Day 20 - Tips for Triumph: Customer Service Saavy

Here, once again, is an outlet for day-to-day living advice that will make you more attractive to the opposite sex, boost your love life, make you smarter AND more sensitive, and (FDA approval pending) lower your cholesterol.

Today's Edition: Getting What You Want When You Call to Ask For It

Say you come across a notice for a show that strikes you as interesting. You say to yourself, "Self, that show strikes me as potentially interesting, and probably an excellent use of my time and money. I think I'll get some tickets!" Should you:

A) Go online with the intention of using the production's website and allow yourself to get distracted by the pictures and the opportunity to web surf, leading you to call the ticket office and complain about how difficult it was to get tickets over the Internet;

B) Call the ticket office first, and spend the next 23.6 minutes on the phone trying to figure out when you actually have a night free to attend the show, since you didn't check your calendar before you called;

C) Drive down to the ticket office, promptly forget your name and how to speak English (or whatever the national language is of the country in which the ticket office for the show you want to see is located) and stare intently at the ticket agent until they PICK THE INFORMATION FROM YOUR MIND;

D) Gather all your friends and instruct them to each follow one of the above procedures, forcing the ticket agents into a murderous rage and inciting them to burn down the theatre, thus canceling the show and relieving you from the responsibility of making any choices concerning the show.

Obviously, the answer is D. For DUH.

For the love of all that is holy and good, PLEASE hold firmly in mind the specific question you would like answered when approaching a Customer Service representative, and DO NOT assume that mind-reading and/or psychic abilities are pre-requisite to employment with that company. Know what you want and specifically ask for what you want, and then LISTEN carefully to the response in case adaptation is needed (or just to keep you from asking a question they have already answered). Ticket agents and customer service reps the world over will rain blessings (and free tickets - maybe) down upon your head, and you will be met in the future with songs of rejoicing. I AM NOT KIDDING. (If all that musical-theatricality is too much for you, well, just go to the website, follow the links, and make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page before finishing your order. When purchasing tickets, make sure to look for the picture of event tickets or the button that has the words "Order Tickets Here" and CLICK ON IT. It's amazing how often that works.)

And if you don't believe that this blog feature will, in fact, boost your love life, try this - any guy that calls me and says, "So I called the ticket office to place an order for that show, and I ALREADY knew the date I wanted to attend - the ticket agent found me some seats that sounded great and I was off the phone in less than three minutes!" has got a date with me that I will probably volunteer to pay for.

TO Crime Fighters

*cue black and white*

It was just another day in the office - the ticket office, that is. We were slogging our way through ticket orders when he came up to the window asking for help. Same old story, same old schlub looking for a free ride to a concert or two (which we're happy to provide). We had just changed computer systems, so I took down his information to start a new account - then found that I couldn't print the tickets. I turned the order over to my associate, and here's where things started to get strange.

When I told my pally the schlub's name she jerked and turned pale - and then jumped to her feet to confront the man at the window. "Say," she says, "do you happen to know someone else with the same name as you? I ask because a very good friend of mine with the same name kicked the bucket recently, and I attended his funeral just this week!" He was a cool joe, I'll give him that. He denied everything, and we gave him the tickets. Another satisfied customer! But all was not well on the inside. My associate, following a hunch, checked out the address we'd been given, and commented that it was awfully close to where her friend had lived. Digging a little deeper (by pulling her PDA out of her bag), she unearthed her friend's address and found that they were, in fact, the same. Dun dun DUN! Further investigation led to the discovery that the phone number for the account was a mickey. It looked to us like we'd stumbled onto a case of identity fraud, and it was up to us to make it right.

We contacted the widow and filled her in - turns out she was in the middle of reviewing her finances with her son and it was the perfect time to notify the bank and the credit cards. That’s one widow with one less scam to sort out! We hit up our building security for the surveillance on the lobby, and have shaken them down for a picture of the potential perp. We've now contacted local police, and everyone is on high alert, just waiting for the next hit. The real clincher was when, after receiving "his" tickets, our fraud-pusher remarked that it was too bad the "other" guy was dead, since he wouldn't be able to attend the concert. Folks, we don’t take that kind of levity lightly, especially in regards to larcenous illegalities. Also, we’re a non-smoking building, so don’t hold out for any atmospheric haze in this particular post.

I’ll post updates as the information comes in – we may never know, though, because chances are we scared the man straight when he came in for illicit free tickets and encountered probably the only ticket office in the valley where the employees were intimately acquainted with his deceased victim, and not afraid to throw their suspicions around.

That’s the way we do business.

*cue return to color*