Unreasonable People

I'm sure we have all had our times with unreasonable people.  I had an especially unreasonable customer the other day.  As most people know, I am a field technician for a large communications company.  Our procedure when we pick up a ticket is to call the customer and let them know we are on our way.  I did this and the customer did not answer the call. So I left a voicemail message for him and proceeded to the service address. Upon arrival I ran some preliminary tests and knocked on the door.  The door was answered by a young lady that introduced herself as the nanny.   She had no idea what the customer's issues were.  I told her, I saw some outside issues and would start there while she contacted the customer to find out more specifics.  After checking and correcting some items outside I returned to the door and knocked again.  The nanny told me that the customer wanted some new locations wired for new equipment.  I advised her that there would be a charge associated with services like that.  She said "Oh, I better let him know". I said is there anything not working?  She showed me to the master bedroom for a tv that appeared to have a stuck converter box.  I rebooted the converter box to resolve the issue.  Which it did, all serivices were back up and running successfully.   I then went in search of the nanny.  When I found the nanny, So she could show me to where the new locations for service needed to go, I was told that the customer said he would do the work and if there were any issues he would call me.  I said very well and left my phone number.  I also closed my ticket and left on to the next ticket. At the end of my day, the customer called me on my company phone, the phone number I had left with the nanny.  He proceeded to raise his voice and tell me I had fixed nothing.  As I tried to find out exactly what the issue was he continued in his raised voice and violent tone to tell me that I must not know what I'm doing  I assured him I had been doing this job for sometime and that the issue was, that the information I received about his problem was incomplete and very vague and I did the best I could with what I had to work with.  I offered to come back the next day and he agreed. The next morning I discussed with my supervisor.  She and I both agreed it would be best if I recused myself from this customer and just made a repair ticket for another technician to go back.  Which would make me take a hit on the metrics that the company measures us by.  Honestly, I was relieved.....lol  There is nothing worse than an insulting customer that not only created the issue with lack of communication but has no people skills to get done what they want.  So please remember, if you're not getting the service or goods that you think you should be getting, please exhaust all possibilities of patience and good communication before you just start getting insulting.  It won't get you what you want.  It will only get you the bare minimum.  Trust me, the service professionals that see a customer is frustrated with problems dealing with the service.  They just want to show up and be your hero, but when you insult them they lose all sense of caring about your problem.  Do you yell at the doctor on your first visit?  Probably not.  Even if your problem has been going on for some time, it's probably the first visit for your technician........ So be more reasonable until it becomes time to get credits on your bill.