I pit customer service reps who think customers are stupid.

The BBQ Pit
61

Amazon has (or at least had, last time I checked) an immediate callback option which, amazingly, resulted in a real, live, helpful person immediately calling me back.

I’ve yet to have a bad experience with Amazon, which is why they get a lot of my money. Contrasted with say, a certain gas marketer whose customer service rep offered to set my account up with automated billing, did it wrong, and then copped an attitude/implied that it was my error when I called to correct it—whose relationship with me ended immediately, and who will never see another penny from me as long as we both shall live.

62

Let me clarify, because I notice that the original point of my intial post has gotten all muddled up with whether or not I think it is good or bad customer service to not put a super on when asked.

I don’t have a strong opinion about that one way or the other. I have rarely needed a supervisor to get my business taken care of properly while dealing with companies. On the rare occasion that I have needed a super, one was given. So I really haven’t developed strong opinions on whether or not refusing a super is bad CS.

My point was, you don’t know if you are dealing with a company that has a ‘no super’ policy, and what simple or complex reasons they may have for that policy. So you make your self look really stupid by bellowing threats about people getting fired and calling up hell fire to rain on the heads of the agents and all that other nonsense. If you are calling a job like mine, all of that silliness is going to make you look like an impotent ass. Better to simply vote with your wallet if you don’t like the fact that the agent won’t put a super on, because braying like an ass is pointless and embarrassing.

We are not trained to say, “It is our policy to not put a super on”. As a matter of fact, the less said about ‘policy’ the better. We simply state that a supervisor isn’t an option, and then present them with the options that they do have. I am amazed that there are people suggesting that agents should be finding a different job if they aren’t willing to either put on a super or disclose that it is against policy to do so:

“My dear daughter, mommy doesn’t have a job anymore because she found out that some customers don’t like the fact that we have a no-super policy and we aren’t being ‘straight with the customer’ about that, so I will have to figure out how to scratch out some other kind of living in this economy.”

Hahaaa! Right. How about, unless I find out that my company burns orphanages, I just do the job I love to the best of my ability with the tools I have before me and with the best intentions. Sometimes, I’m the warm body, sweet voice denying you a supervisor and directing you to the website, because I’m replacing the automated system you would have been routed to, coldly and robotically directing you to the website.

Like Dseid pointed out, a lot of times, the customer service side lacks because the product is sold for less. In my case, I’m sales, but I’m routed CS calls that would have been lost in automated system land for ages. The customers vent on me about that, and I can take it, no problem. If they start making wild threats, though, the comedy begins.

63

If anyone cares…I received a response to the email I wrote to customer service regarding the CSR who was so rude to me. Apparently it is their policy to put customers through to supervisors or to ask if a supervisor can call the customer back. The dude I spoke to did neither. It seems it is also their policy to look at the customer’s account to see how long they’ve been a customer (nearly 10 years) and how many times they’ve complained (never) and make a decision based on that. I received not only credit for the shipping on this order, but free 2-day shipping the next time I order.

64

No problem. Every major companies senior executives are reachable, there are websites and Google. When I get “I won’t/can’t let you speak to my supervisor” I fire off a real honest to gawd stamped letter to the CEO/President. Meanwhile, on Yelp, Twitter and what-not, I tell everyone how bad the customer service is. True, this only works if i have a legit beef, but it works 100% of the time, except with PG&E.

I am not saying it gets the CSR fired- how would I know? *But it gets my problem solved. *And, in at least one case, dealing with UPS, the local manager said “You write very persusive letters, and I can tell you that things got a little shaken up down here.”

So, I can’t “get your supervisor” but I can get the CEO, so screw your supervisor.

65

This is, by definition, not 100% of the time.

66

From the standpoint of the company, it gets pretty pointless to keep having department above department to handle the braying jackasses. You get one supervisor, you don’t get what you want, you demand another, blah blah blah. I’ve had people demand that I put our CEO on the line (yeah, right) or “I want someone with Vice President in their title on the line RIGHT NOW”. Fuck off. It isn’t their job to deal with you. It is their job to run the company. If they could be forced to take some screaming clown’s phone call every time someone demanded it, they would not get their own jobs done.

So, somewhere along the line, they have to draw the line and say “this is as far as we want to allow calls to get”. Sorry folks, that’s the nature of the real world. There isn’t some VP in the office just waiting for you to demand to speak to him or her. Get over yourself. You’re not that important.

Hell, two weeks ago I dealt with a very wealthy Hollywood producer and even he didn’t get the “Yessir, we’ll throw it on a truck and have it delivered today!” treatment some people here demand (and accuse me of not knowing how to do my job when I say it won’t happen). Of course, he made no such demands and was an extremely pleasant fellow to deal with. I had no clue who he was and had never heard of him before, until he told me his home address to have it shipped there. Then I googled him and my jaw hit the floor - and that was after having dealt with the man for a couple of days trying to resolve his issues.

You know, we could waste your time transferring you from ‘supervisor’ to ‘supervisor’, all at the same level, if you insisted on speaking to someone else, but that would only be wasting our time too, and annoying the hell out of each other on our job by pawning off assholes on other people. So we’re not allowed to do it.

67

Meh. I’ve had people write our CEO and make threats only to cease being our customers or have their ability to interact with my department be severely limited. I’ve yet to have fire come down on my head over such things.

68

There is no question about that. I’m sure you can get your problem solved if you act out enough. That is no big shocker; it will work for anyone. I get customers saying they are going to end our company by posting their experience on face book, and to all their twitter followers and figure it out at the website how to reach the CEO, and that is all great. Like Jesus said to Judas, “what you must do, do it quickly”. I hope you get your issue solved. I wish I could solve it for you.

The thing is, you are funny as hell when you start talking about getting folks fired. Hilarious. We aren’t going to get in trouble for not putting a super on when we are trained to not put a super on.

69

Then what are your customers supposed to do if they have a problem you can’t deal with but your supervisor could? :confused:

Well done. :slight_smile:

I have no problem with people who work on the front-end of customer service, and that is actually why I’ve occasionally asked if there’s someone else I can speak to who does have the authorisation that they’re claiming doesn’t exist. Let the manager deal with it.

Funnily enough, when we had long-term problems with our internet connection and i’d been polite to the customer service people on the phone for months, once my then-GF phoned up and kinda had a nervous breakdown at them over the phone (sounds extreme - but we both need the internet for work and they were incredibly rude to us on every call), they suddenly called back with a supervisor who knew what she was doing.

And since then the problems we’ve had with this line, which have been quite a few, have been routed to a technician automatically.

The last technician shocked me by being really bloody sensible. I patiently went through the ‘switch it off and on again’ tests with him because I know that sometimes they are the problem, even if you’re doing the same thing for fifteenth time, and it’s not like he knows me, so I’m resigned to them as just part of the process. But I guess my responses showed that I wasn’t totally stupid, because he didn’t ask me to do the multiple other tests or wait for 24 hours like before. He moved my query up, found a fault on the line and it was sorted within an hour.

Him working off-script is one of the main reasons that I’ve signed up with them for another year. I emailed them to say so, without mentioning that he went off-script.

One other customer dispute (about a sofabed that was made so badly that it would only be a bed) I eventually resolved by repeatedly posting negative comments on their Facebook page. Polite, truthful, negative comments. Sometimes ended with a :). Passive aggressive tactics yo!

70

So… contacting the person who is ultimately responsible to the shareholders and then informing the purchasing public about a flaw in a company is ‘acting out’? I mean, it isn’t quite Falling Down-level shenanigans, is it? It isn’t even on a par with the sad cases who scream and rant at someone who goes home to a Lean Cuisine and a movie marathon. It sounds a lot like being a reasonably responsible consumer in the modern world, especially the part about informing fellow consumers about a defective company.

But yeah… acting out is stupid. I fully agree.

71

Right. The real danger is from the customers who know Maximized Fireball. That’s when things get hairy.

72

He wasn’t espousing getting individuals fired.

The thought of an individual ever getting fired because of a bad report does make me hold back a lot - and that’s because I’ve worked in some customer service environments where it wouldn’t necessarily get you fired, but could earn you a warning, even if the complaint is stupid.

The other day I had to call someone’s manager to get a large and essential refund and feel really guilty that he’s probably going to get in trouble for it. It is is his fault - it’s been 8 months with me calling every single day to leave a voicemail and him never calling back - unless he’s ill or overburdened with work, in which case perhaps this will cause his bosses to sit up take more notice (it’s a governmental organisation where this is possible). I still feel guilty. But the alternative was me not getting the several thousand the company owed me.

After that long 8 months, his manager dealt with it within ten minutes.

This is one of the reasons people might ask to speak to your supervisor.

73

So tell me, what exactly am I supposed to do if I have a legitimate problem that you can’t solve or if I encounter an unhelpful ,uniformed or rude coworker of yours? I’m not talking about a situation where I’m given a couple of options which solve my problem and I don’t like any of them. I’m specifically thinking of a time where the wrong item was shipped (although the correct item appeared on the invoice) , and I was told to return it at my own expense.I doubt any company has a policy to have customers pay for a shipping mistake, and it clearly wasn’t this one’s, as the supervisor immediately told me I would be credited for the shipping charge.

74

Well, same thing in the Security biz. One complaint can be blown off with no consequences on one day, then the next day they get a silly complaint and they’re all over you.

I was responding to a fire alarm on one job (which turned out to be a false alarm thankfully) when my path was blocked by four female students walking side by side who refused to get out of my way and allow me through until I ended up swearing at them to get the F- out of my way because I was responding to an alarm. I got ‘talked to’ about that one. :rolleyes:

My response was to ask what would have happened to me if it had been a real fire and I had NOT made the effort to get past them.

But the thing is; None of us are saying you should never ask for a supervisor. We’re just saying there are times in the business where you’re at the highest level you’re going to get to and asking for someone higher than that is wasting your time. Honestly in those cases, and I’ve done this with a lot of companies (cough Comcast), your best bet is to hang up, call back and speak to someone else.

Yeah, you have to go through all the bullshit options and waiting over again, but you will actually get to someone else as opposed to giving your self a stroke trying to force that one person to get you to someone else when they either cannot, or will not.

75

I’m sorry if you believe that’s what you’re doing when you email joe.ceo@acme.com, or call the corporate office and ask to be transferred to Joe CEO’s desk. In my call center experience, that just doesn’t happen.

My experience is limited to a few years with a major credit card company, but it’s echoed by the other call center employees who have chimed into this thread so far.

No, really, there was no one to talk to beyond me. I was tier 2 support (when you asked tier 1 for a supervisor, they sent you to us). Our department also doubled as the Executive Response Center, which means we fielded transferred calls from the corporate office when you asked for Joe CEO’s secretary, and we answered emails sent to his inbox. On the rare occasion you actually did hit the inbox of someone a few paygrades up from me, your e-mail just got forwarded to my team, and we responded “on his behalf.”

I did have a supervisor; no, you couldn’t talk to him, because my supervisor didn’t take calls. He did my payroll, worked on our schedules, and handled similar HR issues. In fact, he rarely logged into our system at all, except to perform QA.

We not only had policies in place for just about every scenario, but my team was empowered to bend just about every rule in the book (barring things which were illegal, of course) at our discretion. If I didn’t do that for you, there was a reason. If you were unhappy that I didn’t do that for you, you could continue to call or write in to every executive you could get your hands on, but it all funneled back down to my department to handle anyway. It wasn’t my job to bend over backwards make you happy–it was my job to make you AND the company happy, and if we couldn’t reach a medium on that, you were welcome to terminate your relationship with us. No amount of whining or complaining or contacting corporate officers was going to change it.

There was one other department empowered to overrule any decision we made, but you couldn’t talk to them. Your lawyer could, though, by filing suit. To my knowledge, no one I ever handled took that route.

I’m not saying that the system is perfect, or that every company has the same procedures in place. I am saying that sometimes the buck really does stop here, despite arrogance in believing that you will find someone else to talk to. Sometimes companies have empowered their escalated employees to have the discretion to give you what you want–but if they don’t, there’s probably a reason. If you don’t like that reason, being a pain in my ass wasn’t going to change anything at all. And threats of “getting me fired” were only going to get you disconnected.

No, not all customers are stupid all the time, but plenty are.

Sometimes I miss working in a call center.

76

That’s basically how my place works.

And there is a reason for that similarity: It works well for companies.

It just doesn’t work well for the people who think they can call Microsoft tech support and demand that they put Bill Gates on the phone so he can make sure their issue gets resolved and they get a free computer thrown in as compensation for their time and trouble.

77

Bolded for truth. A lot of customers don’t realize that we are all pawns in the game man, pawns in the game. Both agent and customer. Voting with the wallet is one answer. Spend more on your product, you may get a different kind of support.

And for folks asking me what they are supposed to do, I can’t stress this enough, *do whatever you have to. * Ask for supervisors, demand supervisors, write letters, knock on CEO doors, call the BBB, have your army of Twitter followers wage war, shoot off a simple email, call enough times that some agent may be willing to get themselves in trouble by actually managing to get a super to take your call. I am rooting for you. Do whatever ya feel ya gotta do.

But don’t threaten the rep’s job or make grand threats about making fire rain on their heads and all that. It makes you a joke. Really.

78

Hell, even Mongo was just a pawn in the game of life.

79

OK, ignore the crap about contacting the CEO. What do you drones have to say about people going to Reddit, for example, and making your company look like an ass in as much public as they can reach using the English-language Internet? Do you think it’s bound to backfire and leave the complainer always looking the fool? Does anyone out there actually have written policy to deal with the eventuality of bored 4channers spamming their phone lines with nigra jokes?

80

Like I said- I didn’t try nor would I know about getting someone fired. Why would i want to? I just want my problem fixed. But I had a legit beef, and so the guy who is responsible to the shareholders made sure it got fixed. Which is how it should be.