Its Always the Same and You Know Who's to Blame

When I was at home last weekend, my dad and I were talking.

"You know I was thinking the other day," he said. "We never hear anything good about your customers."

I laughed because it's true! But there are so few good customers to talk about!

Really, most of my customers are short and to the point. There's not much to report. Others, like my astrology guru, love me to death. And some wish death upon me.

These are the customers that seem more interesting to talk about. But I had lots of customers who were pleased with me last week.

One of my short and sweet customers took the time to tell me over and over how good I am. "You are very efficient. Keep up the good work!"

Several customers were impressed by my knowledge of our products. One such customer wanted to put the funds of her mature CD into her savings account because she would be needing the money soon. She needed to have immediate access, rather than waiting for the CD to mature again.

It turned out I had a better option for her. We have a CD that allows you to withdraw funds prior to maturity without a penalty. So she would be earning a higher interest rate, while still being able to transfer the funds when she needed them.

I got a lot of thank-yous for that one!

A guy called in and was yelling right off the bat. "I am calling in for my father! Why wasn't this done right? Arrgh! Grumble! Roar!"

I was able to not only fix the problem, but calm him down enough that he was telling me all about his family. He told me about how he was going to buy his granddaughter a Mustang convertible. He was even prepared to adpot me!

He did ask for my name, though. "Just in case I need to call back and yell about someone in particular."

I have no problem giving my name out when I know I'm doing my job right. Even when I make people mad.

Thursday, a woman called in to do a transfer. She seemed to know what she was doing and I could see from her history that she had done transfers over the phone before.

"I'll just need to ask you a few questions to verify your identity."

"Yeah, I know. Go ahead."

When talking to customers over the phone, we obviously don't have the luxury of asking for a photo ID. We have to identify people by asking certain questions. If they are unable to answer them, we are unable to help them.

Unfortunately, this woman didn't answer my questions correctly.

"You must be kidding me! I've done this before! You can look and see I've done this before! I know what's there! I opened the CD with $40,000! Can't you see that?"

I continued to inform her that we would be happy to help her in the banking center, but I could not help her over the phone.

"You must be drunk! You're sick! You're sick in the head and you're an alcoholic! You are playing head games! What's wrong with you? What is your name? You're going to get fired! You're sick sick sick!!!"

Ouch, right? She would be surprised to know I had only had two Long Island Iced Teas that morning! And yet she was so sure of my drunkenness and information about her CD!

"I put forty. thousand. dollars. in there! . . . Was it fifty?"