In our latest installment of the “Lowe’s Blows Saga”, we had left the story with the first true villain having made his appearance in the form of the diabolical “Joe” from the “Appeasement Team” who not only came into the conversation awfully aggressive and rude (with special emphasis on “awful”) whose one action item was to put a “take-it-or-leave-it” offer in the post.
That was on 31 July.
Three weeks on, I do believe we’ve given the United States Postal Service plenty of time to *WALK* said missive to Raleigh from Mooresville and I’ve not heard one peep from that “Appeasement Team” since.
That leads to these possibilities:
- The “Appeasement Team” are not exactly aces at following up on their action items.
- The “Appeasement Team” is into practicing professional ghosting.
Take your pick.
The funny thing about the game of tennis is that the most successful players do their level best to ensure the ball is in the other player’s court and it was now time to swat the action item ball back over the net into Lowe’s court.
And that means yet another call to the “Customer Service” line to that same off-shore call centre that has done so well this far into the tale to try to get to an escalated customer support team. 🙁
“Cavel” is the first person that picks up and we spend a couple of minutes trying to get him to actually talk into the microphone instead of doing the fading-in and fading-out thing.
Sadly, that would be the high point of the next 75 minutes with him trying to explain in as simple and clear English as I am capable of that I need the phone number to an actual person on the escalated support team, preferably one in the 704 area code where the HQ is located in Mooresville just outside of Charlotte.
He repeatedly wants me to tell the whole story over again to him and no amount of trying to explain that the problem is already well past his pay grade and likely his supervisor’s and that I really need to speak to a person in Mooresville at their HQ seems to get through to him.
No, I don’t actually want to repeat the story multiple times to people who have *ZERO* capability of actually resolving the issue as has been proven conclusively in the multiple previous contacts to this call centre. Doing so is a complete waste of my time and his…full stop!
After the third time trying to get Cavel to understand reason, I finally give up on him and ask for his supervisor.
Of course, his first line of defence is to claim that there are no supervisors available. Having supported many call centres in my professional life, that is an out-and-out lie because no credible call centre would allow the first-level support to man the phones without supervision. Ever.
Then he’d go back to his standard script of wanting me to tell him the details of the situation (NO for the MILLIONTH TIME!) and fail to grasp that I was completely over interacting with him.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat way too many times when the proper action was to just do as they were asked.
I understand level one support agents don’t want to involve supervisors because the supervisors usually get quite annoyed that they are called on to do their actual job, often because the first agent failed to do theirs properly.
But when your customer is insisting upon speaking to the supervisor because they know the level one agent’s script has completely failed to resolve the situation and their lack of any prerogative whatsoever guarantees they can’t possibly resolve the matter on their own, the absolute worst thing the agent can do is claim there are no supervisors and then actively resist finding one when they’re called out for telling that lie.
When Cavel finally realises the jig is up, then he’s wanting me to give him the details so that he can tell the supervisor. Not only is that a waste of time, it’s also a vector for the level one agent to poison the conversation between the customer and the supervisor (if the supervisor isn’t already listening in as “Joe” was in the last episode).
No, I’ll decide when I get that supervisor if they’re going to be helpful and worth the time to tell the story yet again.
During one of the loops between Cavel once again trying to demand details he will not be provided and yet another request for the supervisor and a HQ phone number, he offers up a toll-free number: 855-915-6937.
Ah…hope springs eternal that maybe I’m going to get the escalated call centre number. And that hope lasts all of ten seconds when Google confirms that Cavel’s idea of “phone number to the executive customer support team with a 704 area code” is the Lowe’s Associate Relations team.
In other words, Lowe’s human resources!
So not only is Cavel trying to stonewall me, he’s also trying to give me a bogus phone number. It takes another 25 minutes (and now we’re in the 75th minute of the call) before Cavel finally gets off the line and supposedly I’m going to get to speak to the supervisor.
Except that who picks up the line is someone named “Ashley” in the Lowe’s Pro Contact Centre. That’d be same the people Miguel and I were talking to on the initial failed installation day for a hour who refused to accept the testimony of the plumbing professional they’d effectively demanded to attend and determine that the valve is in working order and always has been.
Not a supervisor and yet again not where I had asked to be transferred nor need to be.
I wish I could say I was surprised but I wasn’t.
I point out to Ashley that apparently Joe of the “Appeasement Team” is into either failing to follow through or professional ghosting but that three weeks seemed more than enough time.
Ashley was pleasant enough to talk to and seems appropriately horrified at how Lowe’s has treated me to this point (with very few exceptions).
She does go through the notes and she can see that Joe was indeed on the call but no indication that he actually put anything in the post as he’d promised to do. Applying a former manager’s dictum to the facts at hand (“never ascribe to malice that which can be easily explained by stupidity!”), it’s certainly plausible that Joe either didn’t have the ability to follow through as he’d promised or likely got distracted (SQUIRREL!) and then forgot all about it when faced with other callers and tasks.
But that’s kind of a hard sell to me when he was very over-the-top and aggressive about the “take-it-or-leave-it offer”…people who double-down that hard usually are very good at following through on the action items to make the big show of how they laid down the law and I can just accept it.
I can’t prove that but the lack of documentation in the notes from Joe strongly suggests that the omission from the record on his part was intentional to evade accountability when the next call wondering what in the hell is going on would invariably come into the call centre queue.
So once again I go through the whole spiel and she’s promising to document everything and escalate it to the appropriate people.
I make it crystal clear that I expect an answer IN WRITING and that time is of the essence so I suggest that a week should be more than sufficient for someone in Mooresville to post whatever resolution they care to offer.
Somehow, I think this will be two hours, 28 minutes of my life that were completely wasted. 🙁