For everyone who has to work with THE PUBLIC.......

Customer: "I've been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can't get
through to enquiries, can you help?".
Operator: "Where did you get that number from, sir?".
Customer: "It was on the door to the Travel Centre".
Operator: "Sir, they are our opening hours".

Samsung Electronics
Caller: "Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?"
Operator: "I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand who you are talking
about".
Caller: "On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that
I need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and telephone
Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give me the number for Jack?"
Operator: "I think you mean the telephone point on the wall".

RAC Motoring Services
Caller: "Does your European Breakdown Policy cover me when I am
travelling in Australia?"
Operator: Doesn't the product give you a clue?

Caller (enquiring about legal requirements while travelling in
France):
"If I register my car in France, do I have to change the steering wheel
to the other side of the car?"

Directory Enquiries
Caller: "I'd like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff please".
Operator: "I'm sorry, there's no listing. Is the spelling correct?"
Caller: "Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar but the 'B'
fell off".

Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator: "Woven? Are you sure?"
Caller: "Yes. That's what it says on the label; Woven in Scotland".

On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone
box told a worried operator: "I haven't got a pen, so I'm steaming up
the window to write the number on".

Computer Capers
Tech Support: "I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop".
Customer: "OK".
Tech Support: "Did you get a pop-up menu?".
Customer: "No".
Tech Support: "OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?"
Customer: "No".
Tech Support: "OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this
point?".
Customer: "Sure. You told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click'".

Tech Support: "OK. In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you
see the 'OK' button displayed?"
Customer: "Wow. How can you see my screen from there?"

Caller: "I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just realised
that I need it. If I turn my system clock back two weeks will I have my
file back again?".

just saw this on another forum

This story was related by Pat Routledge of Winnepeg, Ontario, about an
unusal telephone service call he handled while living in England:

It is common practice in England for the telephone company to signal a
telephone subscriber [ring the phone] by applying 90 volts between one
side of the two wire circuit and ground (called "earth" in England).
When the subscriber answers the phone, the phone switches to the two
wire circuit for the conversation.

This particular subscriber, an elderly lady with several pets, called
to say that her telephone failed to ring when her friends called and
that on the few occasions when it did manage to ring her dog always
barked first.

Torn between curiosity to see this psychic dog and a realization that
standard service techniques might not suffice in this case, Pat
proceeded to the scene.

Climbing a nearby telephone pole and hooking in his test set, he dialed
the subscriber's house. The phone didn't ring. He tried again. The
dog barked loudly, followed by a ringing telephone. Climbing down from
the pole, Pat found:

a. Dog was tied to the telephone system's ground post via an
iron chain and collar

b. Dog was receiving 90 volts of signalling current

c. After several jolts, the dog was urinating on ground and barking

d. Wet ground now conducted -- and the phone rang.

haha awesome

I remember typo getting a call way back when we both worked at GIL and it went along the lines of

"Now double click on the My Computer icon"

"I am I don't believe in Icons"

"Okay, could you please double click on the My Computer picture please"

i had one guy come up to me once with a game that was "20% off!" and 2 prices, one was $99.95 and the other $87. So he asked me which was the price that he would take 20% off, to save argument I told him $87.

About 5 minutes later he came up to me..
Him: How do you work out 20% off?
Me: Work out 10% off and then add that amount together, that makes 20%
Him: *puzzled* so... $20 off?
Me: Nono... say it's $90, 10% of $90 is 9...
Him: *puzzled look*
Me: Because 9-tens are 90
Him: OOH.. right!
Me: So then you add 9 and 9, which makes 18, which is 20% !
Him: Oh. Okay, I get it! Thanks. *walks two paces* ... what if it's $87?

*headdesk*
In hindsight I could have explained it easier, but I still don't think that would make a difference.

LOL

When I worked as a Supervisor in a call centre I started collecting some classics an was gonna publish em somewhere...

I did stash them some I'll see if I can dig em up. From memory some of em went like this...

One guy complained that his cat wagered his purse balance down to zero an he wanted his money back. Another guy reckons he had to go get free his neighbours kid when they got their head stuck in a fence an someone snuck in an bet his funds away. I think the best was where I was asked if I could tell them where "Sky" was living now as he had had a fling with this aussie chick in London sometime ago an he had last heard she was living in edit: Melbourene Melbourne, so he thought I might know here.

Ever had to REALLY bite back the desire to answer "Your kidding right?? HOLY CRAP, SHE LIVES NEXT DOOR!!!"

stupid americans

last edited by HERMITech at 10:54:41 25/Feb/05

Oh boy have I got some crackers. You'd think that ordering pizza is a relatively simple affair, but alas some people seem to make it inordinately complex. To understand, our computers are very old. I'm 18 and they're older than I am. There's only so many data-input boxes that can fit on the low-resolution green-and-black-text-only screen. We have a script order that we follow, because that's the order that we are able to put information into.

Call-type 1
Me: Hi, my name's Kieran, will that be pickup or delivery?
Customer: Yeah, I'm just wanting to order 2 large pizzas and a garlic bread.
Me: Sorry sir, I can't put the order in just yet - are you after pickup or delivery?
Customer: What kind of pizzas do you have?
Me: Before I can get to that I need to know which store to send it to, and if you're going to come and grab it or if we're sending it out.
Customer: Have you got chicken?

Call-type 2
(Background: We have a speech recognition system that will ask you to enter your phonenumber using the keypad, confirm your surname, and if you've ordered from us before it will ask if you would like it delivered to the same address/pickup from the same store. If there is still a call-queue after this, the recording will say "I'll just get an order-taker for you in the next x-amount of seconds." You will listen to the Pizza Hut jingle, and then you will hear the general rabble of 120+ people talking at once.)
Call comes in
Customer: HELLO!? HELLO!? IS ANYBODY THERE!?
Me: ...

Call-type 2
(Background: If you have a silent number and there is no call-queue, you will come directly to an operator. We require a contactable phone number for all orders so we ask for it)
Call comes in
Me: Hi, my name's Kieran, may I start with a contactable phone number please?
Customer: beep-beep, beep, beep-beep-beep, beep, beep.
Me: Hang-up.

Happened to me about 2 years ago (rehashed from a previous thread):

I work at the Student Computing helpdesk at QUT, so in the week leading up to the start of the uni semester, i get a lot of queries about online enrolment problems.

Anyway, this one particular day (just before semester began) it was quiet as anything, so i was just chilling at the desk, listening to some tunes, trolling various forums and chatting away on MSN/ICQ..

Then up to the desk comes this little old lady, probably about 60 (we get a lot of mature-aged students at QUT) and askes 'i have been told that you have to enroll inside one of these computer devices' (she'd obviously never used a PC before). Instead of taking her out to a computer, explaining how to go through her enrolment (which would have taken her all day) i just turn my computer monitor around to her, load up her details, hand her the mouse and keyboard and start instructing her where to click and what to do.....

we get about 2 minutes into it, and suddenly an ICQ window pops up in the middle of the screen, with spam message

"HEY BIG BOY, COME SEE ME AND MY BARELY LEGAL LESBIAN FRIENDS LICK AND SUCK EACHOTHER TOTALLY FREE!!
WWW.URL.COM"

s***!!The old woman is reading the message in that line-by-line, squinting old person sort of way (obviously thinking the message pertained to what she was doing).

She still had the mouse in her hand at this stage, so i litterally had to lean across the desk, yank it out of her hand and close the window, just as she finished reading it and her jaw dropped. She then gave me the most horrible disgusted look in the world, as though i was the world most perverted sexual deviant.

There was no point trying to explain to her that it was unwarranted advertising spam and that i didn't actually -request- this to be sent to me, she wouldn't have understood, or believed me..

so anyway, i mumble an apology for snatching the mouse from her, hand it back (after closing down ICQ) and we continue doing her enrolment, while she flashes more disgusted faces and stern 'hrmmmmmm' noises.

Then MSN decides to join the party..

[for people who don't use MSN, if you have it linked to your hotmail account and you get a new message in your hotmail inbox, you get this little window pop up for a few seconds above your system tray saying "you have just recieved a new message from -Sender's name-"]

i get one of those little popup windows saying "you have just received a new message from LIVE ANAL ACTION 24_7"

and again, the old lady reads the message in the same way and promptly looses her mind.

About 10 expressions cross her face at the same time, all seeming to tell me that i was by far the worst person she had ever encountered in her life. She didn't make a scene, just picked up her bag and walked away...

meanwhile, i'm imagining her walking into the university chancelers office and lodging a formal complaint that i be sacked and then beheaded for subjecting her to several lines of smut.

Instead, she gets about 10 steps away, reaches in to her bag, pulls something out and marches back to the desk, slams the thing down, does an about-turn and marches off.

I look down at the pamphlet she left me and see in big bold, friendly letters : JESUS LOVES YOU, REDEMPTION CAN BE YOURS.

I almost fell off my chair.

Needless to say, i've been a lot more careful with chat proggies while at work.

hahaahhahahah korbs taht is f***ING EXCELLENT


aahahhahahha that is gold, pure gold :D

hahahah that story never gets old korbs I still LOL when I read it hahaah :)

these are funny too:

http://trog.qgl.org/browse/docs/tickets.html

hermitech where did you use to work?

Hahaha korbs that made my day dude.

After $1,600 worth of car repairs and two 500$ CT scans I was just about ready to kill myself.

^ Someone nuke korbs post please.

My personal favourite from Trogs list....

"This guy is bitching about going from 33.2 to 31.6 - he should die"

I cracked up!

^ Someone nuke korbs post please.

Why?

cos he wants James to kill himself ??

exo - pizza hut use an old arse unix system afaik, but it works. if it aint broke, dun fix it.

^^ you do work at pizza hut don't you ??

last edited by rodolphe at 20:03:38 25/Feb/05

Pizza Hut uses AS400 IBM Terminals.

^^ teehee silly as400.

I had a customer just today.

Her name was "Shang Shang Dong"

I said "okay Ms.Dong how can I help you today?"

My friend next to me laughed :(

my favs since working for telstra have been.

IVE GOT A SILENT LINE BUT MY PHONE IS RINGING!!!!!!!!!!!!

and

Can you put me through to the department in charge of putting random charges on my account.


and its always a big laff when u ask for there full name and date of birth and they dont want to give it to you, so then u have to say u cant view the account without those details and there is nothing else you can help them with *Waits for massive abuse and name calling , 3 warnings *RELEASE* Call*.

But seriously its required by privacy laws to ask these details to verify the caller and people go s*** ape over it quite often.

It my secret plan to develop AI software which would make all call centre staff redundant.

hermitech where did you use to work?

At one time or another I've been sprinkles, Strex, Dan & Mogsy's boss + a few others - They're the one's who intro'd me to this idiocy... bastards.....

Oh, an it was an online casino

It my secret plan to develop AI software which would make all call centre staff redundant.

That is something that will impact humanity ... in a good way. Because let's be honest here, no one should suffer the indignities of being a customer support dude.

i worked in the office at a courier co.

him - "can i have a 2 hr service?"
me - "yer no probs"
him - "how long does that take?"
me - "120 minutes"


:)

It my secret plan to develop AI software which would make all call centre staff redundant.

there isnt much satisfaction at getting the s***s with a computer voice.

you get the "sorry i didnt understand, please say the concern again or press *# to enter the endless queue."

ive also considered providing a service for call centres to divert a call to which is just endless hold music. for those really important customers.

I love that ad on tv

If you wish to speak to albert davis please say the name

her: "albert davis"
machine: "im sorry can you please repeat the name"
her: "albert davis"
machine: "abu davi does not live here, please repeat the name again"
her: "ALBERT DAVIS!"
machine: "im sorry"....

She hangs up I think

My favourite tale from tech support was
"When i call people on the fone they can't hear me but I can hear them since i got this new headset."
So I go up and there's a light on the head set box with a picture of a pair of lips and a strike across them. I press it and asked if it worked now. She goes "oh yes, it does now, I'm not very technical savvy you know?"

I wondered how she hadn't swallowed her tounge yet