I think that I finally get it. Whenever you have a situation where a relationship exists in which the power is grossly unequal, people on both sides of the relationship will naturally revert to their basest behavior.
Customers will be screaming pricks because there is no reason not to be, customer service representatives will be as lazy and disrespectful as possible because it is the only sort of control that they have. What a shame that this is the best that we seem to be able to do.
It’s not a control thing. Customer service reps really do despise customers.
The key to understanding the relationship is that customer service reps do not exist for the benefit of customers. They exist for the benefit of managers and owners who under no circumstances want to speak with customers.
Customers are repulsive sacks of slime that you can extract money from via arcane chemical procedures the sales department knows. Once the money is extracted, you are basically medical waste: disgusting, without value and possibly dangerous.
Incidentally, the owners also despise the customer service department, since it doesn’t generate any revenue.
-fh
Hmmm. Speaking as a customer service rep, I’m inclined to disagree here.
I have nothing against customers. Like most people I have been on the other side of the equation. I couldn’t care less about the sales people or the motivation towards revenue - in fact, in my organization, there is a great deal of resentment towards individuals who take orders because they tend to make promises we can’t keep, or don’t know our policies, or generally are slimy and then we have to clean up after them.
We’re essentially stuck between a lot of rocks and hard places. The client who we provide customer service to expects us to make the most people happy at the lowest possible cost – in other words, to generate the most funds (as ongoing customers are part of that). Our management puts a lot of limitations on what we can do for customers, and has implemented a lot of barriers toward treating people as well as we’d like. On the other hand, customers treat the individual reps as The Company, and take all the abuse that angry customers have to offer, which automatically puts us at odds.
I don’t consider myself lazy and disrespectful. However, it is true that we have precious few means of control at our disposal and so I know I will, personally, dig in my heels if provoked. Customers who are reasonable and polite will get more, as a rule, than people who are abusive and nasty. I’m willing to compromise. I’m willing to explain. I’m not willing to sacrifice my job because a customer is making unreasonable demands and I’m not willing to encourage people who are just plain cruel to stay that way by giving in.
It’s like anything else. You have to expect resistance if you act like a jerk. If a CSR is the one who is the jerk, you talk to someone else. If everyone you talk to at a company is this way, you do business elsewhere.
Actually, it’s interesting. The only times I’ve been accused of being lazy or not willing to do something were not even over a policy issue, but simply for things that were not humanly possible to do (like stopping a charge from appearing on a credit card statement after it has already been put through, or stopping a shipment from arriving after it’s been mailed). The only times when I’ve been accused of being disrespectful were because a customer asked the same question repeatedly but got the same answer, and they got angry that I was repeating the same thing to disrespect them. A lot of people just become irrational over the phone. It’s peculiar.
Actually, it is true. Customer service reps do hate customers…but not all of them. Only the unreasonable jackasses. I have had customers who have yelled and screamed at me for good reason (not my fault, but someone at my company screwed up something somewhere along the line) and while it’s not enjoyable, it’s understandable–and quite a few of them will end with something like “I know if’t not your fault.” The bad customers are the ones who are abusive and uncooperative when I’m trying to help them, the ones who all but accuse me of lying, and the ones who make the accusation straight out.
I often get the feeling that when I say we can’t do a certain thing, or can’t do it a certain way, and then explain when we can do, and then the customer says “Well, just cancel it then” that they are expecting me to bargain or backtrack and say “Well, we can do it, I was just kidding.” or “We can only do it now because you said today’s secret word cancel.” No, we can’t get you 1100 blue-striped zebras. I realize that the sales rep told you we could, but that’s because he’s a moron*.
*Most of our sales reps aren’t morons, but the ones who are, are doozies.
It’s funny, though - I was finishing up my year contract with T-Mobile. I saw online that they were offering a free phone with a year’s contract, so I offered to sign up again. I was told that, no, the offer was for new customers only. I cajoled a little bit, but no dice. I hung up, did some shopping, and found a plan with Cingular.
When I called T-Mobile back and told them to cancel service after the year completed, suddenly THEN I was transferred to the “Customer Retention Department”, who offered not only the free phone, but free nights as well.
I’m now a happy Cingular customer. I didn’t take T-Mobile’s offer - I don’t like playing games. Either you can do it or you can’t, and that’s fine - but don’t refuse me an “impossible” offer, and then change your mind when you realize that your refusal just lost my business.
That has nothing to do with your particular service situation, really - just that the threat of “cancel” sometimes DOES get the attention the customer is asking for.
[Monty Python Mode]Now we see the violence inherent in the system! Help, I’m being oppressed![/Monty Python Mode]
This says it all:
Yesterday, we called the customer service department of a major insurance company, seeking to increase the value of a homeowners policy that we have had for three years. The absolute bitch of a “service” representative that we dealt with insisted that she had to have the square footage of the upstairs and downstairs areas of our townhouse,and NOT the total square footage, before she could accept an increase in our policy. She went so far as to tell me that the figures had to be exact and “not some guess.” I asked her to explain why these figures weren’t necessary when the policy was originally issued and she actually said to me that it was none of my business. When I requested to speak to her supervisor, she hung up on me. I called back, got a different representative, placed the order and was off the phone in less than five minutes. I can only hope that the call was recorded and that she is summarily fired.
LouisB: I strongly recommend you to speak to a supervisor or to write a letter of complaint. You are doing a favor for all the customers of that business and for their responsible customer service representatives as well by doing so.
Just for sake of fairness. Yesterday I had a problem with a lein slapped on my checking account to the tune of about 1300 dollars.
To make a long story short. We refinanced our home back in 1998 and had checks sent to our creditors. A credit card bill for the amount of the lein apparently was never payed. I knew a check had been cut for this.
Having my checking account whacked for this amount of cash put me in the appropriate nasty, vile, ready to do war mood. Imagine my disdain when I realized the company that had originally done the refinancing and was responsible for sending out the check had been “acquired” by a much larger company. All I could think was the worst.
I called the new company and talked to a pleasant female. I explained the problem and was told she would call me back. I’ve heard that before! Imagine my shock and amazement when the phone rang ten minutes later. She told me she had all the information that was needed, apologized for taking so long to call me back, got the number to our bank, talked to personal banker and got everything resolved with very little pain.
She found the old check number, tracked it down and it showed that the original check had never been cashed, got a new check authorized and is having it sent to the proper destination (back in my account).
Simply beautiful! I thanked her profusely and asked to speak to her supervisor. I then explained how thrilled and satisfied I was with the level of concern and service I received. He sounded very pleased to hear about my extreme satisfaction and promised that she would be commended accordingly.
There are some good ones out there.
Yes and there are some bad ones too like Sony. I purchased a Sony drive from Staples because based on what I read on other sites and on Sony’s site ( www.storangebysony.com ) that it supported karaoke. I tried for a few weeks to get my software to support it then decided to contact Sony via their web support. The first person I spoke to said it does not support karaoke and I expressed my suprise because mutiple sites said it did. I was informed they do not have any control over what other people say the drive will do. I then found on Sony’s site text stating it does karaoke contacted them again and same rep said it does not do karaoke that is an error. Now I have a drive I can not return because I sent the UPC in for a rebate and Sony will not take the drive back nor will they cancel the rebate and send me a new box so I can return the drive to Staples.
The thing about it is, though, that the lines of power can be pretty screwy. It may be entirely possible that the CS department does not have the power to offer you this phone. However, as soon as you say cancel, you get transferred to an organization that can make that offer.
Not that that makes it right, just that I’ve seen similar things in my neck of CS.
I’ve worked at several large company’s in the capacity of CSR and I can tell you that the environment the employers provide, as well as their business practices, can largely affect the service you’ll get.
I worked for a large insurance company (represented by a red umbrella) who firmly and rightfully believed that since anyone can get insurance anywhere, one must do something to make oneself stand out from the crowd. They focused on their CS department, intent on making it the best (or at least the least of all the evils). Realizing that it costs more to attract new customers than it does to retain old customers was a controlling factor when determining their CS procedures.
On the other hand, I worked for another large company (represented by their kingdoms of magic in CA and FL) , reknowned and respected for its history and trusted for its name; and their CS department was awful. Some of their business practices were… questionable at best, and they didn’t care. They were perfectly content to force the CSR’s to take the brunt of the rightfully angry customers complaints and then dismiss them, having already gotten the money they wanted. There was no way to help the customer, though I tried just to spite my employers. Oh how I tried.
We can only hope that the company’s that allow, or indeed force, their customers to be treated so poorly are shown the error of their ways when no one wants to do business with them any more.
I encourage the person above that had the bad experience with the insurance company, and indeed anyone that has a bad customer service experience, to take their business elsewhere.
Oh, and yes, write in to the company. Have your friends write in. Have your kids write in.
And in all the letters, tell them you’re taking your business away and encouraging all of your friends and family to do the same.
Company’s flip out when they get a bunch of letters like that in succession.
A very educational thread. I have nothing substantial to add, but to pick up on the opening line of fluiddruid’s post:
In the context it was offered, this qualifies as deserving the First Annual Polycarp Award for Gentle Understatement in the Face of Hostility, which I’m pleased to extend to you. 
[Hijack: Grammar police…you don’t like “First Annual”? It’s an annual award which I have just now established; this is the first one. That makes it “First Annual.” Bite me! :)]
Hmmm. At our company, we have solved some of our CSR problems simply by giving them the authorization to do whatever they need to, to do their jobs.
Mind you, it’s a smaller company and we can keep an eye on things, so to speak, much more easily than a BFC. (Big F*cking Corporation) We (management) don’t criticize people for trying, even if they make a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, it’s a fact of life. Instead we show them where they went wrong and go out of our way to find something for which to praise them.
We’ve found that most people we’ve hired will really try their best to retain the customer without losing the company money. I think it really is key that they have some control and ability to make a decision if necessary.
I’m lucky. I’ve only spent about two months of my working life as an (effective) CSR. I was amazed by the level of unreasonable abuse I received personally, by the absolute lack of maturity displayed by theoretically intelligence people (yes, you received shoddy treatment, but does scrawling eight pages of obscenity-filled hatemail really reflect well on you?). On the other hand, I was also amazed by how easy it was to make people happy again – I’m guessing there’s some truly shocking service out there given the low expectations some people had of me.
Some good service I’ve had: the Co-operative Bank (UK).
And some bad service: Telewest (aka Cable London), although they’re getting better.
Everybody take heed and please do this when you receive good service.
One of the most frustrating things, for me, about the CSR experience is that your superiors only ever notice you when you screw up, or when a customer’s mad.
What I learned from working retail is that shitty customers are not as common, but they are the ones you will remember the most.