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.
Agreed—customer service jobs are very tough.
My wife recently retired from one—and she is thrilled to be away from that.
very informative take. thanks.
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.