How to handle bad customer service ... without holding a grudge

NBC ^ | Dana McMahan

[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.

[plain talk]

very informative take. thanks.

[Tired of Taxes]

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”.

Maybe the automated phone systems are making the customers angry. They have to fight with an automated system that sometimes throws them into a loop and disconnects. By the time a customer reaches a phone rep, he is ticked off. lol

Times have changed, haven't they?

Before automated phone systems existed, I worked in sales departments. All business was handled on the phone. We made outbound calls, and we made sure to answer every inbound call as quickly as possible.

We had to handle complaints, too. I always stayed professional, and usually I was able to calm down the irate customers. And customers sometimes threatened us back then, too.

One time, I had to warn a manager, "This guy is mad, and he said he's coming here right now." The manager and I joked about ways to handle the situation, but the guy never showed up.

A few other times, irate customers did show up. At one place, a man showed up and stormed through the office yelling and looking for someone. I talked with him and found out an employee had ripped him off - as in, the employee committed fraud and stole a lot of money from him.

So, with that history in mind, now, when I call customer service, I expect phone reps to be able to handle a complaint. I never threaten or yell. But, if a company is giving me the runaround, I use a stern tone of voice: "Your company has been telling me the check is in the mail for three weeks now. Where is it?" Most phone reps today can't even handle that tone. They become defensive. They hang up. We would have been fired if we did those things.

The industry has gone downhill. It's not what it used to be.

[Notthereyet]

“Indian people are so funny when they swear.”
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I tend to watch the ‘scammer’ clips when I need to remind myself why I detest dealing with someone I cannot see face-to-face.

It may be from watching and listening (Call Center Rep), that I’ve noticed their pitch rises a tad when they are outright lying. I think perhaps a lot of elderly cannot hear that change in pitch...

[minnesota_bound]

I worked at Earthlink (ISP) starting in 1998 and I had a co-worker who when someone with a apple computer called he would transfer back into the queue as he hated dealing with users and mac pc’s...

At my last job doing internal tech support we had some bad tech support people who would scold people. One lady would say “I told you what to do!”
Another similar to the earlier one hated anyone from Hawaii saying they were dumb... He treated people with contempt thinking he was so smart and he also did not think much of his co-workers. He got himself fired one day when he unknown to him was talking to the entire California division head who oversaw many offices and after telling the guy what to do and when that person did not quite understand he ‘sighed’ loudly. After the call he was called into the office minutes later and was told the manager had called and that he was fired 😁

I applied for social security and there was a delay. The guy I talked to approved it in less then 10 minutes after asking several questions.
Now that is great customer service!