Anyone work in customer service?

Everyone should do a six month stint in customer service. And see if they can fix 400 peoples problems on the same day, and then also call all 400 people back on the same day

A company that prided itself on customer service would deal with a morning enquiry the same day and an afternoon enquiry by the end of the next day. If it can't be dealt with substantively, and you have to do some investigation, that's a bit different, but so often you get an email saying "we'll get back to you in a week's time". I can just imagine the response I'd get if I put an auto-reply on my emails that said clients/colleagues would get a response in a week's time!

But most issues can be dealt with quickly if staff are properly trained (and, crucially, give some discretion and ability to use their initiative). The problem is they are poorly trained and treated like idiots by their managers as well as customers with user-unfriendly scripts. Regulators are also partly to blame for all the statements they make them read out about call recording, data protection etc. Just get on with the call!

I think they fear/know that the phone call in 2-3 days won't be forthcoming, their complaint will disappear into a black hole and they'll have to call again. If companies reliably phoned back and did what they said they would do, it would be fine.

I think most customers would regard it as a "fob off" as they'll have been told plenty of times in the past by other organisations that someone would call them back which never actually happened.

I think if firms say that there'll be a call back, then they should actually do it.

I appreciate everything else you've said, but surely she should have been given some sort of timeframe? i.e. told 'we will call you back in 2-3 days.' How does she know what a 'realistic' timeframe is (and how busy you are?) every organisation will have a different one. A call back from the doctor usually is within the next hour or two, a call back from somewhere else might be 2 weeks. People aren't psychic!

For example in my role all emails get an automated response saying we aim to respond within 3 working days, to manage expectations. Then if we investigate their complaint they are told both over the phone and sent a leaflet of the average time it will take.

I think @taxguru has a good point though. My very first full time job involved doing admin for an organisation. 15 years ago people would phone up for all sorts of reasons, moving house, setting up a new dd, applying for a discount etc. All quite calm, normal, forgettable conversations. Sometimes you'd get angry people calling up when they got 'missed payment/arrears' letters but that was about 10% of the calls. Nowadays all the standard admin things can (and are encouraged by the company) to be done online, so the 'angry arrears' people are the only ones who NEED to call, so I can imagine have gone from about 10% of the calls to 90%.

@Saltedbutter yes customers are getting ruder, impatient and lack manners since the lockdowns.

There is nothing positive to gain from being like this.

I’m not sure if this has been touched on but I think customers have got worse since lockdown. I think it hampered people’s social skills and the sitting at home monitoring for the Amazon man turning up introduced unrealistic expectations of logistics and time frames for deliveries.

I spent the whole of yesterday being bollocked by a few customers and when I broke down their complaints and addressed each part in turn, seemed to make them angry. What I really struggle with is when there’s actually nothing we’ve done wrong as that makes it really hard to resolve.

I am probably overly nice to whoever answers phones when I ring as a result!

I mainly deal with people face to face.
My main gripe is customers who are late for their appointment. Some ring once they have missed their appointment slot, some even say well I tried to call but your phone lines were busy. We have back to back appointments which the customers very rarely pay for. The ones who pay are virtually never late.
As if ringing makes it ok for them to be late. No I’m not going to make every subsequent customer late because you didn’t allow sufficient time for your appointment.
Often they still turn up late to be told they have missed their appointment and will have to rebook.
No we can’t squeeze you in, that would mean making everyone else late and working later than I should and also working unpaid. It would also make my colleague have to stay unpaid as I can’t do lone work.
If they persist I explain it’s like going for a train. The train does not wait for them.

100% this! 👏👏

Get customers who say “why don’t we get more staff?”

I say to them “people are leaving retail because of rude, impatient and disrespectful customers”

Then in my store “do you want to work for a horrible store manager ?” Eight colleagues have left since he started in May. All due to his behaviour. Even ousted the only white manager to another store 3 miles away.

I want to leave but not many jobs my side of the county. I don’t want to spend half my money on petrol thank you.

I work in insurance.

Customer: "Hi, I need to report a claim for a photocopier."
Sure, no problem, I take the details to find her account.
Me: "Ok, could you tell me a bit about what's happened, please?"
Customer: "Yeah, it's out of ink".
Me: "....and nothing has happened to the machine, it's just ran out of ink?"
Customer: "Yes."
Me: "(thinking WTF) Okay, that's not something that is covered by insurance so I would recommend you to visit the supplier and get more ink.
Customer: "What do you mean I have to get more ink, I thought that was something you guys would keep an eye on!"

As if we have some sort of alert button in our system that let us know when customers run out of ink so we can order it for them?? 😂

I work in retail so do answer the phone on a fairly regular basis.
Had a few corkers in my time but I work for a family business and our boss is happy to take the phone if people are being obnoxious and tell them that we no longer require their custom.

Yep, I had this whilst working in insurance claims. Had one charmer threaten to put me through the window once because we hadn't received some documents he claimed he'd sent us. This was face to face, he was a 40ish year old bloke, I was 19 at the time.

I was also called "the most useless and obnoxious woman I've ever met" after informing someone that we couldn't replace their totalled car because they only had a Third Party Fire and Theft policy. I was tempted to get that one printed on a t shirt.

Oh you’re joking! The op has a wonderful way of describing a situation, really bringing it to life. She’s not hateful or breaching anyone’s confidence.

Very true.

Most things these days can be dealt with by automated systems, websites, apps, etc., so "customer service" lines have become complaint lines, so it's inevitable customers are likely to be unhappy.

A couple of decades ago, people would be phoning customer services to do things like placing an order, paying a bill, making routine enquiries, asking for advice, etc. - now they can do that online, so most don't need to call until they have a problem/complaint.

Back in the old days, the more experienced/higher graded staff would be put on complaint lines and the younger/inexperienced staff would be doing things like taking orders and answering routine enquiries. Now, probably most calls will be complaints, yet the staff will mostly be younger/inexperienced.

@Jumpingthruhoops

There's never an excuse for abuse, death threats. BUT I can totally see why people might be thoroughly pissed off by the time they actually get to talk to someone.

Nail on the head there. Of course, there's no "excuse" for abuse, but the poor systems in place often "explain" why the customer is utterly fed up and ready to blow by the time they manage to actually speak to someone. Especially when it's not the first time they've had to call about the same thing, because previous interactions have failed to solve the problem.

I’ve worked in call centres & actually didn’t get too much abuse. Hung up on people when I wasn’t supposed to though! When I worked for what was formally known as Age Concern, potentially difficult calls would be transferred to me to pour oil on troubled waters. I certainly wouldn’t work on the customer services desk where I am now. It’s shocking how some customers speak to my colleagues. One got a boxed hoover thrown at her which thankfully missed!

Yes. And tells you a million times that you can do what you want to do on their website.

No, I can't. That's why I am calling, oddly enough.

Really? Maybe they just want to get what they pay for.

I'm not saying people aren't rude and entitled, they clearly are. But if you pay for a service, you expect it to work and it's not entitled to get annoyed if it doesn't.

And I also wonder if your business uses useless chatbots which just take people around the FAQs. Why don't businesses just let you send an email with your query?

A shout out to Plusnet who overcharged me last month. I sent them a message online, which they allow, I didn't need to call them and spend 15 minutes validating my identity, they looked into it within 24 hours and sorted it out.

It's not that hard. And I don't pay a lot for their service.