So today a customer calls into the call center complaining because the person she usually speaks to wasn't available. She asks me to see if he's working. According to our internal software he isn't online ie. not working. I advise her of this and offer to assist her.
She proceeds to complain that he hasn't returned her call or emailed her for several days and demands to know why- I explain to her I personally don't know his schedule but even if I did sometimes people are absent or go on vacation so even if I knew his schedule I wouldn't be able to tell why he wasn't at work this specific day even if he was regularly scheduled. I then advise we have other people working, like myself, who can assist her and may I assist you in his place?
She continues to complain saying it's unprofessional and he should be available or at least tell customers why he's not and its an electronic world and there's no reason for him not to be able to say if he's out today or on vacation. I apologize for the inconvenience, reiterate it's not possible for employees to always be available and that's why we have an entire staff available all the time, so that anytime a customer calls they can receive service even if it's not by a specific person.
Karen continues to complain and demands to speak to the employee's supervisor. I reach out to the sup, who luckily was available, and he told me the agent was out of the office for an indeterminate period of time, advised there's nothing he can do for the customer for this issue but anyone can assist her in his place. I return to Karen and explain this.
She continues to complain about why he isn't available and why can't someone let the customers know when people go on vacation or are absent as she prefers to speak to the same person. Again I offer to assist because as we are seeing, the agent she is looking for is not available and it's not always possible for every person who works here to be available every time a customer calls but we do have other people available whenever we are open. She complained that it's unprofessional that I couldn't just tell her where this missing employee was and why he didn't reply to her email or return her call. I replied, I did state that he was not online which typically indicates an employee is not working at the time, otherwise they would be listed as available in the system.
Finally she relents, at this point I am just disgusted with her behavior, but she needed to talk to a different team anyway so I transferred her. IMO customers shouldn't know what's going on, where people are, if they are just absent or on vacation or what, it's none of their damn business what employees are doing. She could have easily surmised the person wasn't working from the lack of reply she got when trying to reach out to him, instead of just moving on with her day she made things extra difficult for herself and myself, simply because she's an asshole. This is why people don't want to work for cheap labor rates that don't pay the bills- it's not fucking worth it. Especially when your customer base is full of self centered entitled assholes.