Remember that the next time you call in to Tech Support with the attitude that we're always wrong and nothing we say is the truth.
Case in point: Customer calls in and immediately demands that we send one of our services techs out to repair her services. This is something that we charge for if they demand it without going through our troubleshooting process first. So I begin by telling her that to do so will cost her X-amount of dollars. Before I can finish the statement and tell her that we charge that ONLY if she doesn't go through the process with me first, she immediately starts jumping on my case. Thus begins the steady stream of beligerent, degrading personal attacks to me and my company. But mostly to ME. I was a liar, I was a horrible customer service agent, I was misleading, I was everything but a white girl doing her job. She laughed at me, whistled like she was bored when I was trying to tell her important information about her technician dispatch, which troubleshooting led me to anyway... if she had just called me calmly, discussed her issue with me CALMLY, and accepted the tech gracefully things would have taken less time and came to the same end. But no... instead she spent a great deal of my time interrupting me, giving me misinformation (like her account information so I could pull her account up in the first place), refusing to answer simple questions, and treating me like I were as dumb as dirt. She said she wanted to speak to a manager and when I offered to transfer her to one, she didn't want to hold for one (despite the fact that calling back would leave her on hold not once but twice anyway) and when I explained the prior fact in parenthesis, she told me "I didn't ASK you." When I asked her if her internet was working okay, she told me no, it was running slow... so I asked her if she wanted me to take care of that issue as well. No, she didn't want ME doing anything else for her. I still handled the call with grace, with tact, with professionalism, and with a smile on my face. Then I broke down crying from frustration and sheer anger after the call ended.
I'm pretty tough but in, going on, 17 years of customer service experience I have never, and I mean NEVER, encountered a customer as psychotic and hateful as this woman. And I've handled a LOT of customers.
In other news... if you KNOW you can't handle or understand the internet and the equipment that comes with it?? DON'T ORDER INTERNET SERVICE!! And especially don't call in, let me go through an HOUR'S worth of troubleshooting and walking you through every single step of the process explaining every single step as simply as possible... and then TELL me you are thinking of cancelling because you "just don't know anything about all this stuff" and you "just don't understand why it has to be so complicated". And please, please, PLEASE don't call in to Tech Support and try to have me talk you through things ON... SPEAKERPHONE. This irritates me and makes it harder for me to hear you and understand you and for you to hear and understand me. And when ya TELL me so - my tongue hurts alot from biting it because I want to yell at you and tell you to take me off the damn speakerphone so we can get this finished and I can get you off the freakin' phone!!
What have we learned today, dear readers?
1) Don't call Tech Support on speakerphone
2) If you know you can't understand the internet - don't GET the internet
3) Don't be beligerent and mean to people who are just here to help you
Until next time, dear readers!!
Lis
Goes the other way too, 16 months on a Doctorial Thesis erased because the System Admin deleted every fourth directory in my department's hard drive ... I guess he got a "B" in a class.
ReplyDeleteIt is sad that today's society is so familiar with what technology can do, but not what has to happen before the technology can do the assigned task. The programing, the development, the research it takes for one piece to work. One thing that I noticed in my tenure working in customer service is that people are always in a hurry, and rushed that they tend to treat people horrible. They want their problem solved, and they want someone to do it for them. No attempt to try to solve the problem themselves. Most of the time, these people are doing something wrong, or installing something incorrectly and that is the reason for the tech-support call. It also doesn't help that companies take the "No Hostage" attitude when it comes to the customer or customer service. The customer is just a means to provide money to the company and if money would just miraculously appear, then they would do away with the customer completely. And also, these companies take the position that the customers owe them, even if they are current on their account.
ReplyDeleteI have also found that companies take the stand that they are always right, and therefore, it has to be the clerk or technician or the customer that is the problem. It is sad that in this day and age money is the top priority.
It is my wish that the lowest paid person could be paid the same amount as the CEO of the company, but alas that will never happen :(