5 Types of Callers - Things That Annoy Me Thursday

I work at a call center (it’s just as glamorous as you think!) and I take anywhere between 15-30 calls a day. You can imagine that I get to talk to many different personalities during the day so I thought I would share with you the different types of callers that we see daily.

1.      Know It All’s: You know these people. We’ve all met them. In my case they tend to be the people who call, presumably because they need help or have a question, but then start telling ME what’s the situation is as though they were teaching me. They don’t let you talk or help them. You tend to have to cut them off so that you can get a word in and actually help them. Which leads to the asshole callers…

2.      Assholes: Not long after I started working, when I was still raw and not completely sure of what I was doing I got a call from a lady who was not happy (but very few are). She was talking to me about her problem and I was trying to help her and telling her that I was going to send a message to the proper person. When I told her to give me a moment to write she said “you aren't done?” I told her that I was waiting for us to stop talking to write it and her reply was “what? You can’t walk and chew gum at the same time”. That is the worst one I've had, but luckily we are able to hang up on callers (After warning them) if they are rude to us.

3.      Repeaters: These are the people who will repeat themselves over and over. They will tell you their story many times even though you've already resolved their issue. I will listen to them, I will fix the problem and I will tell them what I did, and then they will say something like “okay because (repeat problem here)”. These are some of the worst and you definitely have to interrupt them or you will be on the phone forever.

4.      Entitled: Oh, goodness. These I think are just as bad as the assholes. These people feel like they are entitled to the services we provide. They are not grateful for what we give them, but instead think that it is their God given right to them and heaven forbid they don’t get them on time. You can hear them saying: “I want to know where MY benefits are and when are YOU going to give them to ME?” Which leads me to…

5.      Grateful: These are the ones I like the most. They are so thankful for getting the benefits we provide. They continuously say thank you or God bless you. They tend to ask for a supervisor to let them know what a good job you are doing. They acknowledge that they are being helped and sometimes seem to feel ashamed or embarrassed for needing the help. 

I take Spanish calls and 95% of the time my callers fall into the grateful category. A grateful caller can also be a repeater, though. They sometimes are Know-it-All’s, but not generally.