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.
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.
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.
My last bad experience was that NBC news lied to me.
Lol.
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.
Change the channel or shop elsewhere.
Problem solved.
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!