customer service

its because we feel like the person is not helping us... granted they work for the company in question, they are the representative for the time being. that and proper mannors have gone out the window for those under the age of 90 now days

Well, as someone who has been on both side of the fence, I can understand why people get upset. I also know it isn't always the Customer Service Reps fault. I think customers need to always make that statement, "I know it isn't your fault" because it does make a difference to know the customer is not mad at you specifically. I recently placed an online order with Sears for a treadmill. They called me stating there was a problem with the phone number I had on the billing information for my credit card. I verified the number with the Customer Service Rep and she put me on hold to call the credit card company to confirm the number. I was disconnected. Not a big deal at that point so I called back and was transfered to the same Rep. She didn't apologize but I let it go. I told her I was logged into my credit card account online and the phone numbers were correct. She put me on hold again to call the credit card company but this time she transfered me to them and disconnected herself from the call. I explained the situation the the credit card company and they said there was nothing wrong with my phone numbers on the acount at all. They just wanted them to answer some basic questions to ensure the order was not fraudulent. I fixed the situation on my own and called Sears to let them know the issue was resolved. They again did not apologize for anything. Now, in this example there was no major harm done but, had I been a mean person, I would have been very upset by the lack of professionalism of the Rep.

In the years that I was in customer service, I went to numerous training seminars. One that sticks with me still was the "bicycle course". In this course, we were given some information I have found very useful to know. It is a fact that people can have a bad day and you never know what might have happened to them prior to their encounter with you. Even though their wide variety of examples were bizarre in some cases, it impressed upon us (csa, csr, csm) the importance of turning the conversation into a positive resolution. Ignore the anger & get to the root of the problem rather than responding defensively. When you get an angry caller, just remember they could have had the worlds worst day already and this was probably the last thing they wanted to deal with right now. The anger is not directed at you personally and may not even have anything to do with why they're calling, so don't take it personally. After the seminar was over, we tested our newly learned skills by standing up when we got an angry caller. The managers would time us til we sat down again after working out a positive outcome. It didn't take long before we were getting much better results.