I lost a customer because of what happened. I’m pretty short fused in my personal life but always try to be professional with customers. Basically I received a call and was mid scheduling with the customer, then my phone’s signal completely dropped because that happens for some mysterious reason.
Without thinking I screamed “f****** h***” at full volume, I guess thinking I was in the clear to let out some internal steam because the signal was gone and they couldn’t hear me. Apparently the call hadn’t completely dropped because about 5 seconds later the signal bars came back and then I could hear the customer gasp and say that they were done talking, oops…
I had no idea that it’s possible for audio to be captured and then transmitted after the signal is restored. This is on Google Voice if anyone is interested, not the phone’s native sim number, so that might have something to do with it.
TL;DR: I screamed into the phone when I thought someone couldn’t hear me but they did.
Comments
Sorry to hear that OP as somebody who’s worked Customer service and had bad customer experiences. I would have just laughed if I heard you say that everybody needs to blow off steam once in a while. Don’t beat yourself up too much about it. Also, I’ll be storing the info away so thank you for possibly saving me in the future
[deleted]
That’s not how recording works… you thought the call dropped and it didn’t, and you need anger management
This is why the mute button is my best friend
I remember many many years ago I was working at the phone company, and a customer service rep thought a customer had hung up on her, so she said “b***h” and ended the call …. Hanging up on the customer who was still on the line. Customer spent the next couple of hours calling us back trying to get that rep in order to respond. Poor supervisor was running back and forth trying to intercept the customer telling us if we got a woman who opened the call with profanity to flag the supervisor, but that woman was quick and would end the call quickly if it wasn’t the rep she was looking for. I remember the supervisor glaring at the rep and saying “if I ever Fi d out that was deliberate….”. Lesson? Always assume the line is live.
Some services will queue voice packets for a little bit to help smooth out drops. When they finally arrive, they are played sped up just a bit instead of simply dropping.
I’m sorry but I lol’d for real at this. Murphy’s Law kicked in. At least now you know to just grit your teeth next time. Just notch it up to a life lesson and move on.
The phenomenon you described is buffering-induced catch-up. This typically happens when your network connection is having latency issues or there isn’t enough bandwidth for some reason. Google Voice “pauses” the stream to prioritize incoming network data but the app continues to collect voice input. Once your connection restabalizes, the stream gets unpaused. GVoice attempts to resyncronize the data by playing it rapidly to catch you back up to real time. The same thing happens in video calls over zoom, google meet, etc.
You can try using a wired internet connection instead of wifi if you use google voice on a computer. That might help. Otherwise I would stop using google voice if possible. Many phones support dual sim and that sounds like it could be a more stable option maybe
In the future, go with “I am so sorry. I was pacing around and just stubbed my toe”. Saved the job of at least one person at the old call center I worked at when they missed the mute button.
Google Voice is trash. This has happened to me before too
anger management.