Anyone work in customer service?

[SparklyJadeFawn]

I work in a customer service and admin role.

A lot of the job Is answering customer calls.

Honestly the abuse I get.

They shout scream swear at me. One of them called me stupid before I'd even said anything!

If I tell them that what they're asking for simply can't be done in the timeframe they want, they demand to have it now. Then call me useless etc.

Why are people so aggressive?

Is anyone else here dealing with customers?

We always do Ellmau.

The customer chooses to forget what we told them.

Or the customer will flat out lie.

For example with that lady I said to her "the timeliness for callbacks is 2 - 3 working days".

And the customer said to me "well that's not what your colleague said to me this morning! She told me that I would be rang back in an hour!".

I was thinking that was very unlikely. I checked with my colleague. Colleage said she didn't say that to the customer.

I then checked the notes section on our system. My colleague had written a note on the earlier call saying "I advised customer that we will give her a call back in 2- 3 working days"

We leave written notes on calls as so many customer lie about everything. And they especially say that another colleague said something that was never said. So we check the notes for accuracy.

Another example.i had another customer call in yesterday asking to do something.

I said that we don't do that particular service in our company. It's not possible.

He instantly said "but your colleague told me last week that you could do it!!"

I said 'well why didn't my colleague do it for you then?"

Customer said "oh because I had to hang up I had a visitor".

I check with my colleague . He didn't say that

I’ve worked in lots of customer service roles. What has always baffled me is that when a customer is lovely and sweet to me I would bend over backwards to help them, but when they are rude I would do the bare minimum to cover my job description. I don’t get why people think being personal or aggressive gets better results, I’m obviously more likely to help someone that acknowledges they’re asking for something difficult!

I don't have empathy for the people that don't listen and ask me to say the same things five times.

I dont have empathy for people shouting and screaming at me, no.

My colleague was in tears all day today after a man threatened to kill her. One of my other colleagues has gone off on stress leave

I was also in tears yesterday after a man swore at me , after i had tried to help him as best I could.

I have wrote this thread after coming to my absolute last straw of being abused , threatened and insulted.

I agree with you that this job is not for me anymore.

I'm completelt burnt out. I dont want to do it anymore. I never want to speak to customers again. I'm applying for new non - customer facing roles.

I have zero fucks left to give.

They can shout at someone else.

I do this too ..

I had a lady swear at me - what she wanted me to do broke the law - she came back and apologised but I was on my lunch so missed her but the other member is f staff did as the law stated

I've worked in various calls centres and been called every swear word you can think of. Honestly sometimes it would be a relief for hen the name calling started so I could disconnect the call 😀 I remember one customer telling me I was probably really ugly and that's why I had to get a job in a call centre... Oh and really stupid too. Not sure how he wasn't smart enough to realise that would ensure I gave him as little help as I could get away with 🤣

Now I work in online customer service (primarily emails). In a way its better because you don't have to talk to horrible customers, but they are often ruder and nastier. Still it definitely isn't as upsetting and since I can prioritise who I help I tend to leave them for as long as possible. Petty but very satisfying!

Why wouldn't I take the piss out of them. In my workplace, we all do it.

It's generally seen as a coping mechanism to stay sane.

When we are on our breaks we vent to each other about our most frustrating customers.

And it's not anything to do with people not being able to navigate phone systems. They are well able to do it. They are just lazy and don't want to do it.

As in the specific example I gave where I told the customer that he just needs to press option one, and he said "can you not do it for me my wife does all this sort of stuff for me"

Been on both sides of this fence.. with the added bonus of of being a highly regulated industry.

As in there’s a joke in the US that something will take ‘an act of congress’ to do usually meaning it would be hugely difficult and very unlikely (replace congress with parliament and you get the meaning). In my case people would ask for things that would literally take an act of congress to allow (so a little more oomph than ‘computer says no’).

And I would get yelled at. So yes people suck.

On the other hand companies suck and some customer service people suck. Like the one who told me I shouldn’t have lost my wallet/had my wallet stolen. Well yes fucking Captain Obvious, that would be the ideal situation, but here I am in a different city with no way to pay my hotel , why can’t I pay you extra to overnight me a new card. I’m not going to lie I said those exact words to her and yes when I calmed down and called back I was able to arrange for a card to be overnighted to me … so yeah as much as customers suck… customer service sucks just as bad.

But kudos to Sandals customer service, It’s very much part of the pleasure of their vacations, Their customer service is amazing!

I have done, but no-one has ever behaved like that to me. Some people wanted to vent, and when they had done so then they usually simmered down. People do seem to be getting more angry and impatient however, and tbh in some instances I can't say I blame them. There is no excuse, ever, for taking out frustrations on customer service staff. However everthing is so much more difficult these days than it used to be and we are all busy so it is very frustrating when you have to wait half a day to get through to an actual person who can help you, and some staff don't seem to have a flare for good customer service.

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.

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.

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'.

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 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.

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

@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'

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!

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 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.

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 hate customers.

A lot of people do six months in customer service then get burnt our.

I never to want to work in customer service ever again

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?'

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 hate the customers who call in and you look at their call history and they've already called in four times this morning.

I would say "I can see you've already spoken to four of my colleagues this morning. What happened on the previous call".

Customer: "WELL IT WASNT RESOLVED TO MY SATISFACTION"