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.

Can I take your mobile number please
No sorry I don't have a mobile phone.
Gasp - what, you don't have a mobile phone.
No - then they look at me as though I have 2 heads. I have no use of a mobile phone so why should I pay for one.
On line I have been stopped from filling in a form even though I have a landline so now I just put a rubbish one in but give my landline. I was almost refused a local coach trip without a phone as there would be a problem if the driver could not get in touch with me - is he going to ring 53 of us to tell us he is going to be 10 minutes late, anyway my friend has one so not a problem.

I’ve noticed worse customer service. Went out for a meal and nobody checked on us. This meant we didn’t order more drinks or dessert or anything else we would have done if someone had bothered to check on us!

Wait staff need to come and check as I’m not going to chase them round the restaurant because I’m missing something or the food is not right. Then you need to queue up or find your actual server.
I will just leave as that is the quickest way to get someone’s attention

I dislike it when they ask me my first name at the beginning of a convo. It’s weird and intrusive and unnecessary. If you ring a small business they don’t do this. It’s not how people interact.

Also the BS recording about how they are experiencing an unusually high call volume. No you’re not. You play this message at the beginning of every call.

Ditto with desperately trying to redirect you to an internet support page. Feck off, I rang to speak to someone.

I always assumed that they’re covering their back – they asked, you said it was fine, they did their bit.

What annoys me is being pounced on by an overly-enthusiastic assistant the millisecond I set foot inside a shop.

Yes of course I'm thinking of buying a bed, I'm in a bloody bed shop aren't I?

But there's People who've commented that they hate that happening, they don't want it to happen. Why is your way better than theirs or vice versa?
And they're as convinced they're right as you are that you're right. You want it done your way, they want it done theirs, you might be sitting on tables next to each other in the same establishment - one table is going to end up pissed off aren't they?
So what's an establishment to do ? How do they keep everyone happy?

Well clearly they can't win just on that basis but it does, as many have said, head off the "complaint after eating the whole dish" scenario so I guess that's why most of them do it. I'm one of the ones who likes it and finds it hard to understand why such an innocuous thing would bother anyone but obviously from this thread it does.

I know people are being made redundant from restaurants and my point is the wait staff aren’t getting the extra sales. If they don’t check on you then the customer won’t order more drinks or sides, dessert etc. so restaurants close and no jobs or places to visit.

if you don’t want to be bothered then order take out or cook at home. It’s fairly normal and expected for staff in a sales role to come and offer help which you can politely decline or accept. It’s like a 10 second interaction.

OP needs to get over themselves.

In your haste to patronise me you've missed (but also kind of illustrated!) my point.

I'm posing the question as the establishment, the staff, I work in hospitality so I'm well aware of the challenges faced right now and genuinely interested on how people think this issue can be navigated.

If you're a customer and OP is a customer, you've got completely opposing expectations and a further expectation as a customer those expectations should be met, regardless of any other customers expectations, or the needs of the business etc.
As somewhere you want to go, you think I should listen to you, as somewhere they want to go, OP thinks I should listen to them. As customers you're both equal as far as the business is concerned - so what does a business do?

You listen to one lot of customers and the others declare you're giving them poor service.

My point is that you can't, and never will keep everyone happy, you go with the majority, but some people take it so personally that you don't change everything on their say so.

I'd say customer expectations that they 'pay the wages' and therefore should call the shots - and the over emotional, exaggerated and over reactive responses and subsequent 'honest reviews' (that damage businesses) are one of the biggest challenges hospitality faces.

when I worked in shops I always asked this when I saw customers browsing and at the tills. If they weren’t able to find it and we had it I could help them and if we didn’t and it was a pattern, we could look to start stocking it. I’d say a third of the time I was able to help a customer with something they couldn’t find but we had.

I have a bee in my bonnet at the minute about restaurants. They swarm you whilst eating checking everything is ok but the very second you need the bill it’s like they vanish into thin air. I don’t want half an hour to sit with an empty drink after my food I want to leave and I constantly get held hostage, or sat with the bill waiting for the card reader. Why?!