In any case, here are some general thoughts on customer service. Generally speaking, customer servants are there because they have to be, not because they want to be. This is definitely the case for me. I met the first person I've ever met in my life who openly professed to genuinely loving customer service exactly three weeks and a day ago. Most people just hate that shit.
There are a lot of reasons, but they can basically be boiled down into one: people are fucking monsters, and your job in customer service is to suck up to them no matter what they say to you. Seriously, people gotta get genuinely abusive before I'd even think of calling up a manager and saying, "Hey, can I hang up on this fucker?" But there's plenty of emotional abuse you can take up till then that's just part of the job. Individually, most of these interactions aren't so bad. Dickish, sure, but who doesn't deal with an asshole every now and then?
No, the part that sucks most about customer service is that these interactions happen constantly, eight hours a day, five days a week, ad infinitum until you get another job. For most of us, that shit adds up. There are a rare few who can genuinely shrug it off, and don't let it bother them. The rest of us just pretend we can when a manager can hear us.
What most people don't seem to understand is that customer servants have very little genuine power, and even less to do with the problem that they're calling about. I'd hazard a guess that 98% of my daily contacts are not related to a failure of customer service in the slightest. (According to company statistics, full 50% of our contacts are 100% related to customers not fucking reading, but that's a story for another post.)
A few people get this. Even angry ones, sometimes. Today, actually, I had a lady that was pissed about some other thing or something. Livid. But at one point in the conversation, she said something along the lines of, "Now, you know none of this is directed at you personally."
Thank you, lady. Now I do. This may not seem like an important thing to say. You may think that customer servants assume that shit. Guess what: It is important, and we don't, because usually people are wishing us, personally, all sorts of ill will. So if you're pissed, super-extra pissed, about some shit, make sure to take a deep breath and remember you're talking to someone who had nothing to do with your offense, who can only pretend to a modicum of independence, who tells you the company line because s/he has to. Because, at the end of the day, customer service people aren't really there to serve you. We're there for the same reason every other employee is: to make the company some motherfucking money. The company believes this is best accomplished by providing quality customer service and that's why it pays someone with a master's degree $12 an hour to listen to inbred rednecks complain about how it's your fault that their illiteracy prevents them from being well-informed.
So be fucking nice. Because here's what we all wish we could do:
And one day, one of us somewhere just might be able to do it. I can only hope.
I think being on the phone is incredibly different than any other CSR interface, and by FAR the most stressful and deleterious to your mental health. I completely agree it takes a special person to be able to shrug it off--and I am not that person, at least not for more than a few years, probably.
ReplyDeleteHas being in CS affected the way you react to shitty customer service when you are the customer? I'll admit it: I tried so hard to be nice all the time I got super pissed if any Customer Service person was less than at least cordial.