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It’s easy to get sucked into the black hole that is Reddit, a.k.a. “the front page of the internet.” Because users can remain anonymous, the site gives people the chance to tell stories they wouldn’t share anywhere else. Things get weird fast when people can speak their minds with no filters. Two legendary Reddit posts, for example, chronicle a dude chucking his steak out the window at a dinner party and someone pretending not to know what a potato was.
For years, Reddit has been my favorite way to waste time during work — I’ve spent more hours than I’d care to admit mindlessly scrolling through threads. At least when I wrote this post, I had the excuse that I needed Reddit to do my job!
I dug deep into the catacombs of r/callcentres, r/talesfromcallcenters, r/talesfromtechsupport, and other subs to compile this list of strange tales — if you’ve ever worked in a contact center, I’m sure you can relate! If you haven’t then strap in, things are about to get weird!
Below are the top 10 weirdest and funniest call center stories I could dig up. If you want to throw me a bone and convince my boss that writing this post was worthwhile, please download Invoca’s new State of the Contact Center Report! Maybe it’ll give me an excuse to scroll more Reddit in the future.
We all know that some customers are more than willing to get short with contact center agents. After experiencing a frustrating issue, these callers are like a lit fuse, and the agent is unfortunate enough to be in the blast radius.
But the caller from this Reddit post took this all-too-familiar situation to new heights. When the agent told her he had to hop off the line to take shelter from an incoming tornado, she insisted he stay on the phone to service her complaint. When he told her he couldn’t, all hell broke loose.
In our State of the Contact Center Report, 38% of agents said they are often blamed for things they can’t control. I’m pretty sure that a tornado is the most extreme example of this we’ll ever see. Check out the full Reddit post to get the rest of the story!
The customer from this Reddit post wanted to get a new prepaid card. In order to get his request processed, all he needed to do was tell the agent that his existing card was damaged. Sounds like a cakewalk, right? Not quite. The agent dropped obvious hint after obvious hint, but the caller just didn’t get it.
In our report, 46% of agents said that they often have to deal with callers who are unprepared to resolve their issue. This one seems unprepared to follow obvious cues, which I think qualifies.
The caller from this Reddit post somehow managed to rack up a five-figure roaming fee on her phone bill — and that’s not even the wildest part of the story. Our hero, a dedicated call center agent, went above and beyond to help the customer secure a whopping $14,000 credit on her bill. After he saved her all that scratch, you’d think she’d be grateful, right? Guess again.
Almost 40% of agents report frequently dealing with rude callers, and not being thankful for a five-figure credit is pretty dang rude!
In this Reddit post, a customer called her telco provider with a complaint that her Bluetooth wouldn’t connect with her car. The customer was snippy throughout the call and belittled the agent. But once the caller connected to her car’s Bluetooth, she got a taste of her own medicine! Her enraged voice blasted back at her through the speakers, and her attitude promptly shifted.
When a father received a package of “green stuff” from his son, shipped straight from the Netherlands, he panicked. He promptly called the logistics company that had shipped it, trying to talk them out of sending his son to jail. Read the full Reddit post to learn what happened next!
A contact center agent from a telecom company wanted to test an elderly woman's internet connection. So, he asked her to run a simple test: go to “hotmail.com.” Only one problem: the customer spelled mail “M-A-L-E.” The woman’s reaction to the miscommunication will surprise you! Read more here.
We’ve all been on a phone call that made us so frustrated, we wished we could reach out and hit the person on the other end of the line. Well, in this Reddit post, a contact center agent learned how to put this into practice — just one problem: he did it by accident.
This caller caught her husband in bed with another woman and got creative with her revenge plot. While the husband fled in his car, she called her insurance company and asked the agent to remove his vehicle from their shared plan. The next step? Call the cops on him for driving uninsured. Check out the full post to see how things played out!
In a truly bizarre tale, a caller assured the rental car company that she dropped her car off “near the lot.” But she didn’t remember exactly where. Strangely enough, she didn’t understand why that was a problem.
This post took an incredibly unexpected turn. The contact center agent had the misfortune of dealing with an angry older gentleman. But it turns out, said gentleman wasn’t a bad person — he just needed to be shown some kindness. Cue the waterworks!
One of the most eye-opening stats from the State of the Contact Center Report is that 94% of agents say it’s personally important to them to provide the best service possible to every caller. This one is just above and beyond the call of duty.
At the end of the day, it’s important for all of us to remember that when we call a business, the person on the other end of the line is a human being who deserves to be treated with respect. Call center agents put up with a lot of flack — and just plain weirdness — so don’t forget to thank them before you hang up.
For our State of the Contact Center Report, we surveyed hundreds of agents and managers to get their opinions about their work environment. There were definitely some discrepancies in their responses!
Download the full State of the Contact Center Report here to see what contact center agents really think about their jobs! Their answers may surprise you.
