Have you ever contacted a company and talked to someone at first, then you call back, ask to speak to the first person and they tell you they have never heard of the person you talked to previously?

Sometimes, when I am talking to customer service. They are not set up to let you talk to the same person.

Yes. All the time. I imagine the reason behind it is to vex you into thinking that your case would be better served if you settle down and talk to whoever it is who took your call. But wait, are you referring to customer service people?

@marinelife It’s very frustrating because Person A is the one who you talked to about your situation and you feel comfortable with them but when you ask to speak to them again, Person B claims they don’t know who Person A is, even though you give them their full name and number.

@mazingerz88 Any company. Not necessarily customer service. But it probably DOES relate most to customer service.

@AshlynM I’ve had numerous frustrating experiences with customer service people. They could be ruthless in their coldness and matter of fact tone. I discovered that the trick really is anticipating that they don’t really care and they prefer that you fall into a crack before you could bother them. And deal with all that calmly but also with some step by step intelligent moves.

What I do is immediately inform the first non-caring person on the line what I want or need to do. Second, I explicitly inquire if he or she is the right and actual person who could help me with my situation from start to finish.

To be more clear, I would add that I’ve had experiences before where I would explain my case to someone and that someone would spend 10 minutes wrestling with the problem with me, only for me to hear afterwards that I would then need to talk to another person. ( Who would be more likely than not sitting somewhere in another continent )

When the person says, yes, he is the one to help fix your problem, from start to finish, then by all means continue with the conversation. Otherwise, request you be connected to the right department.

@AshlynM Not yet, but they don’t want to transfer the customer in case that person is dealing with another customer at the time and maybe yet another customer has asked for him/her. So, if they are allowed to transfer us then it may end up the same pleasant, competent persons will do all the work all day and get paid the same amount, which is not fair, so that could be one reason.

Some companies have offices in several locations, so one person in Arizona may well not know a person in Atlanta. They all answer phone calls and are, as far as they are concerned, equally qualified to answer your questions. It saves them time and money not to have you insist on repeat contact with one agent, unless that agent is assigned to you.

I worked in a distributed phone site for a big company. No way you know who is working in the other phone centers. There are East Coast branches for the early calls, West Coast branches for the late day calls. You are one of thousands of people who don’t know each other. What if that person is on break? You leave him a voice mail? He is not allowed to follow up with you, he gets paid to take oncoming calls. Following up without you on the line will get him in trouble. And how do you guarantee he actually will?

I wouldn’t know. I am bipolar if I do call customer service it never ends well. I did this with my cellphone phone company. I was so mad at them.

They were like: “Pay until xx date and then you can cancel the contract since you lost the phone and we can’t give you a new phone, call back on xx date to cancel the contract”. So I did.

They said: “you can’t cancel, its a contract, we can give you a new phone though…”

ME: “WTF! I don’t want your service, TURN IT OFF! I have been paying for 8 months for a service without a phone and NOW you want to give me a phone!! I think not.

THEM:“Well, it will cost 200$ to break the contract..”

ME:“WHAT! I have 2 months left on the contract! That’s bull! You are making up that price! Tell me why I owe that…waiting…yeah no answer, thats what I thought…are you still there???? OK, I will pay 200$ more to you liars, cuz you apparently don’t already have enough of my money, I was told I did not have to pay any extra money, look it up in your computer.

*THEM:*There is no note of that.

ME:OH of course there’s no note, Go figure, why would there be a note? Half of you don’t even speak my language! Fine then after I pay you your money just know this, I will tattoo on my ass if I have too this companies name so I can show everyone I know and advertise just for your company that I’ve been screwed by your company. I will also need your name and your managers name. This service has the worst customer service ever and I will be letting everyone I know and meet not to ever get an XXX cellphone, TV or internet, you are criminals.”

3 months later I got a check in the mail for 200$.

And that’s my rant LOL, I still will never deal with that company again.

These companies can be huge, so depending on the company you are dealing with they can have like 10 branches spread out worldwide even, so if you call one call center, when you call back it does not specifically mean you were just dispatched to that exact same location where that first person you were talking to is at. It can be very frustrating. My insurance company is only in one building I can call and talk to the same people over and over again. My phone company has multiple locations across Canada I could talk to someone in Ontario one minute & someone in Alberta the next.

Very often, customer service is not just one office in one location. The same phone number could get you someone in Oklahoma on your first call and someone in Singapore on your second. That may be why they don’t know each other.

As others have said, lots of large companies (and even some smaller ones) have – or hire – distributed call center services. Your phone call to 1–800-HELPMEE can be answered almost anywhere in the world, depending on time of day or even depending on which service center is busier (there are lots of algorithms that can determine who gets the call). So it can be perfectly true for one service tech to not know another one, even if you give him the guy’s full name.

This is why, when you talk to service centers, they will normally give you a ticket number for your issue. Don’t lose that ticket number if you want to call back about the same issue again! The work that one tech did on your issue is probably recorded on that ticket number, and it’s how the next tech will pull up that history without having to get you to go through the whole story again (and maybe have to guess at what the last tech did or said).

Some of the people answering the phone may also be new to the company, new to the job, or new to that type of work. They may not even know where the other call centers are – it’s not part of their job to know that.

For some reason, too, when you call service centers in Japan (although that’s getting more and more rare, since Japan is a fairly high-cost area for this type of work), a lot of the techs there are called (they certainly weren’t named this way by their mothers!) “Kevin”.

This only happens to me every single damned time without exception, other than that it is usually an easy and enjoyable process.

I asked a question just now – in Social – check it out – and I hadn’t seen this one. Crazy!

I work in a callcentre (although I’ve graduated to an administration role now) but it’s pretty common. Even if you work in the same building you might not be on the same floor or in the same office. And the turnover of staff is pretty high; few stay more than three months, during which time they probably only learn the names of the people on their own team.

HA oh yeeeeh. I felt like burning the uni down. Some people loveee to play us for idiots. I was talking to the same woman since December, its been four months now, so when I called in to speak with her, they told me she didn’t exist.