Funniest Call Center Stories: Part V

In my continued 5 part series of Funniest Call Center Stories… In American society, invariably you’ve contacted a call center filled wall-to-wall with customer service representatives (CSRs) And for twenty years, I was a call center rat in some capacity. In some of those call centers, I rose through the ranks to be promoted to title of supervisor. Not only did we manage the workers, but we took escalated calls. The following is part 5 of 5 posts based on the humorous call center stories I have to share.

Funniest Call Center Stories: Part V – Magic Porthole

For the conclusion of my 5-part series, it’ll be a story at Costco Travel. This was most cringe-worth experience I’d ever had at CT, even beyond the nudist colony taking over a Royal Caribbean cruise ship!

Even still, I can’t reminisce about the story without mentally busting up laughing.

It was an escalated agent call. I knew the agent and realized she’s not the hallmark of customer service or compassion. She unloaded some rudimentary information about the booking and the issue.

Then the transferred call was completed.

“Carlos, I want my magic porthole! I paid for it, and now don’t have it.”

I was speechless. So many off-color remarks raced to leave my mouth in competition with my corporate speak. “Let’s start from the beginning as I wasn’t the initial call taker, shall we? First things first, what’s your name?”

Over the next 20-minutes of my Funniest Call Center Stories I managed to talk her off the edge and glean all the pertinent information.

My search for her Magic Porthole has begun …

Being a College of Disney Knowledge Graduate, I don’t ever remember this feature on a Disney Cruise Ship, but who knows? Maybe I missed a detail. My Spidey sense was tingling letting me know this is the Funniest Call Center Stories that I could ever tell.

I madly flipped through the current Disney Cruise Ship paper brochure. Nope; no Magic Porthole. I literally have no idea what this woman is talking about, let alone know why she’s so upset. I decided to search on the interwebs.

I honestly should’ve thought about my search parameters more clearly prior to typing in “magic porthole” in Google. DO NOT DO THAT at home, folks. Oy vey.

My IT Department was alerted then started chuckling like children when I said this was all about her magic porthole. They laughed, “After three kids, I don’t think it’s magical anymore.”

Children! All of them.

I resumed my research on the paper brochure. Based on her stateroom number and deck plan, I found an oval shaped object adjacent to the room. “Ok, this might be it,” I mused.

I circled it, scanned it and emailed it to my Disney rep, with the question, is this a magic porthole?

The rep calls me almost immediately, and laughing so hard she barely makes sense. I grumble into the phone, “I’ll take that as a no.”

This was supposed to be the Funniest Call Center Stories and this starting to not be that way. I finally visited travel forums to research what exactly is a “magic porthole”. I managed to locate a Disney Magic Porthole. It’s a cruise industry first, high-definition cameras on the exterior of the ship feed video to wall-mounted framed monitors that have the appearance of a porthole for an inside stateroom. Camera positions correspond with stateroom locations – port or starboard, from bow to stern.

The angry caller had an inside stateroom already. So all of that to confirm that she has what she wanted from the Minute “Go”.

As always, be good like you should, and if you can’t be good, be good at what you do!

Mic drop *bOoM*

‘los; out