If you spend an hour with someone arguing over a $20 refund, it’ll cost you more in staff time than you save in not giving the cash out.
A quick resolution can save a lot of pain in the arse later on.
If you’ve got a legitmate complaint, send an email. My last job was in customer support, I answered emails and took phone calls.
If you send an email, you have a record of the correspondence. Also, the CS rep can forward it to the appropriate party, if necessary. If I got an email from a customer with legitimate complaint about our policies, I wouldn’t hesitate to forward it to my manager. Better yet, send the email to the company’s public relations director or marketing department. Whoever receives it will escalate the complaint to management, and will want to know the resolution.
On the other hand, if I got a phone call from a customer with a legitimate complaint, all I could do was log it. If you’re an Average End-User your complaint would be ignored. Management wouldn’t get involved unless you had a very large account with us.
Ah, customer service… most of the time, it felt like I was taking abuse from people with too much free time on their hands:
[Customer]: Your product doesn’t fit the requirements of my application.
[Me]: I’m sorry to hear that.
[Customer]: I thought it would, though, when I bought it.
[Me]: What led you to believe that?
[Customer]: the store that sold it to me.
[Me]: [sub]So what the fuck are you bitching at me, for?[/sub] That’s unfortunate.
[Customer]: I want a refund.
[Me]: Did you purchase it directly from us? [sub]thank Og you didn’t[/sub]
[Customer]: No…
[Me]: We can’t give you a refund for something you didn’t purchase from us…
[Customer]: Okay, then I want a free upgrade.
[Me]: Um, we don’t have anything that will suit your application. I can’t upgrade you to something that we don’t have.
[Cusotmer]: Why the fuck not?
[Me]: We may have something in the future, but we don’t have anything at the moment.
[Customer]: Your product is fucking useless.
[Me]: I wish I could help you, but our product performs up to our specifications.
[Customer]: 30 minute rant about how horrible a person I am, various demands to speak to the owner of the company, the head of engineering, the head of marketting…
Lord, I’m glad I don’t work there anymore.
This is a good way to complain.
This is an EX-CHIHUAHUA!
Seconded. I work in customer service. I give nice service to jerks, and nice service to nice people. I’m not going to deliberately screw the customer because they yelled at me.
However.
There are often situations in any customer service environment where things aren’t black and white. What if the customer’s complaint isn’t legitimate, but requires a procedural change to correct? Those cases often result in representatives seeking exceptions from people higher up in the command chain. I’ll argue for anyone, but I’m going to argue harder and more genuinely for the person who’s being nice than for the person who’s being abusive. It’s not going to be conscious, but I know that I’m imperfect. Besides, I don’t think that any company would want to set a precedent of “yell and you’ll get what you want.”
However, I have better luck with this than most; I am a supervisor, and I am paid more to listen to people be jerks. The reason my luck is good is because I’m very, very good at talking people down and remaining polite while standing my ground.
I keep a journal. I write down what I want to say and have specific dates, times and costs. I usually start by calling. I always start by being nice and explain that I know it isn’t the fault of the person on the other end, but it is a problem with their company. I always have a list of what they need to do to make this right. I right down the name of the person I spoke to.
If calling doesn’t work, I right a letter and send it via certified mail. I again explain what needs to be done to make things right.
If that doesn’t work, I never do business with the company again.
I’m just marvelling at the combination of that sentence and your user name.
I thought stores had to honor the prices they put on things. So the store would suck it up that time and then go back and fix the mislabelled cheese. Or are you saying the customer generated the price tag??
I’m polite, make sure I get the CS name and use it when speaking to them. I also documet EVERY time I have called if the problem isn’t resolved.
I used to work in Customer Service for a Health Insurance Co. Back in the day when Hillary R-Clinton was doing the Health deal. If I had a nickle for every time the customer would tell me they were going to write to Hillary…
I worked as a supervisor in a customer service call center.
I’ve had my life threatened (“I’m going to come down there with a gun!”) I told him threatening my life over interstate phone lines was a felony and he was being recorded. Wouldn’t he like to calm down and try that again? (Total BS line, but it worked.) Fool never realized that while the company was in Delaware, the call center was in Texas…
I’ve been told my surname was stupid. That went along way in encouraging me to go the extra mile when the customer was in the wrong. :rolleyes:
I’ve been told that we turned down an applicant for a credit card because she was a woman. I responded that I was a woman, and that really didn’t have anything to do with it.
I’ve had a woman clearly be driving in her car with the kids in the back scrrrrrrreaaaaaammmmming at the top of her lungs irrationally.
Customers are freaks. I’m very polite to CSRs and let them know right up front I realize my problem isn’t their fault, and I hope they can help me. You can almost hear the heavy sigh of relief. When you work in a call center and you hear that beep on the line, you never know what you’re going to get. Could be an easy “what’s my balance?” could be a fire fight.
I get this all the time-people just griping. At the end of the gripe I have to ask them what they want me to do about it. I am not interested in being a therapist for these people. I want to solve the problem, help them out. But no, they just want to gripe for 20 minutes. It achieves nothing.
I was exposed to a bit of this while working at Home Depot. Returns were huge-mostly for the low-grade tools and equipment that HD sold-real crap, made in China. The funny thing was that people would never learn-insted of spending a few extra bucks for a better quality tool, they would leave with the same POS tool that just broke. :smack:
I don’t work in a call center, but part of my job is sometimes answering the phones for the store. It’s a big store. Very big. Too big, IMO. Anyway, we get lots of calls. Sometimes, for various reasons (too far away from phone, busy with another customer, too fucking lazy to answer the call which is really shitty when you work in the BAKERY and lots of people call you for SOME REASON) when I put you through, they won’t answer. Often, if I put you back through to that extension, they get it. I don’t know why our system bounces calls back to the operator so damn fast anyway.
If they do not answer it is NOT MY FAULT. Please do not blame me. I am as pissed as you are. I can’t walk across the store and say “Will you answer your fucking phone!” or, better yet, get on the intercom and say something like, “Somebody in the bakery, get your ass to the phone! I’ve just been cussed out because you’re too fucking lazy to get it!”
Be patient, or if you’re pissed, simply ask me to get you a manager. I will be MORE than happy to let one of the managers hear about how somebody won’t answer their calls even after several pages and having it sent to their extension several times. Because they piss me off too, and I can’t do a damn thing about it.
My three years of work in a technical support call center (in which I talked to about 20 people a day on the phone) convinced me, without a doubt, that there are a lot more unhinged people out there than I had previously thought.
Knowing that a goodly number of the people we encounter in our lives are out-and-out nutjobs is chilling, but it’s helped me cope with them as well.
In my experience, a good 75% of the people that complain and bitch to me are either
a. in the wrong in the first place
b. bitching about something that isn’t going to change. (most of our policies are dictated by state law)
c. completely off their rocker and just need something to yell about.
I tend to either become sugary sweet to them, which pisses them off even more or just start repeatedly citing the applicable policy or law that covers their complaint.
My grandma does something like this. She claims she didn’t like the product, demands a refund, and buys the exact same product again. :o
With a legitimate complaint and expectations of a resolution, it’s always in the customers’ best interests to at least start the conversation pleasantly.
I’m quite upfront and acknowledge that it is not the CSR’s fault directly and that I’m angry for whatever stated reason and apologize that they must bear the brunt. Typically conversation goes as such
“Hi, I’m RSSchen and my acct # is ***. I’ve been trying several times to contact your company/resolve this issue and I’ve been having problems. Can you please help me?” or “I’ve got a bit of a problem and I’m really hoping that you can help me out with it”. These statements make me appear a bit humble even if I’m flaming like a roman candle. I only get nasty if I encounter someone who appears completely ignorant or wants an argument. That sometimes happens too.
I currently have a problem with Euro-Pro. They’re the manufacturers of the Shark Vac. I got one for XMas and it sucks. Or, more precisely, doesn’t suck. Anyhoo, after contacting them (I have all original papers, box and packing slip) and being shot down (return it to seller - Amazon - yeah right, it’s been six mos, Amazon has a what, 30-day return policy(?) and this has a one-year mfg warranty). They won’t take it back, even under a warranty claim. Boogers. So I told them it was really unfortunate that I’d have to off it onto some unsuspecting retailer and they’d end up with a backcharge anyway. Haven’t heard back since, and my correspondence was exceedingly polite.
I think that this is probably the only lose-lose situation I’ve had with complaining in a really long time. Most companies want you to be happy with their products and say good things about them. On that note, I HAD just sent an email to Swiffer praising their new product (Swiffer Pro) that does exactly what the Shark couldn’t handle. So, essentially, a $25 vac is vastly superior to a $100 one. They were thrilled with the praise. That makes it all worthwhile!
Over all, I’ve had wonderful luck complaining. I’m good at it and it’s fun!
Problem is, this is what is reinforcing the poor behaviour on the part of the complainer.
As someone who was in customer service for a long time, I’ve noticed that most people who genuinely had a fuck-up are angry, but struggle to be polite about it, whereas people who feel you owe them something and have a false sense of entitlement tend to be assholes. Obviously, this doesn’t ALWAYS happen, but it’s something I’ve noticed.
I, when complaining or anything like that, try to spend my hold time calming down. I know that the reason whatever isn’t working or my pizza is late isn’t this person’s fault directly. I know how it was when I was doing this shit, and I know I didn’t like it. I also know that even if you’re entitled to something because of a genuine fuck-up…well, you’ll get what you’re owed (refund, difference in price, et cetera) if you’re mean, but if you’re nice, you’ll get that PLUS free shit. I was delivering pizzas for the place I worked at and this guy opened his pizza and he was like “…this isn’t what I ordered.” He was so nice about it that I called the store from his house on my cell phone and got them to put three free future pizzas on his record right then and there - one to replace the fuck-up, and two for being so nice about it!
~Tasha