Saturday 25 March 2023

The customer is alright

 I've been wracking my brain for a decent idea for a post and have failed miserably but Red's story about a lady with an accent reminded me of this recent little incident:

At work I answered the phone to speak to an elderly lady who I thought had a German accent. We had a pleasant enough conversation. She wanted to buy pantyhose and I explained what sizes and colours are available. She sounded a tiny bit confused about credit cards or payments, I wasn't sure of the exact problem but we cleared it up.

Just a few minutes later an elderly lady with what I thought was a German accent called. (Almost none of the customers have accents and if they do it's probably an English or Asian one) The lady was unsure about whether she had the right place and I assured her she did. I was starting to think it was the same lady and I was wondering if she might have memory problems and maybe she was making loads of inappropriate purchases. She wanted to buy a skirt and blouse so I took the details of the order and asked

 "Didn't I speak to you a few minutes ago?" 

"No" she said.

"Oh, so you didn't buy pantyhose?"

She laughed as though pantyhose would be the last thing she would buy and I realised that I had added 2 plus 2 to make 5!

I didn't need to monitor the purchases of old ladies quite so diligently :)

10 comments:

  1. I am smiling here - and suspect that both of the women you talked to were smiling at the end of their call. Well done.

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    1. I hope they were smiling, i enjoy a wee chat with a lot of the customers.

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  2. You still may be right if a woman had memory problems. I can talk to someone with a bad case of memory and end up thinking I am the one who has a problem.

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    1. They both seemed to be pretty much on top of things but because the two calls came close together and I thought it was the same person, I probably latched onto any little sign that things may be amiss. I do think an instinct like that comes up for a reason but I couldn't establish that there was a problem

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  3. Sometimes our logic goes into overdrive and we get sidetracked.

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    1. You're right, Red. In this case, I'm happy to go into overdrive and to be wrong

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  4. An easy mistake to make if both women seemed to have a German accent and foreign accents are quite unusual in your area. I would probably have made the same assumption that it was the same person.

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    1. It was also because they were both elderly and both had a moment of uncertainty. There are lots of accents around, just not so many European ones

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  5. I still think you might have added up correctly! Maybe she was embarrassed that she didn't ask for the blouse and skirt during the first call! Odd though, isn't it?
    Sx

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    1. Yes Scarlet, I'm happy to be wrong but I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually find out I intuited some version of truth

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