Irritating Customer Service Practices

[Somethingthecatdraggedin7]

Does anybody else find the various modern customer service scripts hugely annoying?
Why on earth are waiters and waitresses told to go and interrupt customers enjoying a good chat over their meal to ask if everything is OK? If it wasn’t OK we would be telling you so this seems entirely unnecessary and borderline rude butting into a conversation.
Then there is the perennial How are you today at the start of a phone call to a utility company or whatever.
You don’t give a toss how I am and we aren’t in a social situation so cut to the chase with How can I help you instead.
Also the use of first names as if we are friends is extremely presumptive. They then go on to repeat my name as some sort of bizarre punctuation throughout the conversation in a misguided attempt to make me feel this is all a personalised interaction and they really care.
Which idiots train staff to behave in this way??
I have reached the stereotypical grumpy old woman age and this twattery really gets on my tits.

With experience, yes you can pick up on the often glaringly obvious societal clues as to how the other person wishes to be treated. Obviously there has to be a starting point, but when someone is clearly not making eye contact, answering in one word answers, looking flustered, etc., it's blatantly obvious they don't want to talk about the sodding weather! Likewise on the phone, same with one word answers, "sharp" answers, etc., it's clear they're unhappy so just cut to the chase, solve their issue rather than pretending to be called Sue (when you're clearly in Bangalore) and talking about the weather in Manchester.

But a lot of the time you don’t have a choice
it can be that you are scored on asking the customer something about themselves, asking how their day is going etc
We don’t want to ask it, we don’t want to be yelled at for asking it but if it’s part of the call process you either ask it or have to answer to a manager why you didn’t and then risk a PIP
There isn’t a great solution to that

‘Do you prefer to be called miss/Mrs.....?’

Well, yes, actually I do. I am of an era when calling people by their first name was a sign you knew ( and probably) liked them, not some random in a call centre hundreds of miles away. I understand however that younger people are presumably insulted or intimidated by being addressed by their title and surname, so I just grit my teeth and bear it.

In France , they address you as Madame / Monsieur which is both polite and easy ( though the actual process of dealing with any service problems is actually rather worse…)

Personally I don't find the name thing weird at all. I hate being called Miss, Mrs or Ms and my first name is my name! I'm not ashamed of it or think it's disrespectful for anyone to call me by it! I also have had many lovely conversations with customer service people starting with "how are you today?" And as for restaurants, I think it's great that people check in mid way through. It shows that they are attentive. I guess everyone is different!

There is a great solution to that. It starts with the managers who design these pointless and facile interactions. They should do more market research and alpha and beta testing on small samples then larger ones to check that what they've designed is actually how customers want to interact. The companies that do this are the ones who are well ahead both with customer and staff satisfaction because they're not putting the staff in an impossible position (and I've been there as a customer service assistant for years before I landed my current role in marketing) and not annoying customers.

The managers are the ones who need to stop defending this shite with "someone wanted us to say "how is yourself" that one time so now we always do it" and go with what normal people want to hear from another normal person. That's what good customer service looks like, it's the same compassion and care you'd show a good friend with a problem, and I think the people designing all these scripts just lose sight of that.

I hate the ‘calls are taking today longer due to call volumes’ that’s always on. No one is fooled.

And I'm not saying ditch the scripts completely, but they should be carefully curated, used only for staff training so it's not repetitive, then they should be able to use their own brain and deviate as long as goals are met. Most customer service assistants I've worked with are intelligent and thoughtful and could do a lot more to leave customers with a good impression than they're allowed by some companies.

Customers get annoyed at everything though depending on the customer
A lot hate that I have to ask for email address. Or confirm their details
But the management won’t/can’t change the scripts as it comes from way above them so we are stuck with asking the questions
its not a long thing but it’s the equivalent of the script that you get read out to you when you’re setting up a direct debit etc. I have to read it and it’s quicker if customers just let me

No one is saying it isn't. I know that some customers are just off on one but others get mildly irritated by silly facets of "customer service" that is not serving them, the customers. Did you miss that I worked in Customer Service for 5+ years before I moved up? And that I'm saying in my previous post that it's the managers that need to fix this situation and they have the power to do so?

I mean, that's the exact reason we give our CSRs scripts - because we were having trouble with them not knowing what to say next, or saying something that didn't make sense/was wrong/was inappropriate.

YMMV

To be clear, it is the people who decide staff have to behave in this inane manner and train them to do so who annoy me, not the poor soul who has to carry it out

Problem is when they’re too high up to care. My manager takes the brunt of our complaints and passes it on but it’s like 3 managers above him that set the scripts and they aren’t bothered and just say well you have to tell the customers XYZ
Always been the same anywhere I’ve worked (19 years call centre work)
Our customers don’t like us ringing them at 8am either but again, management want us ringing them at 8am so very annoying!

But with things like a shop asking for an email address, the staff should just smile and accept it when a customer politely says no. Trouble is a lot of the time, the staff do the "huffing, puffing and eye-rolling" when you politely decline to give an email address or to take out their extended warranty or up sell a bag of sweets or whatever nonsense. They're presumably not instructed to eye-roll, huff and puff are they?? Why do they act like you're expecting them to sacrifice their new born child? How hard is it just to accept a polite refusal with good grace??

Same when trying to return something to Argos or Currys - exactly the same Spanish inquisition, and the shop assistant acting as if the refund is coming out of their pay packet, like some kind of personal insult or slap across the face, when all you want to do is simply return something. It makes no sense how some of them act.

I have to say none of this bothers me, life's too short to go around getting annoyed at every interaction with strangers. I'd rather be called by my first name then the rigmarole of "is it Miss or Mrs" "Ms" "oh". I like it that waiting staff check if everything's OK and that shop assistants actually notice you when you walk into a shop. I know they are scripted and they aren't really interested but I still value human interactions in my daily life.

And I have never come across eye-rolling and huffing when I decline to give my email, but imagine they have targets and it must be dispiriting knowing you are going to fail because too many customers hate it.

I hear you, and I should have clarified that I didn't mean supervisors/team leaders/first level managers, I meant the higher up managers who sit in separate offices making silly decisions without the data to back it up and not having to deal with the everyday fallout.

Same when we last bought a new car from a dealership. Right at the start of the formalities, the salesman apologised up front and said he had a load of questions to ask which he was forced to do due to regulations regarding insurance, warranties, extras, etc. and that it wasn't a hard sell and that he didn't mind whether we took any of it or not, and just asked us to bear with him as he went through it all. Took ages, but it made for a much more pleasant experience with him being upfront about it, and we did actually "buy" an extra because of the way he handled it, whereas if he'd done the usual "hard sell" without a human touch, we'd have retreated into ourselves and just done the usual "no, no , no" to each question like when you get bombarded in a shop re warranties and upselling etc.

Despite scripts, rules and regulations, people can still give the human touch and make it all a much more pleasant experience for both sides.

Our family business used to have a call centre that was not in Bangalore, it was in Leicester. To the people who staffed it, being repeatedly told throughout the day that they were lying and were in India, felt like being on the receiving end of repeated acts of racism. There are many call centres in this country situated in areas with diverse populations. You cannot tell where someone is from their accent.

I used to do this, a lot of customers don't look properly or what they are looking for isn't in an obvious place so if they tell me they couldn't find something I can hopefully go grab it easily as I know we have it or tell them a of place that does.
Managers don't like that last bit but to me it's still customer service!

They DO have the data though, don't they. They have customer satisfaction surveys, if they are monitoring calls, they should be recording and analysing outcomes, etc.

Take HMRC, some banks and utility firms, etc., often appearing in the top 10 of most hated organisations in terms of customer satisfaction, yet they don't actually do anything to change things for the better.

So you really can't say they don't have the data. It's more that they can't be arsed to change things.

Trouble is, if they've not bought anything, they won't be queuing at your till for you to ask them. Far better just being visible and approachable throughout the customers' time in the shop so that they can ask at their convenience.

I'm a server. It's called a check back. Because unfortunately a lot of people will wait till the end of their meal with an empty plate to whinge and think they're entitled to a discount. If I ask you if everything is okay and you say yes then you complain when you've finished eating I'll refer back to the check back 😊

No I'm not saying they don't have any data in front of them at all ever forever, I am saying they clearly aren't making connections between satisfaction and ways of doing things, asking the right questions about that and using the data they have to make decisions on what market research to conduct before making changes. If you read my earlier post you'll see I was specifically referring to market research, alpha and beta testing on small sample sizes before rolling out ways of doing things across the whole of customer service.

There's definitely an element of CBA from some upper echelons in some companies, I agree, but mostly I think the issue is people being over promoted without really knowing what they're doing.

Yes I strongly agree with you - however I do understand the checking that the food is ok so you don’t have to then wave them over or catch their attention if there is a problem.

However, what really pisses me off is when they come over when you’ve practically finished your meal “oh is everything ok with your food?”.

To which I feel like replying “Well it’s a bit late to ask now as we’ve clearly almost finished” - but I don’t do that - I nod politely (usually with a massive mouthful of food as of course they time their question perfectly to coincide with me putting a forkful into my mouth).

I’m not irritated by this at all, it doesn’t take much to say “yes it’s fine thanks” or whatever and yes, if anything is amiss it’s nice to have you right there to ask rather than wait until you become free 😊 the rest of OP’s post I totally agree with!