have some other urgent matters to deal with" (such as one person not sending/receiving any emails at all, a server playing up etc etc)...and she tells me "well perhaps you can hurry up and fix it - prioritise your workload"

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGH!

I'm gonna combust - spontaneously combust

 

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Just count to 5 and then breathe!

 

Tell her you've fixed her problem and no more emails will go into her junk email folder - by shutting down her email account! Problem solved.

basically, explain (politely if you must) that you deal with many issues, and you have issues to deal with that are more urgent than the issue she is currently experiencing, which has a viable workaround. Also tell her that phoning you ten minutes after logging the call is not conducive to getting the problem sorted - every minute you spent telling her what the status is, is a moment where you arent actually sorting the problem.

I hate users like this, who assume that their problem is the most important in the world. we deal with many many issues, yours isnt necessarily that important in the scale of things.

Most of my work has defined SLA turnarounds of about 2 business days. Its clearly stated on the forms, and has been agreed with the Business. Yet we still get people phoning 20 minutes after logging it demanding to know why it hasnt been done yet.

If you want to be reallly evil? set their account password to expire next time you log on. Hell, if you really really want to be evil. Do it every day for a week.

Or, if you want to take the 'customer focused' line. Explain to her that you are looking into the issue, but it may take a while to track down the problem. Dont tell her that you arent actually looking at it, let her think that you are and its just taking a while.

 

Love 'em or hate 'em, where would we be without 'em?

 

in a much happier place?

 

Restrict her account that'll shut her up

 

Tell her that you DO prioritize, and tell her how you prioritize. I explain to users (with some success) that what I do is akin to triage in a medical facility. Patients with life-threatening injuries are treated immediately, and all else is dropped. Then, after there are no patients who are at death's door, patients who are badly hurting or at some risk of dying are treated next. Only after the severely wounded are handled do we consider treating people with minor scrapes and hangnails.

Then tell her that, unfortunately, she has the equivalent of a hangnail. It's bothersome to her, but she can still function quite normally.

If she doesn't get the "big picture" after that, just ignore her, because she's self-focused and likely unreachable.

 

Heh - loving these replies!!

Really though, I can't be nasty - she's a very posh client, and I think part of the problem is that where she comes from, they are used to being treated like royalty (they are in England, and have swimming pools in their back gardens, BMW 7 series, home cinemas....get the piccie??) - sometimes if you're stressed it's easy to take what they say as insulting....

Took BMs advice and explained the situation to her

Turns out I managed to resolve the problem about 20 mins after this post - so pretty good timing considering, as had to compact and fixup the mailfile etc from server

The "Lee" is back in Leehaa and all is good LOL!

Euuugh - gonna go home on time and have a nice break from it all tonight

 

My boss in the NHS used to label users that rang hourly as ID 10 T Users!

 

Glad I could assist, Lee. How did she take the "revelation" that she wasn't your top priority?

 

Unemployed?