PSA: customer service representatives are people

[magical thyme]

That might seem obvious to the majority of you, but I sadly learned last night that it is not apparent to everybody.

I got a call from an irate customer. When I immediately offered to listen, she emphatically stated, "No, I want to complain to a PERSON!"

I sat in silent perplexity for a moment. Looked around the room. Looked down at my body. Looked up again.

Then I tentatively asked, "Did you mean you want to speak to a manager?"

"Yes!" she answered triumphantly, "I want to speak to a manager!"

So, just for the record, while it is true that managers are people, reps are people too. So you need to try to be more specific when you want a manager-person, not a representative-person.

Also, while I'm on it, Investment Advisors are also people. Some of them are female people and yes, some of them do get pregnant. The reason I feel the need to mention this is because the reason this caller-person was irate was because she read in the newspaper that her investment advisor had a baby. And it dawned on her that if she had a baby, she might not be working. And she had a hard time finding the phone number for her local office. But after an excrutiating effort to find the number (which she could have gotten within seconds by either checking the website or calling this number), they confirmed that her investment advisor is no longer working and she's been assigned a new advisor.

Which apparently pissed her off to no end because they didn't personally notify her in advance that her advisor had left the company.

Never mind that this is the absolute cheapest investment company out there. All no load funds. Rock bottom expense ratios. No fees for just about anything except overnighting and a couple special circumstances. Free financial advising for wealthy customers. Of which they have millions. (I was tempted to inform her that if she was *really* somebody there would be a little green VIP next to her name on my screen, but decided she simply needed to learn by experience how much of a person SHE is )

So anyway, yeah, something has to give. You get what you pay for. Wealthy enough to qualify for free advice, yet too cheap to pay for an independent investment advisor? Then you get the advisor you're assigned.

Oh, and as long as I'm at it, please understand that a Customer Service Representative is a low paid, likely poverty-stricken peon. Not a trained, licensed financial advisor. So stop asking us for financial advice, unless you want to hear the advice of somebody who makes 13 bucks/hour, has no savings whatsoever, a pile of student loan debt, will likely be toiling until they drop and mightily resents Mr. and Ms. High and Mighty. Otherwise, we might just be tempted to give you some investment advice.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. The meanest, nastiest, rudest communication I've ever been exposed to was email as a webmaster.

People forget they're sending messages to real people.

[blueamy66]

2. How about the CSRs quit telling me "that's not a problem....not a problem....no problem...."

Yes, it is a freaking problem. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be wasting my time on the phone with you.

[magical thyme]

3. we're actually not allowed to say that where I work. but even if we were,

when somebody is saying that, they are saying that it is a very easy fix. They aren't telling you that it's not a problem for you; they are saying it's an easy fix. They are using poor wording to try to let you know your suffering will be over in a moment.

On the other hand, I went apeshit when some stupid passerby stopped her SUV by my driveway and got out to pick up a can, luring my dogs into the street just as we were coming up from my barn, and then rewarding them with pats.

She kept telling me it was ok, no problem, not a problem because she likes dogs.

It is NOT ok. 1. My dogs are NOT allowed in the street, where they could get hit. 2. My dogs SHOULD be responding to ME, not you. 3. You are rewarding my dogs for going into the street and ignoring me 4. the effing can you picked up is far less pollution than the SUV you have left running and spewing, and 5. I pick up those cans when I walk my dogs and use the money to buy them special treats, so you've just spent 25 cents on gas to take 5 cents from their special treat fund.

See? Now THAT is a problem

[blueamy66]

4. But my suffering wasn't over in a minute.

My BF was up for 2 nights for 2 days in a row trying to hook up cable. Can you say No Sleep?

And I'm sorry, but your name isn't Coco and you aren't in Houston.

[magical thyme]

7. um, you couldn't pay me to be in Houston.

Out of pity for your CSR, maybe she's unhappy at being named for a dog

seriously, sorry about your cable issues. Computers are just as bad. I feel lucky cable-wise. My cable guy hooked me up and had me online in under an hour, while I did chores. No problem!

[blueamy66]

10. She was in India, using an "Americanized" name

or so she thought.

Area code was Houston but the call center was def India.

Comcast leaves much to be desired.

[magical thyme]

14. why am I not surprised?

a lot of my customers are foreigners as well, living high on the hog here in the US, taking american jobs from americans. their English is very poor, which makes them very difficult to understand as well.

what an effing mess. (shakes head sadly...)

[KurtNYC]

6. Untrainers. They are a problem

I have had to be more aggressive than I like to be with a few people who try to train my dogs to do unsafe things while telling me "it's okay." Examples:

trying to feed my dogs chocolate cookies
throwing food from across the street and it lands IN the street so my dogs want to go into traffic to get
encouraging my dogs to jump up on them or holding a treat up in the air to try and get the dogs to jump up and take it

Many others. I love people who get your dogs all excited -- high voice, face rubbing, tug a war -- and then they say "your dog is out of control" and walk off.

had an employee who related that his roommate was thrilled one day whne he came home. He says 'hey I taught your dog a new trick..." Then he lays back on a recliner with food sticking out of his mouth and the dog jumps on his chest and takes it out of his mouth. Great, just what you want your dog to do to people..... ugh.

[customerserviceguy]

5. In my list of ways

on how to NOT get good customer service, the first one is, "Demand a manager the second you get on the phone, or in the door."

That's the best way to lose a potential ally in your struggle to get what you want. On the way to getting that manager, the employee is very likely to find a way to tell said manager about your lousy attitude, which is not going make a good first impression with that person. At my job, we report supervisor escalations on the notes part of the customer's account, that serves to warn other customer service reps about the customer.

Thanks for posting this.

[blueamy66]

12. If your job title is Customer Service Rep,

you should give good customer service.

[magical thyme]

16. you do the best you can with what you've got.

I wrote a long reply and blew it away by mistake, so I'll just summarize.

We have lousy resources. Lousy, incomplete instructions that are pages of word salad when all that is needed are 3 short steps (and somehow they forget one critical step or other). Lousy scripting that doesn't explain anything to anybody. Lousy systems that are piles of 40 year old spaghetti-ware, slow, unresponsive and practically force mistakes. Lousy policies that piss of customers. Lousy management that nitpicks us to death, treats us like imbeciles, and is political in the extreme (such that I'm taking 3-4 times as many calls as the rep sitting next to me, who is the manager's snitch but was failing calls, so I'm forced to cover for her while they keep her volume low to hide her from the external quality review). And lousy pay. Last year everybody was joking about the 10 cent raise they got. Except they weren't joking. This year we got 18 cents more. Yes, you too can get an extra $1.44/day if you work really hard...or snitch really good.

When someone calls and immediately wants a supervisor, like the woman in my OP, they get excellent service from me. I'm more than happy to pass them off to a manager, who will give them a lovely corporate blow job even while she's rolling her eyes and making faces at them.

[customerserviceguy]

17. And I try mightily

not to let a customer's lousy attitude get in the way of my doing just that. I really do like to be able to turn them around, sometimes I've even been apologized to for the way they started the interaction.

A customer service rep has a variety of tools at their disposal to give the customer what they want, but they cannot do absolutely everything the customer wants. Lousy corporate policies and procedures are part of the problem, but some folks expect the impossible. It's sometimes my job to help explain that to them.

[Worried senior]

8. I worked customer service

at a third party prescription drug company.

It was not an easy job, people do forget you are human and also have feelings.

It was a real relief to hang up the phone for the final time.

[dionysus]

9. meanwhile a few threads down a DUer is bragging about yelling at a poor CSR from Sears...

[tammywammy]

11. My first job was in customer service at Six Flags.

The general public is mostly assholes. You wouldn't even believe the crap people yelled at me for there.

I used to work as a receptionist at a car dealership. You know what people would scream at me for? The Service department being closed after 5pm on Saturday or after 7pm during the week.

You know what I am? Really nice. Because I've spent years being treated like shit by customer that thought "they were always right". Fuck that.

I'm so glad I don't interact with the general public anymore as part of my job.

[Laelth]

13. k&r for a righteous rant. n/t

-Laelth

[chrisa]

15. Re: People being jerks

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101858577

I had a similar experience in 2012.