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?

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

There is nothing positive to gain from being like this.

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%.

You have missed it, bit I've already said thar the customer WAS told that she would be called back in 2-3 days.

If the customers issue is not resolved on the first call, We always tell the customer that they will be called back in 2-3 days.

No customer likes being told that they will be called back in 2-3 days.

They want everything done NOW.

So they will often call back one hour later again in the same day shouting "I haven't received a callback yet"

And I will explain again to them

"but you only called in this morning we just logged your issue this morning, it will take the I.T. team 2-3 days to look at your issue , as we have hundreds of calls coming in every single day.

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.

But they need to realise that hundreds to thousands of people call companies every single day.
It's not humanly possible to call everyone back on the same day.

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

Another one I get a lot is people who seem to think their elderly parents are completely helpless.

I'll often get people calling in saying 'I'm calling in on behalf of my mother she wouldn't be able to do this type of thing. She can barely talk, type, she can barely hold a phone etc etc".

The person will describe their mother as barely able to talk, sit up and say one word

And I say: I have to talk to your mother for security reasons as it is her account

Caller will moan and complain but then eventually put their mother on he phone.

Mother comes on the phone, and she will be able to answer the questions perfectly fine.

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.

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 don't know.

I think people should have a bit more patience.

For example I help people to reset their passwords.

I advise them could they please wait for ten minutes before they use the new password.

The IT guys have advised us of this to make sure the password is refreshed reset and will work.

The amount of people I've had who complain about this ten minute wait.

I've had a woman say "you're telling me I have to wait ten minutes!!! For god sake I've better things to do"

These companies have a duty to you as their employee. If they are giving you verbal abuse, can recorded calls be given to the police? Such as the threats Etc.

If it were up to me and I was in power, anybody who does such a hideous thing, the voice call would be sent to their friends and families.

To be honest it sounds as though there aren't enough staff. Someone with a problem doesn't care how many hundreds of other queries there are, they just want someone to look at their issue and having to wait 2-3 days for a response really isn't good enough.

There arent enough staff because the staff leave bevause they are getting abused.

And Why isn't it good enough?

People need to be realistic.

If I call anywhere about an issue they also usually tell me that they will get back to me in a couple of days.

I don't demand to have it NOW

This also reminds me of when I used to work for a different company. I used to do customer service for a utility company.

People would call in with problems. Think gas/water/ electricity , one of them.

I was trained to aks specific questions and if the customer met the criteria, which they often would, we would send an engineer out to fix their problem.

The timeline I told them was "an engineer will be out to look at the issue for you within 24 hours".

I thought 24 hours was a really good timeline. And they engineers always did go out within 24 hours.

When I would tell the customer that someone would go out within 24 hours, the amount of abuse I got for that timeline.

They would say "24 hours! You expect me to wait 24 hours! That's fucking ridiculous!! Etc etc.

I was thinking that it was a great service. That we sent an engineer to their door within 24 hours. They still complained and shouted about it

Ironically Amazon has really good customer service the few times I’ve had to use it over 1000’s of orders.

But people go on comparison websites to buy the cheapest. And then wonder why the company go with doesn't have enough staff. Lack of joined-up thinking.

I don;t live in the UK, but I can't think of anywhere I have phoned with a query (or even emailed) where I have been told it will take 2-3 days for them to respond. Usually I am quite surprised with how quickly they do get back to me. I'm not blaming you, but the company doesn't sound great.

We don't all do that. If you are running a business you should have enough staff to cope with queries without making people wait - no matter how cheap your goods.

I would consider a business which couldn't answer my query for 2 -3 days to have poor customer service, and they wouldn't be getting my my future custom.

In one call centre I worked at, customers’ accounts came up automatically as either rang from a number on their account or had to key account number on phone keypad.

One customer’s details came up and a pop up came up (never did with other customers) informing that if customer rings tell them you need to transfer the call to a certain extension. I asked a manager what was this about. He said that this customer had been sending death threats to this CSA.

I hated working at this call centre as we had to
disclose first name and surname when introducing ourselves. If the company didn’t make us say our surnames to customers then this CSA wouldn’t get death threats. The colleague from what I remember had a double barrel surname.

Not customer service as sorts but work in DH company dealing with the public. It's been an eye opener as to how awful some people are. I've been called a c@@t by a woman because I couldn't giver her an exact time for an appointment (despite the fact I was doing her a favour squeezing her in to try and help her), one guy had a meltdown on the phone because one of our staff stroked his dog to calm it as it was barking at him when he went in the house and threatened to call the police because of that! When I said I was ending the call due to his behaviour he proceeded to repeatedly call us to try to continue being abusive this went on for an hour of us cutting him off and him calling again. I was verbally abused by a woman who rather then check what certification she needed (she didn't need any) had gone and ordered it online from a third party, paid a small fortune, realised it wasn't relevant and thought I was appalling as I said our company wouldn't refund her as had she called and asked us in the first place we would have advised her accordingly. The stress if dealing with these types is ridiculous

I don't anymore but I used to. It made me realise how many dickheads live among us tbh.

A lady who sat next to me wasn't English however her spoken English was perfect as was her ability to understand spoken English in regional accents. She basically had a slightly noticeable accent that didn't hinder her ability to do her job at all. The shit she used to get about it on a daily basis was actually unreal.

My DD also worked in retail while at uni,.she worked in a clothes shop she actually had a coat hanger thrown at her head when an item the customer wanted wasn't in stock in her size, I told her to quit as manager didn't care at all that was unacceptable. DN also worked in retail clothes shop while working through college she had clothes thrown at her because there was a technical hitch with the till and she had to wait for a manager to come and clear the fault.

I totally disagree.

You said 2 -3 days is too long to answer a query. Again you're not being realistic.

Querys are different.

If a customer comes into a shop and wants a refund, she will get it on that same day.

Customers ring in to my company with complicated technical issues. It takes our IT team about 2-3 days to sort their issues. As they have to look at various servers.

It was the same when something was wrong with my sky box in my house. I rang sky and they told me that they would send someone out in 2 days time.

It is TOTALLY unrealistic to expect everything to be done NOW

I don't see how 2- 3 days is a long time.

Customers just get demanding and impatient. And they also have ego complexes demanding that they should be waited on NOW.

For example I rang booking.com yesterday. They asked for my reference number. They told me they would look into my issue and they would email be back within the next three working days.

I didnt lose my shit and demand that it be done now