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Relational communication skills training!
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"phunny" mail:

I think your phunnies make a very vivid point to the audience. They're great.

Elsa


And now for something more serious...

Call Center Culture

"Call Centers are mainstream. You see call centers in TV commercials and on the cartoon pages of your daily newspaper. Both are great indicators that the call center is a “household word.” .... So it’s no surprise that call centers make the news as did Victoria’s Secret recently, and it's no surprise that in a letter to its credit card holders, Dress Barn alerted its customers to a change in the location of their call center operations."

Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen,used with special permission from the cartoonist.

Unauthorized usage of any kind is prohibited and unlawful.


OTIS WITHOUT HIS WARRANTY
I work in the consumer complaint division of an automotive repair company. It's sometimes difficult to resolve consumer issues at a franchise store. (Since it's not corporately owned, we can't force them to take action. We often have to persuade the manager to make good on a poor repair.) One customer complained that our franchise operator wouldn't replace the transmission in his riding lawn mower. I sent an E-mail to the store manager and received this response:

The customer in question is the town drunk. His driver's license has been revoked for years. I wondered why it was showing such wear, but I still replaced the transmission in his mower twice! Recently I discovered him riding it, along the shoulder of the road, to his favorite "watering hole," which is eleven miles away! 11 mile journeys are not a legitimate use of riding mowers, and I am not going to replace his transmission again!

YOU TALKING TO ME?!
I took this call in a cellular phone call center.
Caller: I can't make outbound calls on my cell phone.
Rep: Do you have the phone with you?
Caller: Yes, I'm talking on it right now.
Rep: The phone is working just fine. You just called me.
The embarrassed caller quickly hung up.


WHERE'S THE REST OF MY ORDER?
I work in the home delivery enquiries (read: complaints) department of a major UK catalogue retailer. A colleague once took a call from an extremely disappointed woman who had purchased a cat gym/scratching post type of thing. In the catalogue, the product is pictured with two little kittens climbing on it. You can probably guess what her complaint was . . . yes, the product had been delivered, but the two cats weren't inside the box!! The advisor explained politely that the picture was for illustration purposes only and that there was no way that we could send live animals via a parcel delivery service, but the customer continued to rant at him, threatening to report the complaint to Trading Standards, the press, her solicitors, etc, etc. If that item is featured again, maybe we should add the phrase 'livestock not included' to the description!!!

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!
Working in the restaurant business you get some PHUNNY calls. The best one was: "On what days is your Sunday Brunch available?"

IS THIS THE PARTY TO WHOM I AM SPEAKING?
A rep recently told me of the following situation: A guy called our toll-free number from a pay phone. He asked to be transferred to another phone number which did not belong to our company. Apparently, he called us because the numbers 4 and 5 on the pay phone were not working. This is funny because our 800 number contains both a 4 and a 5.

WE'RE GETTING WARMER...
I work in a furnace manufacturing company sales office, where customers call to place orders. A customer requested a particular furnace model, and I told him "I'm sorry but our stock is depleted." The customer replied, "That's okay, I'd rather get furnaces without pleats anyway."

Source: Readers of The Phone Phunnies