What Means This Customer Service?

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CSR Shiny Robert has entered the session.
BILL: Can you please provide me with a phone number for our sales agent, John Yadda-yadda?
CSR Shiny Robert: Hi bill.
BILL: Hi
CSR Shiny Robert: Thank you for contacting the Office Blah-blah.
BILL: Can you please provide me with a phone number for our sales agent, John Yadda-yadda?
BILL: Are you still there?
CSR Shiny Robert: Yes.
CSR Shiny Robert: Please do contact your account manager YADDAYADDA,JOHNVINCENT at johnyaddayadda@officeblahblah.com . they will surely assist you in this regard.
CSR Shiny Robert: Is there anything else I can assist you?
BILL: I tried e-mailing him, but got no answer. I've been trying to get a credit from you guys for three weeks now. Do you have a phone number for him?
CSR Shiny Robert: I am sorry . there is no phone number.
BILL: What?
BILL: How can he not have a phone number?
CSR Shiny Robert: I am sorry please do contact him through email.
CSR Shiny Robert: Is there anything else I can assist you?
BILL: Yes, please. Put a manager on.
CSR Shiny Robert has exited the session. You are the only user left in the session.
CSR Shiny Robert: Due to the inactivity this chat session will be terminated. Thank you for choosing Office Blah-blah. This Service is available 8 am- 8 pm EST. Monday through Friday. Please don't hesitate to use this service again
Have a nice day..

And thus ended my first, and most likely, last experience with customer service online chat. This is a direct cut-and-paste, although last and business names and John's e-mail address have been altered But Shiny Robert is real. Too real. Even I couldn’t make that one up.

The most pressing question I have for now: Is Shiny a first name or merely an adjective?

Okay, all right, I admit my last two texts were a little belligerent. Some might construe them to be borderline abusive. And no, I didn’t really think that Shiny would let a manager start typing, but I was hoping that Shiny would start typing as if he/she were a manager. And perhaps improve the grammar to even make it believable.

Maybe the conversation would have continued like this:

MGR Glossy Bob has entered the session.
MGR Glossy Bob: How may I help you? I have read your transcript, and that is all that can be done.
BILL: I’m just trying to get a phone number.
MGR Glossy Bob: And I told you, I mean Shiny Robert told you, there is no phone number.
BILL: So how does John Yadda-yadda, the person who handles this multi-million dollar account, have no phone number? No cell phone?. Do you have a CB radio handle for him, or what?
MGR Glossy Bob: Explain to me, please CB Radio. What means this CB Radio?
BILL: C’mon, citizens band radio. You remember, back in the 70’s, before cell phones?
MGR Glossy Bob: I was born in 1991.
BILL: Really? You’re a manager at age 19?
MGR Glossy Bob: I will be in October.
BILL: What are you wearing?
MGR Glossy Bob: A powder blue leisure suit and tasseled loafers. Why do you ask?
Bill: Never mind. Wrong chat room. You really don’t know what a CB radio is? You never heard the song, “Convoy” by C.W. McCall? You know, the rubber duck?
Bill: You still there, Glossy?
MGR Glossy Bob: I know not of which you are talking of. I have helped you the best I could do.
BILL: You’re really Shiny Robert on the lamb, aren’t you?
MGR Glossy Bob: I am not Shiny Robert. I am Glossy Bob. I am on the lamb but off the cow.
BILL: Huh?
CSR Shiny Robert pretending to be MGR Glossy Bob has exited the session. You are the only loser left in the session.
CSR Shiny Robert pretending to be MGR Glossy Bob: Due to the inactivity this chat session will be terminated, and so will your entire infidel country.
Thank you for choosing Office Blah-blah. This Service is available 8 am- 8 pm EST. It’s the middle of the night here in the Middle East, so cut off some slack for us. Please don't hesitate to use this service again. Have a nice day.

Either way, the results would have been the same: hung up on by Shiny/Glossy. Apparently, outsourced customer service is on a timer. If they can’t answer the question in X seconds, they hang up on you. It reminds me of how my aunt would get you to eat your vegetables. She would set the timer on the stove and stand above you, wielding a fly swatter. You would have three minutes to eat your broccoli before Armageddon and fly guts were rained down upon you. No one was ever brave enough to actually test this threat.

I am told I should be grateful just to be given more than 144 characters to use in my chat box.

I’m not.

Following my dialog with Shiny Robert, I dialed Office Blah-blah’s customer service line on the telephone (channel 13 on your CB radio). I was given a number to a menu. I pressed zero to speak to an operator. The phone rang 38 times and was never answered. I did finally get John Yadda-yadda’s number through internal means, even though the written contract had to be pulled to find it. Almost 40 minutes after Shiny entered my life, I was able to speak to a human. John Yadda-yadda told me he was with a customer, had received my e-mail and would call me back at 1 PM.

With a customer? So he must be real!

It’s quitting time now, 3 PM, so I am going to go home. Never heard back from John Yadda-yadda.

I try hard not to get all Andy Rooney and say things like, “Remember when business used to be conducted in person, and you, as a paying customer, weren’t treated like stale bread being fed to ducks?” No one wants to hear that. They don’t even want to read it. It just makes me sad and tired (and, apparently old, ugly and boring too).

Oddly enough, it’s my birthday today. I’m hoping there’ll be cake. If not, I wonder if there’s an online chat I can enter to correct that. If not: Breaker one nine, good buddy of mine, this here’s The Tired Buyer on the lookout for some tasty pastry. Over.



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