ANNOYING CUSTOMER STORY!

I work for a charity advice organization. That's kind of all you need to know about the job really, this story involves one of my clients.

So I come into work this morning and before I've even taken my jacket off, my colleague J lets me know that I have a message from "someone" (heretofore known as Lady) on her phone and she seemed quite upset with myself and the organization (note, I don't have voice mail on my phone... why, I don't know, but any messages left for me on the main line are forwarded to J since she sits on the desk across from me).

I give a listen to the voice mail and while I can't quote it verbatim, the general highlights seem to be that she's "trying to get in contact with Joshi38, my number is NUMBER, I've tried to contact Joshi38 8 times today" (that being the day before today since this is a voice mail), "your outgoing message said the line would be open until 4 and it's now 3:30, why has no one picked up, you're not doing what you've promised and I'm very upset. If you don't pass this on to Joshi38, or you can't be bothered" (her words), "I'll go down to the council and let them know that you're not worth the paper you're written on" (again, her words).

Couple of things wrong with that. First of all, she didn't actually leave her name. I have over 50 clients, at least half of which are female and I can't search by phone number alone. Second, I was in all day Thursday (when she allegedly called me 8 times), so either she was exceptionally unlucky to call me every time I was in an appointment with another client (unlikely), or, as I expected, she'd called the wrong number.

See, the thing is, we have two public numbers for our organization. The first is a general inquiry line, this is always manned, as long as there's someone sitting at reception, someone will answer that phone. The second is a dedicated appointment line, manned by a specific person, but said person was on annual leave this week.

Since we're a non-profit, we can't afford to hire a temp to cover her role, so this week, that line was shared between myself and my supervisor (neither of us were happy about this arrangement, but no one else seemed to want to do it), but on Thursday, neither of us could cover it (Sup was out of the office and my Thursdays are tied up) so it was left unmanned.

Other thing is, when I open a case for a client, I send them a letter explaining what the case is about and at the bottom, it has my contact number... which not only gives the general inquiry line, but also my extension, meaning it doesn't even have to be answered by anyone before it gets to me. Guess which number above lady didn't call.

No, instead she called the unmanned appointment line 8 times and didn't think to read my letter to see if there was a better way of contacting me.

While I was listening to the voice mail on J's phone, J informs my Supervisor (S) of the situation (not a co-worker suck, I'd have told her anyway). I explain the situation and S offers to call the number of the mystery lady to see what the problem is (and also find out who she is). She calls her in my presence, so I can hear S's side of the conversation.

After identifying the woman, I fish her case file out and hand it to S while she's still on the phone to her. Meanwhile, S has confirmed that Lady was using the wrong number and pointed her (in no uncertain terms... I'm way more soft to my clients, S on the other hand didn't become supervisor for nothing) to my letter where the correct number was clearly printed on the bottom (S later tells me Lady seemed a little embarrassed about that).

S then asks her what she originally called about... and then goes on to explain to Lady things that I had already explained to her in out initial meeting as well as again over the phone a few days after our meeting before reassuring the client that I am in fact doing my job correctly (and, not that I ever say or ever would say this to any of my clients, but they're getting all of my help completely free thank you very much). *headdesk*

I love my job.