MacBros' Place |

If you call into a customer service line for whatever reason and for whatever service, do you think by starting off with an attitude and bitching at the first human voice you hear is going to help your case at all? ANSWER: NO!

Put yourself in the shoes of that person on the other end of that line who sits there all day taking call after call and listening to everybody’s problem and having to endure one asshole after another. After one quarter of the day that customer service rep is already starting to get irritable.

Unfortunately, for those who call in with real issues and aren’t the ones tying up the line with useless comments, complaints, and are just either to damn stupid or impatient to solve their own problems, these people with real issues sometimes get the shitty end of the stick when it comes time for their turn to speak with somebody to get support for their issue, because the agent is in a shitty mood and is very irritable so ANY question just pisses them off.

People are so impatient these days that a simple automated system that only understands basic language and one word answers, they simply refuse to use them and think (for some strange reason) that by simply bashing numbers or belting out gibberish and cursing at the machine, that it will get them to a real live support agent. NO! This – does – not – work! Period!

Believe it or not. That automated machine you always get is so you, the customer, can be more self sufficient. Manage your issues on your own and not tie up the lines for those who really need a human to intervene and help resolve their issues. If people would just LISTEN to the questions the automated voice asks and answer in simple one-word-answers, or press the appropriate button/numbers, they would waste less time fighting with it than trying to get a real person on the line. Plus! Believe it or not, after you’ve bashed your way through the automated menu, that agent is actually going to waste more of your time asking you the same questions and will eventually have to transfer you to the right department that you’re trying to get to, ONLY to have that next agent re-ask all the exact same questions over again. By the time you’re inpatients gets the best of you, you’ll be in a pissy mood and have an attitude that will trigger the agent to match YOUR attitude and the resolution will never get accomplished.

So here are a few tips for you to follow before you call in to ANY customer care center.

1. Expect to spend at LEAST 10 or more minutes on the phone. Don’t call on your coffee break, or on your way out the door to go to work.
2. If there is an automated menu, be patient and LISTEN to the questions. Answer the questions with basic answers. Don’t try and have a conversation with it. It’s not your friend. It’s a machine. It only understands basic one or two word answers and phrases. Follow the menu options and chances are you’ll be happy that you resolved your issue on your own without having to talk to a real person because the automated machine whipped your ass and made you look like an idiot because you couldn’t follow basic directions.
3. Put the crying baby down and take care of the baby till it has stopped crying. I’m sure what ever the problem is, it can wait till you take care of you kid first. Nothing is more important than taking care of your kid first.
4. Check the attitude. Calm down. Take a deep breath, because whatever the problem is, it will be easily resolved in a calm and professional manner. Screaming, yelling, and swearing is just going to waste both your time and the agents time. Problems are solved in a linear manner. One Step At A Time. Plus, swearing is considered a verbal assault and will result in the agent disconnecting your call, and sometimes having your account flagged and eventually being closed.
5. Lies. Don’t work. Just don’t do it. The questions we ask are to help resolve issues, so lies will just make matters worse. Plus, there is usually enough information collected on you from you calling in all the time to figure you out, and in the case of mobile phones for example, we can tell where you were when you placed or received a call. So saying you weren’t out of town when you really were, will just throw a wrench into your case. So just be honest.
6. Don’t automatically think we’re going to try and screw you over. There is no personal gain by lying to you. There are procedures and policies we need to follow, and besides, we just want to get you’re problem solved and get your ass off the line and don’t want you ever to call back. So YES we do want to fix your problem, because we DON’T want to be talking to you again. Nothing personal, just that we don’t know you enough to carry on a conversation ever again.
7. The phrase, “The customer is always right.” is bullshit. They’re NOT always right when they can be wrong. Whoever thinks that that bullshit line is what all companies go by is an idiot. If a customer is wrong, they are wrong. There’s no other way around it. Yes an agent can sometime be wrong too, but that is usually because they were given the wrong info, or the customer is being an asshole that they just want to get them off the line. So that’s where rule numbers 4, 5, and 6 come in to play. If you’re calm, the agent will be too. If both people are communicating and are both happy together, chances are that if that agent isn’t sure about something, they will take the time to get the answer, rather than bullshit you just to get your nasty and rude ass off the line.
8. Remember that is a person you are talking to. You’re not the only person they have spoken to.  Both of your attitudes will be reflected onto each other. Being a call center agent is not usually the most glamorous job to have, and sometime it can be the most stressful things a person can endure. Most people do this job because it’s all that is available, not for the career. It’s definitely not a dream job.
9. And just one more small thing. Don’t go on and on and on and on about your personal problems. Just get to the point, and keep your questions and answers brief. The shorter the call the better for both you and the agent. Better for you because you’ll be on your way faster, and for the agent because their handle time is kept low on their stats.

Although some call center companies standards of hiring aren’t the highest and unfortunately will have a few bad apples that are there for the extra bucks and really don’t give a shit about the job if they lose it or not, but there are more that actually do need the job and take it seriously. If you think you got one of them bad apples, just hang up. Don’t even bother arguing with them. All that will do is get you in a mood and then you’ll never get any help.

OH, and asking for a supervisor simply because you don’t like the answer you got from the customer service agent really isn’t going to change things for you. Like I mentioned before. We really don’t have anything to gain by lying to you. The supervisors will just tell you the same thing anyway. Now if the agent is an asshole to you, then you might want to speak to their supervisor then, or you can just save yourself the hassle and hang up. Most of the time supervisors don’t really do anything anyway unless its really serious and requires a pull of the recording.

Hopefully this little rant will help make your time on that dreaded customer service line a little better. And there will be a lot more happy service reps out there because you followed some of these simple suggestions. It’s all about communication and patience.