Posted on 02/22/2025 11:31:02 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Can you remember the last customer service experience that left you fuming? Not too hard, right? We all want to be treated with a level of respect, and with so many people veering on the edge of a boiling rage these days sometimes all it takes is one nasty exchange with a company's representative to send you teetering over the edge.
It happened to me recently when I made a call about an item I'd returned to a company for an exchange that had seemed to vanish. The agent on the phone interrupted me repeatedly and was actively unhelpful. Even though I knew better than to let it get to me, it did and I simmered all day — until I fired off an email to the company's founder. He actually replied, and the next day someone called to apologize, make things right and even tell me how they'd be coaching the employee to improve her customer service. I ended up being a bigger fan of the company than ever.
But it doesn't always end so well...Friends and family echo these sentiments with their own customer service gone wrong stories and their anger is palpable as they recount their experiences.
Why We Can't Shake a Bad Experience
I talked with Uma Karmarkar, an assistant professor at UC San Diego who holds doctorates in both consumer behavior and neuroscience..."We have this perception, especially in U.S., that the customer is always right, and that by giving them your business they have this responsibility to you.” Assuming you're talking with someone from that company because something has gone wrong, “to be insulted on top of that by not being listened to … is going to create this frustrated response, but also loss of agency,” she says. And that's what really critical.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Well, hell, now I'm pissed after writing that.
It’s 2025! Who in the world wouldn’t already have the lowest expectations for customer service? I do and I’m rarely disappointed. /s
I spent 30 years working in the Customer Service business. I started on the front lines and phones. I ended up running call centers in multiple locations for a large bank.
I gave lectures on it. I lived and died on it for a long, long time.
By the time I left, I hated customers. I knew it was time to leave when the slightest issues became grist for threatened violence. I knew that my end was near when you could not do enough for a customer to recover from an error made on our end. They wanted their “pound of flesh.”
Our business had gone from 100% face to face; then voice to voice. As soon as we automated and introduced web based services all of the “nice” people stopped interacting with us. What was left were the customers who were “special”.
I hold people in the service industry with high esteem. I now lack the patience to deal with customers who think that a traditional service relationship should be a social service agency; making up for their lack of understanding of how the world works.
We value your business enough to have a single Bangladeshi handling all phone calls because we aren’t going to splurge on an Indian.
That’s why I only bank with USA Prime Credit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8L2cI8brzQ
Peggy is awesome!!! Best Customer Service anywhere!
One of my primary forms of entertainment these days is watching the videos of people getting revenge on the Scammers, based in Indian.
Indian people are so funny when they swear.
But I WANT to hold a grudge.
I usually give them two chances, and if they don’t satisfy me, I look for some other company to do business with.
I miss Phil Hartman.
A clear indication that a company doesn't care about you OR their customer service employees. Soothing music would help disarm the injured customer before they get to a real person. A driving techno beat ensures that the encounter will be high energy on the customer side.
So either the head of customer service at the Fortune 500 company is a total idiot (well within the realm of possibility), or they enjoy having their employees abused.
I would support a federal law to require the CEO of every company with more than 500 employees to call their customer service line personally once a week, and stay on the line until they get a real person. Penalty for not doing so would be a week in county jail.
As a teenager I worked in a large grocery store. Every type of person would come through the aisles and check stands. When I advanced to “checker” I realized that some customers were absolute idiots. However, you try and be ‘nice’ to everyone; hard to do with ‘pure’ idiots.
For quite a while I’ve suspected that companies purposely make their hold music as obnoxious as possible, in hopes that customers will hang up.
My last bad experience was that NBC news lied to me.
Lol.
Agreed—customer service jobs are very tough.
My wife recently retired from one—and she is thrilled to be away from that.
I did customer service in one form or another for 20 + years.
I walked away from it one day, just went in and quit.
Customers were bad enough but company policies sucked and yet we had to implement the policy, often to irate customers. As soon as our conversation would end , the company would send an e-mail asking how did things go ?
😡Grrr says the customer , Joe was ok but your company sucks, so Joe takes the hit.
I lost count of how many birthdays, holidays, etc that I “ruined” as per the customer’s outlook.
Our hands were tied. Rather than allow us to replace an item, the call would be bounced to a supervisor , the item is replaced anyways , yet Joe still gets dinged for denying the customer a replacement .
I had worked for a company where we could replace items, expedite it, free shipping , partial refunds, gift certificates, most of these were available to front line reps , some stuff you’d have to get okayed , but to go from that to penny pinching , along with wokeness training, I was glad to leave.
A clear indication that a company doesn’t care about you OR their customer service employees. Soothing music would help disarm the injured customer before they get to a real person. A driving techno beat ensures that the encounter will be high energy on the customer side.
—-
I am not a fan of the “soothing” music or techno, but there is a resolution.
Let the customer pick
Press 1 for country
Press 2 for pop
Press 3 for rock…
God Bless her. Unless you have a small’ish, professional clientele, dealing with the general public can be a nightmare.
Change the channel or shop elsewhere.
Problem solved.
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