Leave it to the Norwegians to take customer service (and apparently vacuuming) to the next level. According to a story in The Local (which has all of Norway’s news in English if you’re into that sort of thing you kinky freak) a customer service agent finally gave a customer the sort of service they deserve.
According to the story: 16-year-old Maiken Fredriksen Iversen (I thought this was supposed to be Norway stuff in English can’t we get that name translated? How about Mary Iversen?) called to ask why she didn’t get a heads up text that she was about to go over on her “subscription” which is Norwegian for “minutes”.
The agent asked her to download an app to monitor her usage. The teen said TBNT (Google it). The customer service rep said the Norwegian equivalent of work with me here which is “be a little bit helpful” which I like better. “Work with me here” always sounds desperate to me. Reminds me of Jack Lemmon’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Now the lazy customer service rep moves on. Next call. Next person with a complaint that you don’t give two shits about but since you’re making $12.75 an hour and rent isn’t going to pay itself and you’re already caught up on your Facebook* newsfeed you might as well answer another call.
But not his rep. He promptly sent Mary Iversen the following text:
“It’s rare to encounter this level of cheek. Hope you burn in hell!”
in. Ya. FACE! Sick burn (in hell) on the stupid questiony teenager! This customer service rep is going places. This is lower middle management material if I’ve ever seen it. And since I’ve worked in the service industry myself for 15 years, I know exactly what I’m talking about. This is the best of proactive and reactive. I call it reproactive which is a buzzword coming to a board meeting near you.
It also has the added benefit of sounding like you are doing something over again to make sure you were pro-active enough. And if there is anything we like in business it’s double-checking stuff no matter whether it’s actually effective or not.
Mary’s mom didn’t see this as reproactive so much as really fucking over the line. As did Telenor which shit-canned the guy after Mrs. Iversen called and was all like “I’m not trying to be a dick, bro…” which sounds like this in Norwegian “Jeg prøver ikke å være en pikk, bro.”
I just hope that Norway does things the way we do in America; where cats have all the tough conversations.
You tell him Professor Mittens.
*I was going to use the Norwegian translation of Facebook and I did. Because Facebook in Norwegian is “Facebook”. I am disappoint.
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Got an award for you on my blog. Come drop by and pick it up sometime.
http://beckyispassingthrough.blogspot.in/2012/07/its-that-time-again.html
Thanks Becky. I went over to your blog and read the other blogs too. I’ll do the post for this next week.
Is dark and lonely here, hell is bonus place. Yah!
I wonder if that was a lost in translation thing. Maybe they didn’t mean the teen should actually burn in hell. It’s like when you tell your Mom to “fuck off” but you don’t really mean “fuck off” so much as “You’ve ruined my life with your overprotective ways you horrible bitch!”
And I’ve said too much.