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Think about the person who you’ve shared the deepest emotional connection with in your life. Maybe it’s a parent. Maybe it’s a sibling or a friend. Perhaps a significant other? It could be the homeless guy on your street corner that cat calls you on even your worst hair days. Now, think about THE LONGEST phone call you’ve ever had with them. Maybe, oh I don’t know, 45 minutes? An hour tops? I mean, what could you possibly have to talk about for longer than that that’s so important?
Well, one member of Zappos customer-service just set the bar for emotional connections….or filibusters. Because on June 11, he was on the phone with a customer for ten hours and 43 minutes. Straight. I’m sorry, what?
A Zappos employee recently had a customer-service call that lasted 10 hours, 43 minutes, breaking an internal record at the Amazon-owned online retailer. On June 11, in Zappos’ Las Vegas headquarters, Steven Weinstein answered a call from a customer who needed some help with an order of a few items. The two began to chat, and even after she was helped, she stayed on the line. “It was excellent, the connection was amazing, and even though I never spoke to this customer before in my life I felt like I knew her for 15 or 20 years,” Weinstein told Business Insider in an email. “It was just natural and time was flowing — it felt like it was effortless.”
These people were talking for almost eleven hours! That’s like talking throughout the whole Indiana Jones trilogy! And who was the person on the other end of the phone? These could easily be the two worst people on planet earth at getting off the phone, caught in a battle of who can keep the conversation needlessly going on forever. Just a never ending loop of small pauses with “alright, uh, yep, so, ahhhh,” pause….. “yeah, sounds good, ummmm.” Just nobody committing to getting off the phone. It must have been like listening to Brendan Dassey and his mom go back and forth. Only for the entire length of the “Making A Murderer” series.
I need to know more about the aftermath of Weinstein and this mystery woman. Like, if you connect this deep with a woman, you marry her. Or at least dent the headboard a few times with her. If he didn’t track this girl down and score, Weinstein’s new name becomes Byung-Hyun, because that guy can’t close.
And wouldn’t most companies send this guy to the back of the unemployment line for spending his whole shift talking to one person who probably just needed help figuring out how to properly return a pair of $35 Native Shoes Paolo sandals. It’s bonkers. For some reason Zappos lauded this guy for his marathon phone call that saw him only going to the bathroom once (psycho stamina) and saw another employee having to bring Weinstein his lunch. How was Zappos cool with this? Like, they frickin’ praised this dude and gave him an award! Okay, maybe there was no award, but they boasted about this guy for sure. Doesn’t Zappos know how dudes do business? You keep those calls going! Sell! Sell! Sell! He made one sale over the course of eleven hours. That’s horrible.
Next time I call up for customer service and they put me on hold, I’m just going to assume everyone there is engaging in marathon phone calls and hanging up. Call waiting is for suckers, anyway, and talking on the phone for non-emergencies has gone the way of smoke signals and Morse code.
[via Business Insider]
Image via Shutterstock
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Boston Max
Spending my retirement fund at Trader Joe's and trying to remember to check my mailbox semi-regularly
@BostonMaxG
@boston_maxg
Last week I had a 93-minute call with a customer and wanted to blow my brains out. Tack on 9 more hours and I probably would have
My calls usually last about 10 minutes before the “reception goes bad.” Weird
Solid 2001 World Series reference