Be Nice and Get Better Customer Service
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I take support phone calls all day. Most of the customers I deal with are nice, but some call and have a bad attitude from the beginning of the call. They are usually angry because they feel my company has wronged them somehow. Naturally, they take it out on me. I understand being angry to a point, but when calling to have a problem solved, anger only gets in the way. If a person calls and continues to yell because they’re pissed off or having a bad day, it only creates a situation where the person helping isn’t going to want to help you for very long. Instead of helping, the goal turns into getting them off the phone. Personally, I’m not going to tolerate being yelled at if I can help it.
I recently helped a woman who was running Windows Vista. The software I support isn’t fully supported under Windows Vista. You can get it to work though. This woman greeted me using my name and though she had been bounced around a lot and was experiencing a difficult time, she stayed cheery and was pleasing to talk to. I spent hours helping her. Contrast that with the guy that called and started swearing at me from the beginning because he had to wait on hold for 15 minutes (it was actually only 5). He was also running Vista, and I chose to leave him with his problem. I could’ve helped him, but I really didn’t want to. I told him to buy Windows XP.
Being nice will help you get what you want. You want the person at the bank to help you get a better rate? Be nice. Want the guy at McDonald’s to not spit in your food? Be nice. Even if the person you are dealing with is being mean, be nice. Being nice motivates people more than being angry.
2 Comments
Jeff
May 23rd, 2008
at 11:20am
Thank you for posting this! I have experience working in a call center for both Virgin Mobile and TiVo and it was a pain to deal with angry customers who called in. You’re absolutely right, when you call in and start off angry and mean with a rep on the other end they just don’t want to help you and they make it their goal to get rid of you ASAP.
Whenever I got a nice person who was friendly and cordial to call in I was actually saddened whenever the issue was finally solved and I had to let them go. Letting that nice customer go usually meant that I was going to have to deal with 10 angry customers afterwards.
I understand that people expect good customer service but it needs to be understood that customer service reps become jaded after dealing with the same rude people over and over and, in turn, become rude back to them. I honestly didn’t feel like being nice after having to deal with dozens up dozens of rude customers on a daily basis.
I think this little facet of custom service needs to be understood. Thanks again for posting this.
Sergei
May 23rd, 2008
at 2:29pm
This is a good point. I am always nice to customer service and other kinds of support. I may get angry at only certain points. When I know that the company has done wrong, and when customer support doesn’t tell the truth. It is alright to get angry, but you have to know when to do it. As you said doing it at the start, never get angry at the start, you will not get help. You should only start pressuring customer service at the end. This way they know that you are aware what is going on and they want to help out. Try not to be mean, but if it is necessary, do it.