Monthly Archive for November, 2007

First Real Asshole with a Billing Problem

Published
by
mattfast1
on November 15, 2007
in Stories and Work
. 0 Comments

I got the pleasure yesterday of dealing with a very upset Italian woman who was having issues with her bill yesterday. I believe her monthly bill had gone up by $17.62, and she kept me on the phone for quite some time ranting about it. I got so confused in her bill (because she had made so many programming changes in October) that I had to get my trainer over to check it over and try to figure it out. He couldn’t even find it, and he was a platinum agent on the floor for over a year before he started training people. So he went into Dish Promo, which shows things like that a little better, and he discovered the America’s Everything Pack (basically EVERYTHING DISH OFFERS) had been added (by the automated system, as I found out when I went through the notes again), then removed 10 days later.

It took another 10 minutes on the phone to get it through this lady’s head that yes, she was being charged correctly, that extra 17.62 was for those 10 days of having America’s Everything, and that her bill would return to normal next month, while she tried to convince me that this was some Spanish agent’s fault when I knew already that it had been the automated system that upgraded her programming, and I could see notes from the day before that another agent had already advised her about the partial charges. Basically, she’s trying to call up and find someone at DISH who will just throw money at her problem, and it ain’t happening. Even if someone does adjust off the charges, it probably won’t be approved, and it doesn’t matter anyway because this lady would still have to pay that extra this month.

And of course the next call after that was a guy who was very upset about a tech that came to his home, and keeps calling to tell agents he’s gonna cancel if the tech didn’t fix it by Friday. Fortunately, it looked like I could schedule someone for Friday for him. Of course he was still angry, and bitched and moaned about it. I just told him the tech would be there on Friday, and it seemed to satisfy him. Of course DNS uses an entirely different system than we do, so they don’t get the notes on the account to find out what’s been done already to fix it.

Forum Deleted

Published
by
mattfast1
on November 4, 2007
in Board of Smartness
. 0 Comments

The domain forum.mattfast1.com has been deleted from my DNS entries. This means that it will no longer be accessible in any form to anyone. This is as per my previous postings on this subject.

Dominate!

Published
by
mattfast1
on November 3, 2007
in Work
. 0 Comments

The first thing any Technical Service Representative (TSR) learns at Echostar is to dominate the call (and the customer). This message is repeated several times daily, in order to ensure it sinks into the head of everyone in the class. It is shouted by the class (if they are lucky to get my trainer, he’s awesome). However, no amount of training can help one deal with *drum roll* the first call. I took my first one Friday afternoon, and felt good about it - the only opportunity that was noticed by my mentor was the final step - educating the customer. Teaching them why that setting made a difference, how what you did fixed their problem, etcetera… that was the only thing I didn’t do. However, I handled the call well, got top marks on my first live call, and I feel good.

I think this job might work out for me. I hope so, from what I hear, the benefits of being one of the top agents are pretty sweet. A 20% bonus on my gross for the next month, plus access the Platinum lounge, sounds pretty appetizing. I’ll have to work to get there.