But this goes both ways. I work as a customer service representative for a well-known telephone company. We are given unrealistic goals to meet with every customer with whom we speak. We have to get the account number, verify all of the information on the account, discern the customer's problem, try to solve the customer's problem (without breaking our company's rules to do so) and try to sell extra services to the customer . . . All within three minutes.
A good thirty seconds to a minute can sometimes be used up by a caller who isn't prepared. I hate it when I ask a customer for his/her account number and (s)he says, "I knew you were going to ask for that." I just want to say, "Why didn't you have it ready then?" Of course, this would get me into trouble.
At least once a week, I'll get a customer who actually gets irritated about having to put forth the effort of recalling his company's name, address, phone number and (on the accounts in which we have them) e-mail address. If you're reading this and have ever been this kind of customer, I just have to say one thing: I know that it is a horribly difficult thing for you to actually have to verbalize this information, but we will honestly lose our jobs if we don't make you do this little bit of extra work. We hope that it doesn't inconvenience you too much.
Usually, discerning the customer's problem isn't difficult. The caller is more than willing to gripe and complain about the slightest thing. The problem arises when they think that we should be able to bend the rules for them. Today, I had a customer who wanted to change a contact name on his account. The process for doing this is for him to fax a signed letter. Unfortunately, the customer was entirely too lazy to do this. It was actually effort. After the customer's fit of swearing at me (my parents were married when I was born, by the way), he demanded to speak to my supervisor. As she was unavailable, I transferred him to her supervisor, who told him the same thing that I did regarding policy. At the customer's insistance, the supervisor sent a request to the head of our department for a ruling. Of course, she always gives in, which makes us all look like jerks for trying to enforce a bunch of rules that have no meaning anymore.
And don't get me started on sales. I hate doing them. I didn't have to do them when I first started working for this company. But now we have to try to sell the callers something that they don't want. If we don't, we will lose our jobs. This is for those of you who say, "I just called in for you to answer a simple question . . . Don't try to sell me somthing." Guess what? Whether you realize it or not, you are calling in to have us attempt to sell something to you. In the meantime, we will try to solve your problem, too. If you don't like to have us make sales pitches to you, then be sure to do everything that you can possibly do through the automated system or web site. If you speak with a live person, then he is a salesman first and a customer service representative second.
November 26, 2003