Not Going To Happen 'Cause I'm Not Harry Potter (Impossible Patron Requests)

[camlan]

<snip>
My bosses are trying to figure out how to explain that since the client was two and a half months late with the files (we still don't have them all), there's no way we can meet the original due date. Moving the due date up is simply not possible.

Why don't your bosses just say that--"Since you were two and a half months late with the files and still haven't even give us all of them--and routinely halt our work for two or three weeks while we wait for you to answer queries--there's no way we can meet your original deadline"?

Or are these the kind of clients who will get huffy and throw tantrums if you confront them with the truth? Many of mine are, unfortunately, so I know how it is.

My bosses have been telling them that.

The clients seem to live in a special world where whatever they want comes true.

Unfortunately for the clients, at the moment our company is one of the very few actually doing this work, so they don't have a lot of choice if they want to get huffy.

And in mixed blessings for my company, there are several other clients who have arranged to send us work, but now all the bosses are meeting to figure out how to deal with the deadlines, as this first client has messed up deadlines for other clients reaching out into next year.

And this client is supposed to be the leader in the field.

[camlan]

I think this is kind of right here...

I work with over 200 people. I've only ever talked to a few of them on the phone and never with any regularity. So why, when they call me, do they say, "Do you know who this is?" No, dude, I don't. Because I've never talked to you over the phone before. You must give me more detail.

One of a few pet peeves of mine is people who don't identify themselves when calling. I always do it, even for my family (especially now since my teen DD and I apparently have the same voice over the phone). It would make the calls go so much faster if people would just skip the guessing game.

One of my biggest pet peeves is people who call repeatedly but refuse to leave a voicemail. I'm not always at my desk, and even when I am, sometimes I'm not able to pick up a call. Answering the phone is not necessarily my first priority if I'm in the middle of something (my boss knows and agrees with this).

I don't get a ton of calls, but if someone leaves me a voicemail, I either return it promptly (within 1-2 business days at the most, often the same day) or I arrange for someone else to do so if it's a question or issue best addressed by someone else. Nevertheless, there are a few people who seem to insist on repeatedly calling without ever leaving a voicemail...and it's incredibly annoying.

And while I'm at it, if you do leave a voicemail, don't just say "this is Person X, call me." Give me some idea what you need; trust me, it's much more efficient that way. Even if you just tell me, "This is Person X, I have questions about A, B, and C. Please call me back at xxx-xxx-xxxx." It's not difficult!

Building on this, if I've taken the time to leave a voicemail saying, 'Hi, this is Hillia in the xxx department; I need to find out if the Veeblefinster report will be ready by Tuesday and if not, when it will be ready,' please don't call me back and say, 'Uh, hey...you called  me?'

That annoys me no end.

You've left them all the info they need. Easy peasy to send you a quick email with yes, it will be ready or no, it won't but it should be ready on X date. Call if you have questions.

But instead, they waste your time (and theirs) calling and basically starting the whole issue from scratch.

Drives me nuts.

[dawnfire]

I think this is kind of right here...

I work with over 200 people. I've only ever talked to a few of them on the phone and never with any regularity. So why, when they call me, do they say, "Do you know who this is?" No, dude, I don't. Because I've never talked to you over the phone before. You must give me more detail.

One of a few pet peeves of mine is people who don't identify themselves when calling. I always do it, even for my family (especially now since my teen DD and I apparently have the same voice over the phone). It would make the calls go so much faster if people would just skip the guessing game.

Over the phone, I sound like my sister. We both sound like our mother. My three nieces all sound like my sister (but not like me or our mother, oddly enough). Yeeeah, just saying who you are right at the beginning is the best plan!

Over the phone my father, my brother and eldest sound the same.

[HoneyBee42]

I think this is kind of right here...

I work with over 200 people. I've only ever talked to a few of them on the phone and never with any regularity. So why, when they call me, do they say, "Do you know who this is?" No, dude, I don't. Because I've never talked to you over the phone before. You must give me more detail.

One of a few pet peeves of mine is people who don't identify themselves when calling. I always do it, even for my family (especially now since my teen DD and I apparently have the same voice over the phone). It would make the calls go so much faster if people would just skip the guessing game.

One of my biggest pet peeves is people who call repeatedly but refuse to leave a voicemail. I'm not always at my desk, and even when I am, sometimes I'm not able to pick up a call. Answering the phone is not necessarily my first priority if I'm in the middle of something (my boss knows and agrees with this).

I don't get a ton of calls, but if someone leaves me a voicemail, I either return it promptly (within 1-2 business days at the most, often the same day) or I arrange for someone else to do so if it's a question or issue best addressed by someone else. Nevertheless, there are a few people who seem to insist on repeatedly calling without ever leaving a voicemail...and it's incredibly annoying.

And while I'm at it, if you do leave a voicemail, don't just say "this is Person X, call me." Give me some idea what you need; trust me, it's much more efficient that way. Even if you just tell me, "This is Person X, I have questions about A, B, and C. Please call me back at xxx-xxx-xxxx." It's not difficult!

Building on this, if I've taken the time to leave a voicemail saying, 'Hi, this is Hillia in the xxx department; I need to find out if the Veeblefinster report will be ready by Tuesday and if not, when it will be ready,' please don't call me back and say, 'Uh, hey...you called  me?'

That annoys me no end.

You've left them all the info they need. Easy peasy to send you a quick email with yes, it will be ready or no, it won't but it should be ready on X date. Call if you have questions.

But instead, they waste your time (and theirs) calling and basically starting the whole issue from scratch.

Drives me nuts.

Or (I work in insurance follow-up)--I call and leave a message with the insurance including pt name and date of service that I need info about.  The callback is "oh, I couldn't understand the pt name" (I always slow down and if it's a difficult name, I even spell it with a "c as in charlie" or "z as in zebra" or other such hard to distinguish letters).  Odds are that even if they call me back same day (rare), I will have worked at least six to seven more accounts since the call.  I keep a little log of pt names/accounts that I've left a message for.  But if you call me back the next day and say you couldn't understand the pt name, it's just been a waste of both of our time because I'm going to have a hard time locating the pt to pull the account back up. 

[MrTango]

Or (I work in insurance follow-up)--I call and leave a message with the insurance including pt name and date of service that I need info about.  The callback is "oh, I couldn't understand the pt name" (I always slow down and if it's a difficult name, I even spell it with a "c as in charlie" or "z as in zebra" or other such hard to distinguish letters).  Odds are that even if they call me back same day (rare), I will have worked at least six to seven more accounts since the call.  I keep a little log of pt names/accounts that I've left a message for.  But if you call me back the next day and say you couldn't understand the pt name, it's just been a waste of both of our time because I'm going to have a hard time locating the pt to pull the account back up.

Are you able to add the clinic's name and phone number to your log?  That way, you could search the log by those values for a recent entry.

[Library Dragon]

I think this is kind of right here...

I work with over 200 people. I've only ever talked to a few of them on the phone and never with any regularity. So why, when they call me, do they say, "Do you know who this is?" No, dude, I don't. Because I've never talked to you over the phone before. You must give me more detail.

This sort of thing used to happen all the time at the library.  It's a very specialized library and visitors would tend to remember us far more than we remembered them. 

It wasn't odd to get a phone call and hear the caller start with a perky, 'Hi!  I'm Bill!'

Okay, we want to be polite but we deal with at least a few dozen 'Bills' a year and, as it turns out, this 'Bill' hasn't been to see us in three years.  You could hear the air go out of their balloons when we didn't remember what their area of research was and could provide an instant update on new material.

Or when I run into patrons in the supermarket and they ask me to renew their books.

At my parish school parents would come up to me after Mass and ask what books their kids had checked out.  We had over 450 students. 

Sorry, no to both.

[o_gal]

I think this is kind of right here...

I work with over 200 people. I've only ever talked to a few of them on the phone and never with any regularity. So why, when they call me, do they say, "Do you know who this is?" No, dude, I don't. Because I've never talked to you over the phone before. You must give me more detail.

One of a few pet peeves of mine is people who don't identify themselves when calling. I always do it, even for my family (especially now since my teen DD and I apparently have the same voice over the phone). It would make the calls go so much faster if people would just skip the guessing game.

And sometimes it can backfire on them spectacularly. When I was in college, my Mom worked as the secretary at our church. She is fantastic at recognizing people by voice over the phone - they could just call up and start speaking to her and she'd know who they were without them having to say "this is XXX". Me, not so much but everyone assumed I had the same talent. I developed a standard response of "this is her daughter, you should probably call her at the church."

One morning I'm home and get a phone call from a woman who just started talking and telling me that "Dotty died". We had more than one woman at church who went by the knickname, so I did my standard spiel of "I'm sorry, I don't recognize your voice, why don't you just call my Mom at church?" But the caller was insistent that I recognize that "Dotty died! ... Dotty! ... DOTTY!". I kept telling her that I didn't recognize her voice, I didn't know who "Dotty" was, and could she please just call Mom at the church? Until in anger, she said "It's your Aunt XXX and your GRANDFATHER died!" - "Daddy" has come across as "Dotty". She apologized later and said that she wasn't thinking when I kept telling her that I didn't recognize her voice, and that she didn't want to call my Mom at the church, for whatever reason that I can't remember right now 

[ladyknight1]

For seven years, I have been answering emails about a particular program from students. I received such an email from our front office yesterday then responded as usual. Later, I was speaking with my boss and I told her I had responded to that email, so if she was copied not to worry about it. She was incensed. Doesn't the front office know that I am not to get these emails any more? She had informed them of a new procedure early this week!

Only, I didn't know about the new procedure.  She never thought to tell me! It is all for a good reason, I have new duties that are taking a great deal of my time and we have other staff who can answer those emails.

[MissRose]

I still can't get over the customers who want us to disclose sensitive details on their accounts without answering the security questions first.  Some say I call here a lot, but still I am NOT getting in trouble even if I recognize voice!

[Reika]

I still can't get over the customers who want us to disclose sensitive details on their accounts without answering the security questions first.  Some say I call here a lot, but still I am NOT getting in trouble even if I recognize voice!

I work for a supplemental health insurance company so unfortunately my call center ends up dealing with the agents in addition to our customers. The agents take it as a personal insult that they have to verify who they are before we disclose any information to them. Sure, you may be "Bob Smith" from Sarasota, we still need you to prove it. Even if we were limited to just the state of Florida (which we're not, we're in all 50 states plus all of the American Territories) that's still at least a thousand agents. We need them to prove who they are so we know we can disclose confidential information to them.

[StuffedGrapeLeaves]

I still can't get over the customers who want us to disclose sensitive details on their accounts without answering the security questions first.  Some say I call here a lot, but still I am NOT getting in trouble even if I recognize voice!

I work for a supplemental health insurance company so unfortunately my call center ends up dealing with the agents in addition to our customers. The agents take it as a personal insult that they have to verify who they are before we disclose any information to them. Sure, you may be "Bob Smith" from Sarasota, we still need you to prove it. Even if we were limited to just the state of Florida (which we're not, we're in all 50 states plus all of the American Territories) that's still at least a thousand agents. We need them to prove who they are so we know we can disclose confidential information to them.

This reminds me of the time when I had to call my insurance company for some information.  Even after answering the security questions correctly, the CSR refused to give me the information because she said that my name was a man's name, so it couldn't really have been me.  She also refused to transfer me to a supervisor.  Fortunately she had identified herself with her name upfront, so I hung up, called back, and got another CSR.  I asked for the supervisor and reported the first CSR.  The supervisor apologized and said that she would look into the situation.  I wonder what they did with that CSR.

[twiggy]

This reminds me of the time when I had to call my insurance company for some information.  Even after answering the security questions correctly, the CSR refused to give me the information because she said that my name was a man's name, so it couldn't really have been me.  She also refused to transfer me to a supervisor.  Fortunately she had identified herself with her name upfront, so I hung up, called back, and got another CSR.  I asked for the supervisor and reported the first CSR.  The supervisor apologized and said that she would look into the situation.  I wonder what they did with that CSR.

DH's first name is a "girl's name" so we have fun with CSRs as well. He sometimes has trouble with people not believing that he is who he says he is. It works out in my favor though because people assume that I am DH when I call, and give me the info without arguing about whether or not I, as DH's wife, and Payer of The Bills, am authorized to know how much we owe the phone company.

A couple of "fun" issues:
1. People who won't give me information once I've identified myself as DH Name's wife because same gender marriage isn't legal where I live. And since DH Name is a girl's name, we must be le$bians.

2. The cable company won't talk to DH because he is a man, and therefore not DH Name. So I talk to them and introduce myself as Mrs. DHFirstName Lastname. It's a technically appropriate, if overfly formal/outdated way to refer to myself.   

[cwm]

I've pretended to be my mom and my sister for various phone calls. They were at work, I wasn't, and they needed the information and couldn't make the call. So I called, introduced myself as MomsName Lastname. I didn't even have to verify anything else to get banking details from the account. I soon convinced mom and sis to leave that bank.

[MommyPenguin]

I have a frustratingly high voice, so that even when I deepen it a bit intentionally, I can't pass for a guy.  This is really annoying, because most of our bills/utilities must be in my husband's name (he's military and has certain protections in terms of ending contracts early if he has to PCS, but I don't have all of the same protections), and since I'm the one who pays the bills and changes addresses on things every time we move, sometimes I need them to deal with me.  Very, very annoying.

[jedikaiti]

Can he add you to the accounts as someone able to take care of things for him?