Tales from Customer Service: Funny Hangups

We conducted short interviews with the customer service team to hear about their experiences from their own homeschooling and from taking your calls.

If you’ve never called in to our Customer Service team, you may not know what kind of help and encouragement you’re missing. (Go ahead! Say hi! Call 1-888-854-6284.) The summary from the interviews? They love talking with you. They love encouraging you. Meet Patti, Sandra, Mary, Sindy, Amanda, and Linda.

What’s the funniest reason a person has had to hang up the phone?

Patti: I had a customer on the phone who said she had to hurry to place her order. She was yelling at her kids to get in the car. The siren was going off for a tornado, and she said she really needed to go to the store to get milk and bread. I was thinking, do you really need to order math right now, with a tornado on its way? Of course, the computer only works so fast, but I got her order in. We got that done!

Amanda: I was on the phone with a mom. Her boys had been doing some chores. I guess there was some burning of trash or brush. I wasn’t able to get a lot of background, obviously, when she shouted, “Oh, my goodness! It’s on fire! I’ve gotta go! I’ve got to call the fire department right now!” Of course, I never got connected with that customer again, so I have no idea what happened.

What do you wish customers knew about Math-U-See?

Sandra: It is for everyone. There are a lot of misconceptions about Math-U-See, like that it’s only for special needs students, or that it’s not for a “good” math student. In reality, it’s a great program for everybody.

Linda: I remember. I was there. There was never enough time in homeschool, but going through each of the four elements is going to SAVE you time. I think most of us try to cut corners, so we don’t use the program right.

Call us. We’ll help you. That’s the exciting thing. So many times, a mom will call and be honest and say, “This doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand the manipulatives, and I think it’s a time waster.”

I’ll say, “Get out your blocks, and I’ll help you.” They experience building it, writing it, saying it, and teaching it as we go through the lesson together.

It’s better to call and work through the problem instead of not telling anybody. Sometimes we get this picture of how everybody else is, and think we must be doing a terrible job in comparison. Naturally, we don’t want to tell anyone, but if customers could know that they can call and have a non-judgmental, safe place to talk, we’ll help them with those basics.

What do you wish customers knew about Spelling You See?

Patti: You definitely need the Instruction Manual. It’s going to give you your answer key, so it saves you time. It also gives you instructions on how to teach the material, and it’s only $16.

Sandra: [With Spelling You See,] you are building neural pathways. With repetition, you are giving the brain something to hold onto long enough to get it from the short-term memory to the long-term memory. You take the test, you throw the list away, like a grocery list. It is the repetition that is developing making the neural pathway.

Is there a customer who stands out in your mind right now?

Patti: One mom who called had a husband who was disabled, and she was trying to homeschool her daughter while they were having financial problems. I explained the James 1:27 discount, which can be up to 50%. I told her that if she had a hardship, she could send us a letter, and she was so excited that we could help her.

Sindy: Sometimes moms just want to talk. I remember talking to a mom, and she was just trying to figure out homeschooling and needed an ear to listen, to affirm that she’s not perfect, that she’s just doing the best she could do. She didn’t need to know more about the product. She just needed to know that she wasn’t alone.

Tales from Customer Service Series:

Funny Hangups (You’re here!)
We Were Students (5/17)
Word Problem Tips (6/10)
When Your Child Has Learning Differences (7/12)