Hello, Can I Help You?

(all company names and employee names changed to protect the innocent... or well in the customers case... the guilty)

This one will take some explaining but is well worth the read if you ask me.

I was working as a phone technician for Blorchizon, so for those of you in the know... we get the weirdest of the weird. I had moved up through the ranks and had become a tier 3 agent, handling only the most difficult of issues.

One fine day everything was going normal, customers with weird throughput issues, customers in areas with recent flooding and more, when this lovely issue occurred.

A tier 2 agent had been working on this call for about 20 minutes and could not isolate the issue. The call had been moved up to them after 10 minutes on the front lines. Needless to say, they contacted me and described that the customer wasn't getting any internet access and nothing they did was changing the issue. So I told the agent to transfer the call to me and this is what transpired:

Me: Thank you for holding, my name is Jed with Blorchizon advanced support. How can I help you?

customer: Hi Jed, my name is Joe and that last guy was really nice, but we can't fix my issue!

Me: I'm aware of that Joe and I'm really sorry. It seems like something out of the ordinary is going on here and it is my job to find it and get you back up and running.

Joe: Excellent... see I have a top of the line computer and it is new, so I know it isn't the computer. It has to be your service.

Me: We'll see Joe.

At this point, I proceeded through basic troubleshooting to see how well he would listen. This guy gave me all the correct answers to anything I asked. For example, I'd direct him to the Control Panel and then into the TCP/IP stack and he'd tell me everything was there exactly as it was supposed to be. So we continued:

Me: Joe, I have to admit this is really strange, everything seems to be exactly how it is supposed to be and you should be getting internet access.

Joe: Yep! That is what I've been saying. You know this all started...

Joe was disconnected right there. At first I thought to myself... Sweet! It works now, no more issue. However it was our policy to try and contact customers back if they were disconnected to make sure everything was ok. So I grab the number from my caller ID and call back. This is what I got:

*ring*

Lady: Thank you for calling Happy Meadows Mental Hospital, how can I help you.

Me: Um..... maybe I dialed the wrong number, but do you have a Joe there?

Lady: Well... nobody on staff here is named Joe. We do have a patient named Joe. Are you a relative?

Me: Uh... no ma'am I'm with Blorchizon Internet. Joe and I were on the phone, apparently he is having trouble with his internet.

Lady: That isn't possible sir! He doesn't have a computer, and we don't have internet access in our rooms.

Me: O....K.....

Lady: *urgent voice* I better go check on him!

I sat on hold for a few minutes, because now I was intrigued. Eventually the lady came back.

Lady: I'm very very sorry sir. Joe had gotten a hold of a newspaper and had found advertisements for Smell Computers and for Blorchizon DSL. He has some boxes set up on his desk and thinks it is his computer.

Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *yes I really laughed on the phone*

After a few minutes of explaining the issue to this woman, stating that Joe had given me all of the answers I needed for everything, she told me that Joe was very smart and had probably learned all the answers to give when asked those questions by calling previously. I checked the note system we had, and sure enough Joe had been calling in since 3:00am that day and had talked to about 30 technicians.

I can still imagine it to this day, a guy sitting in a hospital gown in front of a bunch of cardboard boxes on the phone trying to get his internet working... absolutely fantastic.

Thought I'd share.

Via Clientcopia