I took a call from a customer who sounded like quite a nice old lady. Querying the customer database through the serial number, I found the customer’s name to be “Carol” and her surname to be impossibly long and presumably Eastern European. Fortunately — or so I thought at first — she didn’t want tech support and was only calling to claim a free software offer that was a part of the packaged bundle. I checked on the issue and the offer had expired a good three months before.

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but the offer has expired.”

Customer: “What?”

Me: “This offer has expired, ma’am, I’m sor–”

Customer: (her soprano turning into a growling contralto) “What do you mean it has expired? I’ve got the right to get my free CD! I paid for it! You will give me my CD.”

Me: (explained again)

Customer: “Oh yeah? I’ll talk to your supervisor, then.”

Sure, escalate the call, but she wasn’t going to get it. I told her so in the nicest and sweetest of the tones I’m capable of.

Customer: “I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU ANY MORE. GET-ME-YOUR-SUPERVISOR!”

Wow, talk about getting emotional. I called my supervisor who would take the escalated call and try to talk some sense into her, but he failed. The call escalated a second time as the area supervisor took the call and once more as the shift supervisor took over.

I couldn’t believe it. There we were, all four of us sitting in a row, listening to the call that — for an encore — got escalated once more. A customer satisfaction specialist took the call and didn’t do any better.

We decided to roll it around once more and patched her through another tech, who finally placed and solved the ACTUAL problem.

Tech Support: “Your name is Carol…what? Oh sure, yes SIR…sure, I’ll fix your entry in our database right away.”

Or hanging jaws nearly hit the floor. “Carol” was A GUY — even though he sounded like a Powerpuff girl — and we had all been calling him “Ma’am” all along. The whole company laughed at this for almost a week.