Tips on being a good sevice person

The BBQ Pit
21

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Persephone *
**

You can’t be in many hardware stores, because most of them are like that.

It’s true it’s in the training materials, because I took the test to be a Home Depot guy (but I got an Ace job before they could call back). The 3 tests: math (to calculate #of 9"tiles on a given floor space), a “personality” screen (If you saw a co-worker steal would you report it?), and one that was really more instruction asked as Socratic loaded questions (People often become confused in a large store; should you lead them directly to the department they want and connect them with the associate there?)

At Ace it’s looser. Half our stores are independent, but still there’s a lot of flyers that come here every year from the home office. They seem to think the main problem is clerks are too shy or lazy to talk to people. They can’t seem to imagine that people want to shop for hardware like they shop for groceries.

They always push the “Helpful Harware Man” in examples of be agressive and not waiting for questions, and trying to suggest the more expensive answer: Want to see our new faucets?

22

At Home Depot I usually get the impression that I’m going to have to go on a safari to find the nearest associate. Needless to say, I’ve never had the problem of them bothering me.

23

Why are you answering like everybody is asking YOU (of all people) for advice? What an ego!

You had your own wimpering thread about how the mean old customers are making you do the work you were hired for.

And the stupid answers you give! “I’m not rude, so you cant complain about people who are.” “My friend has ONE store that’s not like that, so you must be wrong.”

God, it’s like you’re a throwback to “old women” before we got New Woman 30 years ago.

Remember the “old women” joke: If you ask a man if anyone will ever live on the moon he’ll say “Yes. People will try anything”. But if you ask a woman, she’ll say “No. I wouldn’t want to live there.”

So grow up and get into the correct century. There’s a lot of stores and a lot of clerks, and they all behave differently, and plenty of them deserve comment.

24

Read note above. If you aren’t an “old woman”, you sound like one. There’s lot of Home Depot’s and lots of clerks and lots of traning materials that are honored or dishonored, so don’t tell other people you are the expert.

25

If you can take you head out of your rectum long enough, you might go back and read the first few posts. Henbin attacks Persephone directly, and when she answers him/her directly, Henbin states explicitly that the OP was directed specifically at her. Her answers are to Henbin. Her only other post in this thread had was only an agreement about an entirely different matter, the service at the Olive Garden, and a comment about one particular hardware store.

And what the hell is this “old woman/new woman bullshit”? I’ve dealt with a pretty even ratio of male to female customer service clerks, some good and some bad, and never noticed a gender or age specific behavior.

Go back to lurking, you dweeb. Come out when you have something reasonably intelligent to say. I won’t be holding my breath for it.

26

Damn you! All this time I’ve spent carefully adopting the persona of a male college student has gone to waste. Do you have any idea how much work I put into that webpage to try to throw people like you off my trail?

In any event, the purpose of my comment was just to share my experiences with Home Depot. The part where I said that it must be that way at every Home Depot was just wishful thinking on your part, not something I actually wrote. But then again, you do seem somewhat incapable of separating your delusions from other people’s posts. The voices you are hearing now aren’t me either.

27

The one I hate is when they don’t have what you want and try to convince you it doesn’t exist.

“Danish beer? You must mean Heinekin, which is Dutch. There’s no Danish beer.”

Or when they knock the product you want because they don’t have it. “Motorola? That stuff is just junk. I hear they’re going out of business, so you couldn’t get repairs. Here’s our Ajax brand.”

28

He seemed to be saying the exact same thing, that there.
“So grow up and get into the correct century. There’s a lot of stores and a lot of clerks, and they all behave differently, and plenty of them deserve comment”

So the “old woman” refers to pre-women’s lib, not the age of the women. That’s what I got anyway

29

back to the OP:

I work as a tech support agent. I have to get 4 things before my system will go anywhere: last name, first name, serial number, and phone number.

If I don’t document all calls that come into this call center, then the representative who speaks to them last has no idea:

  1. what kind of credits I’ve administered
  2. what steps have already been taken
  3. Hi! Opal cat
  4. past problems with their device

We also need your number in case their are any reasons we need to contact you regarding your previous call.

I hope it doesn’t appear rude, but I have to do that to serve the customer correctly and thoughly. If I don’t do that I could jeaporidize myself, a co-worker, or even the customer who called us for help.

30

When I ask where’s the baby clothes and they say “First you have to tell me it’s age” I want to smack them.

I’m always too surprised by such rudeness to respond, so I just turn away, but I always plan next time to tell the manager.

How hard is it to be civil and just say “What age is the child?”

And even better, of course, would be an answer instead of a question. “Layettes are over there, and toddlers’ are one aisle farther down.”

31

Some people never learned it’s impolite to answer a question with a question.

The other thing is endless choices after you’ve decided.
This happens a lot at travel agent counters and car rentals.
Me:"Do you have a convertible? "
clerk:"No, but we have this one with a sun roof. "
“Ok, I’ll take it.”
"Or, there’s an SUV. "
“No, the sunroof is fine.”
“I can call the other airport, they may have a convertible, but it will take an hour to bring it, and it’s an expensive sports car so it will cost triple.”
“No, the sunroof is fine.”
“Our limo also has a sunroof, but it’s out, I’m afraid.”
“Which way to the Avis counter?”

32

I’ve never been told “First you have to tell me…”

Nobody would really say that. You’d better get some other examples.

33

Yes, I did start my own thread. However, if you’ll take your head out of henbin’s ass for a moment and go back & read it, you’ll notice that not once did I ever complain about doing the work I was hired for. I don’t hate my job. Quite the contrary. I like it very much.

Now, please read the following quote, from my post about the hardware store:

Tell me just where in there I said tshirts was wrong. I’ve re-read it a few times, and I’m not finding it. I was simply relating a tale about a hardware store that doesn’t have clerks tail you.

Oh yeah–I’m not a rude customer service clerk, and to my knowledge, henbin has had no dealings with me, therefore, henbin has no right to say that I am rude. I have stated repeatedly that yes, some customer service clerks are rude, but I am not one of them. When henbin addressed me, I addressed henbin.

Here we are in agreement. One hundred percent. I don’t like bad customer service any more than anyone else, particularly because I am in that line of work. One bad clerk makes us all look rotten. But we’re not. I know that most of my customers are average, normal people that walk away from my desk satisfied with what I’ve given them, *because they don’t suck, and neither do I. For every bad customer story I could tell you, there’s five more good customer stories. I myself started a thread in MPSIMS about a year ago relating a tale of some positively excellent service I got at a KMart here in my city.

I believe that what I’m doing here is normally referred to as “participating in a thread.” Lots of people here do that sort of thing. We’re funny that way.

Have a nice day, Real Radio.

34

There’s two lines you don’t see together every day.

But go get him/her lucie. This is the pit. Spit venom.

35

The job I’m currently doing is at a travel agency. I do a lot of things, but the task I was hired for is to take people’s requests for a copy of a ticket or itinerary and fax the copy to them so they can submit it with their expense report.

A few weeks ago, I had a problem with my internet service. I kept calling them and asking what the problem was, if my bill was delinquent, and when it might be fixed. They kept fobbing me off with non-explanations and assurances that it would be up “soon”. Finally, I called them and literally screamed and cried on the phone. It was up within an hour. Of course, that had just as much to do with the fact that it had taken me that long to get punted to a person who was both competent and responsible. I called him back and apologized, and got his name. I wrote a letter of complaint to the company. I didn’t know the names of all the people who’d been BSing me, but I did mention this guy as the only one who’d done anything for me. Although that may have been a mistake; they may end up thinking that he was a putz and everyone else gave me a hard time.

When dealing with the internet service, I made sure to always have my customer number at hand, and sometimes gave it before I was asked. (One of the twerps pulled up the record of a different account, one that was one digit off from mine.) I also kept track of the other number they gave me to track the repairs, and I had info about my hardware, which they didn’t ask for. I didn’t give any vague answers, or assume that they knew anything I didn’t tell them. But they didn’t communicate with me. If a problem takes time to fix, then it just does, and I was open to being patient. They kept telling me it wouldn’t take long, and it wouldn’t have, if they’d gotten off the dime. It almost literally came down to someone flipping a switch, something that could have been done three days earlier.

At the travel agency, I get a lot of the information piecemeal. People ask for their ticket copies from May, so I search from January to May 31, in case they bought one of the tickets that far in advance. (It happens, and the database sorts by day of purchase, not day of travel.) People e-mail on someone else’s behalf and spell that person’s name wrong, so I e-mail back and ask, “I don’t see a Kadiddlehopper in the database; maybe it was purchased under a different name?” People ask me to send it interoffice. Once someone e-mailed back to say she never got her copy, and ultimately it turned out she’d told me the wrong mail code. So now I suggest faxing, then assure them that finance will accept a faxed copy (they do for everyone else!) and if they just have to have it sent, I keep a Xerox and check the next day to make sure it was received. And that’s not counting the people who don’t give me a fax number, or the woman who changed her fax number and didn’t tell me. Now I always ask.

Man: I want to get a sweater for my wife.

Clerk: What size does she wear?

Man: She shops here all the time; don’t you know her size?

36

That should be “no one else gave me a hard time”. Doh!

37

Does anyone else find it fishy that Henbin and REalRadio just happen to be Newbies, only like, 15 posts, and all of sudden, they’re starting personal attacks against people?
Hmmm…trolls, maybe?
Go the Complaint Station or U Get Heard, Henbin:
http://www.thecomplaintstation.com
or
http://www.ugetheard.com

BTW, don’t ever come by Customers Suck. WE eat people like you for our lunch break…evil grin

38

I get really tired of the “You MUST smell the cork and take a small sip” routine at restaurants.

It’s Okay to offer, but when I decline and they want to push it on to the next person, anyone at the table, even someone who ordered beer, it’s just too much.

I came to eat and talk, not play snob.

And get a clue. If we’re at a Holiday Inn drinking a blended Gallo wine, the cork isn’t old enough to go bad. It was probably corked last Wednesday.

And even if it were bad, that wouldn’t take long to figure out, without the game first.

Also it’s funny when you know the young waiter, being the lowest paid person in the building, probably never bought a bottle with a cork in it, so who is he to play expert?

39

We have an idiot who works at the theater here who pulls the “First you have to tell me…” routine.

If someone says “I’d like some popcorn” she says “First you have to tell me what size”. She’s been told to just say “Large, Super or Family?” but she won’t do it.

So they have to guess. “Two small and one medium”.
(You can see the cups but not the names from the counter. The management cleverly put the sign with the names over your head.)
So she goes"We don’t have a ‘small’". And you can hear the disgust in her voice.

So the guy will say “then three medium”
“We don’t have medium either”

So he has to step out of line and go back to look up at the names. She will quickly switch to talking to the next person and the popcorn guy usually just leaves in disgust.

Then the next guy will say “How much is the candy?”
And she says “First you have to tell me which kind.”
No. It’s all the same price. She just likes to screw with people. A real sad case, hates people and took a people job.

If they say