Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Customer Service


1.  When I phone you from an English speaking country, and you don't speak English clearly or well, expect me to be crabby about it.  If I'm not, then bonus. If I am, and you take it personally the call isn't going to go well for anyone.

2.  If I call you and I'm obviously angry, don't react in a 'my day is worse than yours' manner.  Again, the call isn't going to go well. You had a bad day, I had a bad day. It's inconsiderate of either of us to inflict that upon each other.  And no, you didn't call me just to bitch.  Chances are? I didn't either. You have no idea what straws were in my load before this last one so don't make assumptions.  You are a point of contact for the business you represent.

3. The minute you make the call into a me vs you situation, you lose.  You'll most certainly lose my respect which will make it darned hard to accept anything good from you without it being suspect in some manner. Do I mean you should take shit and abuse from someone? No. Absolutely not.  But if you get pissy because I ask for someone who speaks clearer English than you do (BECAUSE I AM HARD OF HEARING AND ANY ACCENT MAKES IT DIFFICULT for me to clearly understand you) then you're not really interested in servicing the customer, are you?

3A. And if you chose to make it into a racism situation, well.. just think about that in reverse for a moment.

4. I may not have started out in a cranky mood when I first called you, but if I've been passed about like a hot potato from department to department, having to listen to the world's worse choice in music (IE blaring rock and roll or rap or anything with a hard driving beat that gets my heart racing) I'm probably going to be that way when I get to you.  This will be doubly worse if I've been hung up on by someone else, or had to jump through a series of press 8 to speak to X department 3 or more times before I get fed up and press the * or 0 for a long hold to get past your silly, supposed timesaving phone messages.  Understand that. And if I want to bitch about it for a moment or two, let me.  Really, it'll go a long way to me seeing you as an ally.

5. By all means, smile when you speak to me.  It really does come through in the sound of your voice and cadence of your speech.  However, keep the shit eating grin that tells your co worker I'm another nut bar off your face, cause guess what? That comes through as well.  Se that part about I may not have started out cranky?  This will do nothing but make certain that I am.

6. I'm not always right, but I sure as hell think I am.  If you can be right without taking that away from me, you'll be well on your way to a career in Customer Service and management.

7.  Tempting as it might be to tell me to stuff it and hang up, reconsider.  I am a customer of the business you work for.  Without customers, chances are the company will have little use for customer service personnel. We don't have to be friends but this whole thing works better if you can manage to be a double agent and be on my side as well as your company's.

Just one more thing:

All of these work equally well for customer tips.