Anyone work in customer service?

I work in customer service and on the verge of quitting

I have some stories to tell,but I'd be here all day-ill just tell the last weeks stories

A bloke came in,having ordered on our app
He ordered a big mac meal-big mac,fries and an orange juice
I got his order together,he snatched it from me and walked out
Came back 20 seconds later,screaming that he'd pressed the diet coke button and I'd given him an orange juice
I showed him his receipt (which showed he'd pressed orange juice,but he was having none of it-he wanted diet coke (if he'd come back in and told me the problem,I would have swapped it,no questions asked)
He was screaming in my face and before I had a chance to do anything,he punched me

A woman came in,ordered and my colleague put her order together
Handed it over to her and was met with screaming that 'this fucking place is meant to be fast food!I've been waited over 20 minutes,you thick bitch!'
We checked the camera-from her walking in,to collecting her food was 3 minutes
Thankfully she left,while screaming that 'I'm never coming back!'

A couple where waiting in the bay (drive thru) and where waiting 5 minutes for an apple pie
I'd explained that they could either wait the 5 minutes or have something else-they chose to wait
I went to give it to them,with the explanation that they would need it to be left 10 minutes as it had just come out of the fryer and would be lava hot
Cue,screaming that they wanted free food and it was all my fault they didn't get any
He got out of the car to hit me

I went to give a guy his food in the click and serve order and because it didn't show up the second he ordered it,I was treated to his penis in my face

The police did nothing

Don't think many people could handle 150 calls a day with angry people for 17 years TBH!

Fair enough. Think you've kind of just answered the OP's question...

I work as a secretary in a school in a deprived area and unfortunately so many of these stories sound familiar: right down to my colleague receiving death threats from a parent!
Fortunately the Head has our backs and faced with parents threatening to remove their kids he gives them the form to apply for a different school.

However, the number of people phoning up to receive duplicates of important documents that they signed for when they were given the originals some time in the past two years is unbelievable. . . . . . . . they need them "urgently". . . . . . but have misplaced them - not our fault, and we try to help, but providing duplicates is at the bottom of our to-do list, especially if it involves a trip to archives for stuff thats 10 or 15 years old. . . . . . and like the "customer number" it really helps to know the ex pupil's class and the year they graduated, but of course they can rarely remember.

And trying to work out what they actually want can take some time as, despite the Head having sent out instructions on how to contact us, they don't follow the procedure, so they get through to us when they actually need to speak to the bursar or the pupil counsellor. Or reset their password on the online platform.

I love my job most of the time, but it's back to work tomorrow and the beginning of the school year is always full of fraught phone calls.

You need to remember that people are not angry at you. They are angry at your company which has given them crap customer service.

And by the time they talk to you them are probably hugely frustrated at having to fight their way through an automated call system that appears to be specifcially set up to deny them service.

@Jumpingthruhoops but there's no need to take it out on the staff
I can't break policy and my manager won't either, and I'm not risking my job over it or being put on a PIP as I've not followed the process

Would say the majority of customer service staff are jaded which is why there's such a rapid turnover in a job where you could do with experienced staff
But companies don't want to pay more than minimum wage so yeah you're stuck with the jaded or inexperienced staff

Because, respectfully, it often doesn't seem like there are 'humans at the end'. Just automatons reading a script and wanging on about 'policy'.

Also, you say people aren't kept on hold on purpose. I beg to differ. I got told many years ago that the easiest way to get through to a customer service 'human' is to select the option to cancel (whatever service it is).

My call is almost always answered in a few minutes. Hmm, funny that 🤔

I will say OP, that your subsequent updates suggest you've become rather jaded by/intolerant of dealing with people's queries. Maybe customer service isn't for you?

Well, no... as I said in my post, there's never an excuse for abuse and death threats. Sorry that's been your experience.

I'm just offering the myriad reasons why normal people might still get pissed off from time to time.

I did 4 years in retail - including answering the phone to customers. I've covered some of the in person horrors on here a few times but phone calls in could be just as interesting! CS dept colleagues are heroes!

One man rang up and wanted me to talk him through how to find and buy something on the website. I didn't have it in front of me at the time. It went as well as you'd expect. People ringing up and wanting to know how to park in town etc. They were coming to our shop but the town hall outreach team would've been a better shout. Many epic phone tantrums as people would call in March to want a "navy coat" they'd seen in November. At the front of the shop. They'd get nasty when we'd ask if they knew which one or ask for more info as at least 8 winter collection items matched that vague description and we'd have had new season, 2 sales and countless floor moves and ad hoc stock rejigs by then.

One woman rang and yelled at me from the second I picked up. I forget the intricacies but she needed to talk to customer services for a refund- yet she was so wary of online scamming etc that she was suspicious of calling or giving info so had reached an impasse. I called them, arranged for them to talk to her. She rang back two weeks later- immediately screaming still no refund. Luckily I picked up and recognised her so calmed her down. I called CS- she'd been refusing to deal with them when they contacted her in case of fraud. I had to give her and them a load of info about my appearance/my outfit/ ny name & shop which she could "match" with them when they called her as security questions!

CS staff deal with so much.

I had a really satisfactory couple of complaints recently.

One on the phone
Them: put me through to Bob

Me: okay can I please ask who's calling?

Them: FFS, it's Ben from twatsrus. Put. Me. Through

Me: is Bob expecting your call?

Them: stop being a fucking robot. Why can't you speak like a real fucking person?

Me: okay I won't be speaking to you anymore. I am a person and I don't deserve to be spoken to like that while I'm just doing my job hang up

He called back a few moments later, apologised but tried to back pedal saying I was frustrating. Bob came to the phone after hearing everything, listened to the guy for a sec then said

"You verbally abused my staff to try and cold call sell me a printer? Id never buy anything from people who treat others the way you did. Delete our number"

Another time a guy sent me a string of weird emails after he'd purchased a service online, calling me a scammer, fraud, fucking bitch etc. all sent around midnight on a Friday. I emailed him back on the Monday explaining why he'd been charged (in the Ts&C's) and saying his service was cancelled due to his behaviour. He told me it was no big deal and everyone says stuff like that when they're pissed. Then he got aggressive because the service was important for his company but I refused to back down. I was very polite.
He then sent an edited screen shot to my boss demanding I get fired.
I had bccd boss into the last email.

Ohhhh yeah I have so many stories!

I used to work on checkouts for a big supermarket and when I told a custome the price of something he argued with me about it and then flung a cabbage at me - it very almost hit me and would’ve really hurt!

I worked in a bank branch and a customer who didn’t agree with something I’d said told me he’d wait outside for me and follow me home - for a while other members of staff used to take turns walking me part of the way home bless them! (He never did turn up or wait outside but he was scary)

I also used to work in complaints for quite a big organisation - when I told a customer we didn’t agree with her complaint and that we wouldn’t be giving her money back, she swore at me, told me I’d lead a sad and lonely life, that I was a horrible person and that she hoped I’d die.

People can be lovely sometimes!

I've done my time in call centres. Couldn't believe it when in my later roles, people were too scared to say anything to the particularly arseholish callers at non CS employers. I'd stand there, trying to get them to give me the call as they were in tears being shouted and sworn at, but they wouldn't 'because you shouldn't have to hear this'. Bollocks - there is literally nothing that could shock me or give me greater pleasure than saying 'well, yes, I would have been able to help you. However, as I have just sat in on your call and heard you tell x that you want her children to die because you have been incapable of hitting 'reply' on an email, what I am going to do is instruct the entire team that if you are anything other than utterly polite and reasonable towards them, they are to transfer the call to me instantly and then I will personally hang up on you. The complaints procedure is available on our website if you would like us to share details regarding your behaviour further. Now, would you like to start again with your problem or shall we go straight to my hanging up on you?'

It was an eventful shift that’s for sure I have a pretty thick skin so I just walked away!

But I’ve helped so many other people over the years and made some very special memories for people even when the 💩 was hitting the fan I try and remember all the good I’ve done!

Took redundancy during Mat leave though so no more general public for me for a bit 🤣

I do, but I rarely get shouting and screaming customers to be honest.

I can think of 2 in the last year that have really stood out.

im not in customer service but in a service industry and we get this. We have so much work much more than we can do and people still think you are desperate for the work and will do at any price. When people aren’t happy with a fee now and say they’ll take their business elsewhere if we don’t reduce we say ok then.

I worked on an emergency out of hours line a few years back.
Someone had missed the last coach of the night- he was around 20 minutes late. I apologised and told him there was nothing we could do as the coach left on time from the correct location.
he accused me of being racist… because he was brown- I had no way way of knowing what colour he was on the phone and took great glee in telling him I’m brown too!

@MonsteraMama "I think people are just cunts to be honest, and getting cuntier by the day. The company I worked for didn't use chatbots, had a 48 hour turnover for email queries and the average hold time was three minutes. Still got death threats and abuse every single day 🤷‍♀️

Do you think the man who hoped I was gang raped was understandably pissed off because he'd had to wait -gasp- three whole minutes?"

Also customers lie about the wait. I had one kick off that she had waited twenty minutes ... in our call centre we had a big screen which had all the call wait times and at that moment it was under 2mins (generally we were under 2.5-3mins).

So I did a faux nice - oh I'm so sorry, I'm looking at our live call wait screen which is saying 2 mins so I will get your details passed over to our IT team as they will need to investigate why customers are waiting 20 mins when our system is saying 2, we obviously have a problem

... she quite sheepishly admitted that 'maybe the wait hadn't been quite 20 minutes'

17 years ago I worked at a call centre. A colleague discovered that if you transfer customers to a certain number it takes them back to the end of the queue. If we had a very nasty customer we said something on the lines of “ I’m very sorry that the system has gone slow on me. Just putting you on hold” then transfer them to this number. As there was 4 other call centres with about 150 people on the phones, the was zero chance we got the same customer again

I used to do the same!
It throws them off when you are super, almost sickly sweet, nice.

What customers don't realise either is that if there's a problem and they're nice to me I am more likely to go above and beyond to find a solution. If they are horrible I will do the necessary work but I'm not going extra.

Those who are rude to customer service staff on the phone or face 2 face have never worked in CS.

Have asked customers if they have worked in retail or CS when they are rude to me - 100% guarantee they say no.

Would love to record customers being rude and forcing them to watch it back. If they don’t react with flinching, looking embarrassed or apologetic- they are nasty people

I worked in retail for years. Some customers are arseholes. Some because they know you can't fight back, some because they feel superior to you as you work in retail and they have a 'real' job, some as they are just plain nasty.

I do think some work themselves up into a frenzy thinking you won't give them a refund etc and get very aggressive.

I think some also believe the hype that a mate told them 'well I got this' and they think they should get 6 months free service if they threaten to cancel and are angry when you are like 'OK I'll process your cancellation'.

Also depends on your what excatly the service is for?
people are toxic and impatient when they do not get what they want.
Its disgusting behaviour.
Stay focused, keep yourself in control and let it go over your head.
Keep your tone stable and dont let them knock you back.
Easily said.

If your employer doesn't support you to immediately hang up in situations like this, and to put a mark/sanction against their account, then they are part of the problem. Nobody who screams abuse down the phone like that deserves to actually have their enquiry dealt with.

Interesting point made by somebody else about chatbots. I am always polite to humans but yesterday i was in a loop with a chatbot trying to get put through to a human and I was getting more and more wound up. I made a couple of snarky comments to the chatbot and then rapidly had to reverse my brain when a human had entered the chat and I hadn't realised! So I do suspect that dealing with a chatbot then a human predisposes people towards frustration and end-of-tetherness.