When irate product support customers demand to speak to Bill Gates

Source: Hacker News

Procedure for Irate Customers Demanding Bill Gates

1. Apology and Transfer
   The support technician would apologize for not resolving the problem to the customer’s satisfaction. If the customer persisted in demanding to speak with “The Boss,” the technician would transfer the call.

2. Special Internal Phone Number
   The call was routed to a dedicated internal line. When the operators answered that line, they said, “Bill Gates’s office.” They were not actually in Bill Gates’s office; they were merely pretending to be his secretary. Their job was to tell the caller that Mr. Gates was currently unavailable and to ask for a message and contact information, which they would supposedly pass along to him.

3. No Real Escalation
   In reality, the information was never forwarded to Bill Gates. It returned to the product‑support channel with a note that the customer had been escalated to “Bill Gates’s office.”

4. Follow‑up Call
   The technician who later returned the call would typically say something like, “Bill Gates asked me to contact you to follow up on an issue you had earlier.”