One of my bosses is out of the office the rest of this week and so I’ve been doing a lot of busy work to keep myself…uh… busy.
One thing I’ve been doing is calling our clients about some older projects (pre-2017) to find out if we can close our files. For the most part it has gone well – I’ve managed to close out 15 projects that are confirmed closed, AND cleared out some space in my boss’s office as a result.
Some of the phone calls to clients go really well.
“Hi, I’m Jaynee calling from Company, and I just wanted to see if Project X has concluded and whether or not we can close our file with your permission.”
“Why yes, I see in our records that this project finished in June 2017, so you are welcome to close your project files.”
“Thank you. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
Pretty standard fare. Until today. Called a client – a professional company with dozens of employees and a receptionist that answers the phone. And this is what happened:
“Hi, I’m Jaynee calling from Company, and I am calling to check as to whether the project involving John Doe has finished.”
“Who dat?”
And my response was:
I thought maybe for a second I had called a wrong number. But nope! That was their receptionist, who continued on with her highly developed sense of professionalism, but huffing into the phone when I asked to speak to someone about the project, then after muting herself for a moment came back and said, “We gonna hafta call you back.”
You do that, honey.
