Now I want to preface this by saying that I lost it with a customer service person (and I use this definition loosely) earlier today.
We needed to contact customer service because we were doing annual maintenance on a device and it was failing. Per instructions, we called customer service after the maintenance failed three times, twice with a professional on site with us observing our technique.
Upon calling the “customer service” person, we were informed on how to properly do the maintenance because it was obvious we were not intelligent enough to follow instructions despite the fact that we informed him of our three attempts to do the maintenance and the actions we took. Oh, and to be sure that we did it correctly, he had us do it twice to prove that it was not working before he agreed that the unit was failing and a replacement was needed.
Fortunately, my wife was on the phone with this idiot because I was screaming at the phone (as she muted it) about his inability to pay attention and regarding his need to read Einstein’s definition of Insanity: … doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
If this was the first time with such lunacy on the part of customer service, the very uniqueness would not warrant comment beyond a complaint to the employer. It is not! Most customer service people start out with the assumption that the caller has made a mistake and 1) treat the person as less that intelligent, speaking to them in a condescending attitude and 2) having them repeat actions already performed, often several times during the call.
Thus my word of advice to customer service responders:
- Treat the caller with respect. Start out by listening to the caller to not only determine the problem but to determine the actions already taken. This may also result in you not doing unnecessary actions.
- Do not assume the customer has made a mistake. Assume that there is a problem that you both have to resolve. A partnership is always a better way to resolve a problem.
- From personal experience helping customer service departments, it is common for scripts, manual or online, that you follow whereby you try to drill-down to a resolution. When you do not get a resolution on one script you may go to another script. Advice: do not go over the same questions on the next script that you asked on the previous script – we will know.
- Do not assume that you are the smartest person in the conversation. Quite often, you are not and it shows.
- Remember, your calls are recorded and your customers are savvy enough to lodge complaints when you pull these stunts and it could affect you career, in case you care.
I know that I am addressing customer service responders here but this also applies to other so-called company representatives. I recently had a similar difficult 2 days with a company representative that was more interested in his opinion (repeat opinion) than he was in listening to us and focusing on actual training. In fact, when he did not observe any issues he queried us in what I can only describe as obtuse points as if he was trying create a controversy.
In short: remember it is CUSTOMER SERVICE!
You are my inspiration, I possess few web logs and sometimes run out from post :). “No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.” by W. H. Auden.
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