Strange but true

Welcome to the secret shopping blog, our window into the world of cusotmer service and sales.

When it comes to answering the phone, truth is stranger than fiction.

Complied by Tron Jordheim, PhoneSmart Director.

Our telephone sales reps at PhoneSmart try to have an answer for any concern a caller raises and tries to be able to professionally handle any situation that comes their way. PhoneSmart takes overflow calls from self storage facilities all around the country. We get some calls that make you shake your head. Here are some of the odd and curious calls we have actually taken.

We got a call from a desperate mother trying to save her teenage son with some good old fashion discipline. He was misbehaving and running with the wrong crowd. She described a scenario that is every parent’s nightmare. She was trying to use grounding to get him to slow down, but realized that grounding him to his room did not work so well because he always found something in his room to fiddle with… so her purpose for storage was to store away everything (TV, games etc) except his necessities (bed, dresser and clothes). Then he would have to earn back his luxuries one by one. I hope it worked for her.

Husbands and wives sometimes want storage so the other half cannot take belongings from the home. We get calls like this more often than you might think. There is a divorce brewing, an abuse issue, a spouse who is stealing from the home to support a bad habit or issues the callers don’t care to share with us. You know the callers are up to their elbows in trouble when they ask about confidentiality, refuse to give a home number or ask that the spouse not be informed. These are difficult calls to take, but you have to be polite and help the people without upset yourself.

One time we had a man-on-the-run call us. He explained that he was running from the law and thought he would be caught soon. His arrest warrant was apparently well distributed. He wanted to get all his belongings in storage before he got caught and locked up. Isn’t it odd that he would open up like that and tell his story to a perfect stranger on the phone, especially since was wanting to rent a storage unit us.

We have had calls from people who wanted to know if the storage place needed identification and if a contract was required, because they wanted to be invisible. One caller explained to us that he did not want to be traced to his storage unit and needed everything to be on the hush. These kinds of calls make you shiver.

One day we got a call from a lady crying and screaming on the phone claiming she was being held captive by some crazy man threatening her near a storage facility. She gave us clues about the location, but she was calling a nationwide toll free number for one of our client companies, so we had to guess which store she was near, based on her description. We contacted the store manager for the store she described. The storage Manager thought we were getting dingy and said that she gets crank calls on occasion, too. The lady who claimed to be captive sounded so terrified that we could not believe it was a crank call. PhoneSmart reps tried to contact the police in that area. The police didn’t think the location made sense based on the description and were not sounding motivated to investigate. BUT by the next day we found out that it was all true. The police had found the woman being held by a man in a parking lot across from the storage facility we had told them about. The police had responded to a call from someone locally who had seen the man and woman scuffling in the parking lot. The woman, it turned out, was ok. Very strange indeed.

Then there are the calls that are just plain odd. We talked to a guy who did not need a storage unit for four years. He was retiring in four years and was going to put a lot of his household stuff in storage while he hit the road in his RV. He just was curious what a unit cost. How is that for getting prepared?

One day we got a caller who asked, “How many golf balls will fit into a 5×10?” Okay, that would make a rep stop and think a second. We can talk about boxes and dressers and couches, but golf balls? The caller was starting a golf-ball cleaning and refurbishing business and needed someplace to store the balls after he pulled them out of lakes. We took the reservation, so I guess we answered the question right.

Just the other day we got a call from a lady who was potty training her son while talking to us on the phone. She put the phone down in the middle of the rep’s sentence and all we could hear was the lady praising her child for making potty. Ah, the special moments we get to share with our customers.

We also took a credit card reservation for a man riding his bicycle. Our rep thought he was on a cell phone, but assumed he was in his car. This is not unusual. She walked him through the sales process and took down his credit card number. When she tried to give him his confirmation number, he said, “I can’t write at the moment, I’m on my bicycle”. Who would have guessed that people call your stores on their cell phones while out riding their bikes?

We also participate in a global economy. Our call center may be in Missouri, but the world seems very small to us. We once took a call for a lady in Honduras who was moving to Hawaii. So we booked her a unit that would be waiting for her when she arrived in two weeks. We occasionally get calls from US service people from over seas who are calling to make a payment on their storage unit back home in the states. We booked a unit in Florida for a couple that was moving down to the sunny climate from Toronto Canada. It’s a small world.

It happens to us about every day that we have an odd situation or a funny circumstance that we can use to lighten up the atmosphere. Occasionally we get a bizarre or scary call that makes us glad we are not at the location the person called. We know each of you could write a book about some of the odd and strange calls you have taken. Just like you, we take them with a smile.

bye for now, Tron

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.