[QUOTE=Borborygmi]
Wow, rhythmonly, I think we may have talked recently! Do you do CSR work for a large bank in the Pacific Northwest?
[/QUOTE]
Nope. I’m in manufacturing. And belong to a credit union.
[QUOTE=Otto]
Also, have your credit card in your hand when you call or at least on the table next to you, instead of zipped in your purse, in another room, or out in your goddamn truck. Have a pen or pencil and paper in your line of sight and test the pen to be sure it works before you place the call.
[/QUOTE]
Will do. As soon as you people start picking up on the first or second ring.
[QUOTE=Otto]
The OP didn’t say he wouldn’t do his job. He said he wouldn’t go above and beyond the minimum requirements of the job. For instance, in my job I deal with overdraft fees. I have discretion to reverse them but am in no way required to. If you (the royal you) treat me like shit I won’t reverse your fee. Treat me with a modicum of decency and respect and I will. If it’s worth $20 bucks to you to be a prick to me on the phone, go right ahead.
1984 Val-speak much?
[/QUOTE]
Actually, the “much” thing is something I heard in a Buffy repeat a couple of nights ago.
So, the better question is “2001 Whedon-speak much?” 
[QUOTE=rhythmonly]
Jesus H. Christ in a hopped-up-sidecar. Anybody here ever stopped to think that the 'puter system asks you for your account number to determine if you should have access to the account in the first place? And that the CSR still needs your account number because the 'puter system doesn’t interface with the CSR?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, we understand that - that’s the problem I mentioned on post #2. Good job of reading the thread. :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=Roland Orzabal]
Customer service is a big fat brick wall protecting the people who make the decisions from the stampede of customer complaints that result.
[/QUOTE]
If all in all, you’re just another brick in the wall, affect no surprise whenever one of the foiled outlanders (whose patronage, in some small measure, contributes to your very own livelihood) vents his frustrations by spray-painting FUCK YOU across your flat, stony face.
Figuratively speaking, of course.
[QUOTE=JohnT]
Yes, we understand that - that’s the problem I mentioned on post #2. Good job of reading the thread. :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]
And I think you need to go su…well, you know.
[QUOTE=T_SQUARE]
Will do. As soon as you people start picking up on the first or second ring.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, because these things are completely comparable. Because the proper response to having to wait on hold is to neglect to do very basic things that, once you’re off hold, will expedite your call. Ever occur to you that maybe at least some of the time you waste on hold is because instead of answering your call I’m stuck with Mama Dumbass, who’s ambling out to her SUV to get her card with me on the line?
And as long as I’m venting, may I say to the dumbfucks with call waiting, if you put me on hold to chat with whoever it is who’s beeping in, don’t be surpised if you come back five minutes later and I’m not there.
[QUOTE=Otto]
And as long as I’m venting, may I say to the dumbfucks with call waiting, if you put me on hold to chat with whoever it is who’s beeping in, don’t be surpised if you come back five minutes later and I’m not there.
[/QUOTE]
Five minutes? I’ve got that long? I just assumed if you heard the click of the call swap feature being used you’d just hang up. Thanks for that tidbit!
[QUOTE=tbdi]
And those systems that only allow you to speak get nothing from me but the zero being pressed repeatedly, especially when they use the phony “let me find your account… ahh, here it is!” crap to make it sound more like a person. “ahh, here it is” my ass. It’s a computerized database and it damn well better be able to find it right where it should be. Cut the shit and assume the customer isn’t an idiot.
[/QUOTE]
Granted, I haven’t used that system when I’ve had to call to solve a real problem, but I use that system when I call my phone company to pay the bill. I like the fact that I don’t have to take the phone away from my ear to enter numbers, it’s actually faster than paying my bill through the website, the voice-recognition system works remarkably well, and the geek in me thinks it’s cool in a Star-Trekkish kind of way. I feel like Captain Kirk talking to his computer.
[QUOTE=Uncommon Sense]
Five minutes? I’ve got that long? I just assumed if you heard the click of the call swap feature being used you’d just hang up. Thanks for that tidbit!
[/QUOTE]
No dear, I won’t wait five minutes. How long I wait depends entirely on my mood. You may only get 60 seconds. If I’m feeling particularly magnanimous you may get 90. But I ain’t letting you fuck up my call stats for the day so I hear it from my boss.
[QUOTE=JohnT]
Sorry, but you’re wrong. If your systems are so incompetently designed as to have you request the same piece of information multiple times, you’d better expect this reasonable reply. Why should I have to type in my account number on the keypad, only to have to say it to the CSR mere moments later?
[/QUOTE]
I can’t speak for any other call centers than the ones I worked for, but in one of those, we would get screen pops based upon the caller id from the originating call. So, if you were to call from your cell phone, or from work, or from a neighbor’s house, the information that I would see might not be accurate.
Asking you to verify the account information ensures that the agent is looking at the proper information and and is thus ready to help you.
[QUOTE=rhythmonly]
…Anybody here ever stopped to think that the 'puter system asks you for your account number to determine if you should have access to the account in the first place? And that the CSR still needs your account number because the 'puter system doesn’t interface with the CSR?..
[/QUOTE]
I thought I did, in fact, acknowledge this in post 17, though with a slightly different tone.
[QUOTE=Otto]
Yes, because these things are completely comparable. Because the proper response to having to wait on hold is to neglect to do very basic things that, once you’re off hold, will expedite your call. Ever occur to you that maybe at least some of the time you waste on hold is because instead of answering your call I’m stuck with Mama Dumbass, who’s ambling out to her SUV to get her card with me on the line?
[/QUOTE]
There is indeed a connection between call waiting time and the availability of pen/credit card/whatever. While I do normally assemble those implements I think will prove necessary for the expeditious processing of my call, after I’ve been on hold for over an hour, I may have needed to get up to turn off a burner/get a drink/find a book to keep me entertained/go to the bathroom/leave for the play I’m going to see tonight. With long wait times, you can’t expect me to just be sitting there staring at the wall, pen and credit card aquiver, for some undertermined length of time. Particularly if you’re only open during the day and I need to call you from work.
mischievous
[QUOTE=Otto]
You’re right. It’s definitely always the system that’s at fault here. Customers never mistype the card number, and the customers’ phones never fail to produce the correct tone for the system to read, and customers never only type in the first 12 numbers of the card number because they’re too stupid to realize that all of the numbers on the front of the card are part of the card number, and they never enter the CVV from the back as part of the card number because they’re too dumb to figure out that it isn’t part of the card number, and they never press the * instead of the # because they’ve managed to live for decades without learning what the pound key is and they never are too slow in entering the number so that we don’t get the entire number.
[/QUOTE]
I’d buy this explanation (to some extent, see below), if I were occasionally asked for my account number after I’d already entered it. But it’s nearly every time. It’s actually surprising to me, now, when I don’t have to give my number several times. I’m pretty sure I know what my card number is. I manage to enter it into websites all the time and they manage to charge me for shit. I’m sure that I make the occasional mistake, but not 95+% of the time.
But, even if the vast majority of people are making those errors, the reasons are still bullshit because they are so easy to fix in software. For a system to be designed so poorly that it fails with any of those minor perturbations is just as bad as a system that is apparently designed to ask for your number, then do fuck all with it, then give you to a person who asks for your number.
[ul][li]Too many digits? Play an error message to reenter, or just take the first 16. That’s why credit cards have fucking checksums. If exactly n+m digits are entered, look up the account denoted by n, and then see if it has the CVV number in m. This isn’t fucking rocket science.[/li][li]Too few? Play back a voice that says: “I’m sorry, you didn’t enter your whole number, dipshit. Please enter the last n digits to continue.”[/li][li]Valid card number, but * instead of #? Who the fuck cares? Until you people start issuing credit cards with fucking s in the middle of them, that’s a perfectly easy to interpret input.[/li][]Phone malfunctions and creates the wrong tone? Ok, I’ll give you this one. You’ve now accounted for the 0.001% of people who call in and manage to have their phone break after having navigated all the phone tree menus, just in time to make their account number unreadable. I guess it also covers the people who whistle their way through the menus, and the people who like to play with magnets next to the headset while calling Customer Service.[/ul]
[QUOTE=T_SQUARE]
Will do. As soon as you people start picking up on the first or second ring.
[/QUOTE]
They might be able to start picking up the phone on the first or second ring, if it weren’t for the fact that they’re all still stuck on calls with people who are taking up time digging out their credit cards and/or searching for a working writing utensil.
[QUOTE=minor7flat5]
I thought I did, in fact, acknowledge this in post 17, though with a slightly different tone.
[/QUOTE]
I think another aspect that may come into play is that many systems that I call into offer automated service and that the account number that I’m asked to enter is used to authenticate me. That number may not be passed on to whatever CRM tool that is used by the live operators.
You don’t understand, walrus. As his long history of anti-customer, career-hatred postings makes clear, for Otto, customer service is not just a job, it’s an incubation chamber for highly virulent strains of frustration, misanthropy, and impotent rage, and one from which he is heartbreakingly powerless to escape.
I worked in tech support (the inbred cousin of customer service) for a couple of years, and I fucking hated it. I hated almost every moment of it, and I felt my rage growing and the life force being sucked out of me every second I had to spend on the telephone dealing with the public. Not everyone was a fuckwit, but there were enough fuckwits that eventually “bitterness creep” bled over into my dealings with even the decent folks who didn’t deserve it, and even into my personal dealings in “real life.”
I knew I had to get out, so I did. It wasn’t easy, but I tweaked my skills and finagled my way into a non-support position elsewhere, and I’ve never, ever looked back.
I admit I had certain advantages, though: I had a computer with an intact keyboard, so I was able to use actual job sites to perform my search. Poor Otto, whose keyboard lacks an “M” key, waits fruitlessly for a response to the résumé he keeps posting to onster.co, meanwhile using our own beloved SDMB as a frequent sounding board to rage, rage against the dying of his life!
[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip]
If all in all, you’re just another brick in the wall, affect no surprise whenever one of the foiled outlanders (whose patronage, in some small measure, contributes to your very own livelihood) vents his frustrations by spray-painting FUCK YOU across your flat, stony face.
Figuratively speaking, of course.
[/QUOTE]
Ah yes, the stoic heroism of vandals. In singular, intrepid; in plural, world-shaking. An apt extension of my analogy indeed, for, just as I hope that the tagger who defaces property with his “artwork” at least finds some self-fulfillment in his works, it is also my hope that the person who spends an hour bitching out the CSR for his failure to correct perceived errors in corporatewide policy feels the sense of a job well done when the call is concluded. In both cases, it’d be the only constructive thing that got accomplished.
By the way, in response to the “contribute to your livelihood” part, whatever ten-thousandth of a percent of the customer’s latest overdraft fee found its way into the CSR’s paycheck last month, it doesn’t change that fact that that CSR cannot do shit about corporate policy and complaining at him about it is pointless. That it should not be pointless does not change the fact that it is, and that you may have no other obvious avenue of recourse has no effect on any of it. It sucks, but the service guy didn’t cause the suck; he’s just trapped between it and the people pissed off about it.
I often marvel at the people who seem to believe that, simply because a person is paid to be on the receiving end of negative feedback should any occur, that gives them the automatic moral and ethical right to unleash their anger upon that person for problems he did not cause and cannot solve.
Just as I said two posts ago, the serviceperson is the guy I pay $20 to deal with you after I call you an asshole on the street. If you have any common sense or an ounce of ethical fiber, you wouldn’t direct your anger at that guy, even if I – the person who actually caused what you’re angry about – had hidden so you couldn’t find me to deal with me directly. But why not? That guy is my appointed representative! He fully agreed to deal with feedback in response to my actions for me in exchange for payment! He’s my fucking customer service guy! That’s what he’s there for, and if he doesn’t like it, well, fuck him! Right? Right?! Well, if you wouldn’t bitch at that guy, then don’t bitch at the CSR for things he can’t change.
If the CSR is rude to you first, give him hell. If he treats you poorly, give him hell. If he fucks up your account, give him hell. These are all things he can reasonably be held responsible for. The phone system, and any other decision made ten miles above his head, are not, regardless of who signs his paycheck.
When I call my credit card co., they ask for my account number. I enter it.
Then they tell me my balance. Thank you, I knew my balance before I called, we are wasting time.
Then they tell me “no payment is due at this time.” Thank you, my payments are at the same time every month, I know when they are due.
Then, after finally giving me a phone tree, they advertise at me to go to their website. Thank you, but if my question could be answered by visiting your website, I’d have gone there instead. (This is a pet peeve of mine. I understand the subtext of “quit wasting our expensive CSAs’ time, hang up and go online,” but still: arrgh!)
Now, I know 99.7% of your customers are morons who don’t know that major banks operate websites and who are just calling for their balance. But for the tiny percentage of us who are calling because we really need something specific, could you let us have an option to speak to you WITHOUT the hoops?