Customer Service

[susandennis]

My brother starts a new job today doing telephone support. I've always been fascinated by those people who answer phones and fix stuff. What is it like on the other side? What don't I know that I should?

The obvious part, since people rarely call a customer support line to offer up excellent news or thanksgiving - being the target of rage and frustration and rudeness, I can actually imagine.

It's the nuances I've always wondered about. How far off the script is allowed? I know this call is being recorded but is it being timed? Are you allowed/encouraged to spend more or less time with me? Do you get a bonus for every time you say my name?

How much of my activity at your company can you see online? Is there a personality profile of me? Can you spit in my online soup? Would you if you could?

I just had to call CitiBank. Their telephone tree is fairly painless and you get to a person quickly. But that person does not have a great telephone line and is not a native English speaker. So it's both hard to understand and hard to hear.

I needed a replacement for a lost debit card. The guy told me he would be freezing my accounts for the 5-7 business days it will take him to get me a new card. No No No and no. When he agreed he would not freeze my accounts and so I would not get a new card, I said fine, thanked him and hung up.

I called right back. The next person asked for a lot of personal ID info that the first guy did not, which was interesting. She said I'd get the new card in 5-7 business days. I asked about freezing my account and she said yes and I said no. She quickly countered with if she put a temporary hold on the card, it would not affect the account in any way and then, when I got the new one, I could just have the old one declared lost and the new one activated and all would be fine. See? How easy was that? Thank you Second Person.

I wonder if she saw my conversation with First Person.

I used to get massively stressed by having to call an support line. I still mostly opt to chat instead of call. But a few years ago I had a intervention with myself over the whole thing. I was making everyone miserable - the poor support people who answered my calls and me... arugh.

Now, I have a pre-call checklist. What if the call does not go as I wish? What will I accept as Plan B? The person on the other end has way more problems and issues to deal with than I do, but there is a job to do so my job is to help them help me. Ask my question and shut up. Answer their questions simply. If it's going way south, just politely thank them and hang up. Worst case "I'm sorry, I have to hang up. I'll call back another time." Then call back.

It has, for the most part, taken the pain out of the calls for me. But my online soup may be full of spit. I have no way of knowing.

Comments

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

Maybe I need a pre-call check list because I can’t handle calls that go wrong

[susandennis]

It helps. It really does. Just a quick thought about not so much what my expectations are but what might happen and how I will deal with it.

Also a reminder to speak as slow and simply as possible.

And understand that the person you are talking to probably has no idea how annoying the hold music is or how difficult the telephone tree was to climb. They don't know and they don't care and they can't do a thing about it.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

I listened to half a dozen calls in training and only understood the person's name on one. People take for granted that someone can understand them and is impatient. Typically it is exactly the opposite. The problem is almost always too fast talking, not too slow.

And I frequently talk over the other person. Difficult habit to break.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

I’ve been following his posts on his new job pretty closely, since one of the areas my job covers is a call center, so I think about these things a lot too. Most of the answers to your questions depend on the company, and their philosophy around customer service, and their desired outcomes for their brand. For example, calls are always timed (that’s basic data built into all the software platforms and reports) but the goals vary. For example, some places will give bonuses for call efficiency, but places like Zappos (and my workplace) don’t have limits. My agents take the time they need to take with each caller to help them figure out what they need. Zappos brags that their record customer service call is TEN hours! (That’s too long, if you ask me, but if some shoe buyer needed ten hours of attention, well, bless their hearts.)

For my agents, the answers would be as follows:

How much of my activity at your company can you see online? All of it, and every previous call in.

Is there a personality profile of me? An “activity profile” more than a “personality” one, but yes.

Can you spit in my online soup? Would you if you could? Hmm, maybe, but why would we want to? Notes about bad behavior are only there to assist both agents and callers. If someone took 30 minutes to yell at a person who was just trying to help them, we want the next agent to know, and to have their answers cued up before any callback. Or if someone routinely has trouble with emails, for example, we’ll make sure the resolutions don’t require the caller to rely on email.

It’s mostly benevolent, really. And you’re not eating anything served over the phone, so spit is harmless. ;)

[susandennis]

You are too nice. You would want to because I've just been an asshole for 30 minutes and you need payback for release. And not harmless. Maybe your set up does not have a way, but, for instance, someone could hose up my account in ways I could never prove but would really be annoying - slower shipments or fuck with the algorithm of my account so I never saw part of their inventory. There are a gazilion ways and reasons to spit in my online soup.

And while you, as manager, could easily understand 'why would we', an employee with issues and lacking a sufficient koolaide dosage, could enjoy making my service less than stellar.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

I alluded to this in my note but the upshot is everything is audited now days. So maybe no one is watching but if there is a problem it is easy to pull the thread and find the beginning. Nothing is ever hidden or thrown away in a database and the entire world is nothing but a database.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

That presumes some kind of sociopathy. Most people working want to do a good job. Few people show up to jobs everyday hoping to suck at them. What this means for customer service jobs is that most people in them just want to get through with as little trouble as possible, and then go home to the rest of their lives. Messing with people will only 1) make the people they deal with MORE difficult to deal with 2) risk getting in trouble or losing the job. Those just aren’t worth it, to mess with strangers, unless one is some kind of sociopath.

It’s the customers who bring a lot of shit, because they often use people in customer service jobs to take out the stresses of their life on, but in my ample experience, it doesn’t often go the other direction. The kind of people who spit in food don’t stay in customer service jobs past the low-level fast food ones.

But there likely is some fun and mocking and eye-rolling
happening behind your back, if you’ve reached the level of “standing out from the 50 other calls of the day.”

[colestainedpage.livejournal.com]

I used to work in a customer service call center for a cell phone provider. We did have a certain amount of time per day we needed to be on the phone, as well as a certain number of calls to take. The only thing we could see with regard to previous calls the customer made was a) that they called, and b) whatever notes the previous rep left. If you're constantly rude when you call in, it gets noted. Those notes were as close to a personality profile as we got. Our activity was constantly monitored so if we went into the account of a friend or family member, we'd get in trouble. If we purposely did something we shouldn't have on a customer's account, management would find out. If we could without getting away with it, we definitely would. But only for customers who are rude and constantly berate employees.

[susandennis]

If we could without getting away with it, we definitely would. But only for customers who are rude and constantly berate employees.

On some level I actually want the call answerers to have some retribution. I'd feel better knowing they had a way to retaliate when necessary :)

[zestfive.livejournal.com]

I once worked at an inbound call center for large health insurance company from 1997-2002 (I'm sure the technology has improved even more) you had a script for greetings and certain phrases you needed to say, certain ways you had to close (offer additional help, thanks for calling and etc). It was recorded and timed. We had call average times (3 minute 30 seconds, maybe?) There were also certain words that if you heard meant transfer to the escalation team. I also know that the level of service and willingness to help varied broadly. As a more seasoned employee if someone called that wasn't authorized I knew how to talk around without giving specific information about a policy so the caller got the information they needed. (If you send the premium payment that you say you will, it will cover the amount, send it to this address with the policy number on it and we offer an additional grace period of 30 days beyond the due date or you need to have the policy reinstated). I remember one telephone call where a woman called to report her husband's death and she started talking...and talking and I couldn't in my right mind cut her off so I listened. I knew that my call times were shot for that day but I also knew I was a good employee and she needed to talk. You could see the other calls but only if you looked into the call history. They weren't all documented the same (accurately or effectively - sometimes an attempt like yours might just look like an address change or payment verification). Different folks have inconsistent training or remember poorly, give wrong information and I also remember once I had been there longer, I knew how to access a dos system that had different information that the system most folks used. I also know how I was treated impacted my willingness to help as well as if I was having a bad day...so many variables when someone is doing customer service all day everyday. It make perfect sense that if you can't get what you want to try and call back.

[susandennis]

Fascinating... to me anyway. Thanks for the inside look.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

I've had nearly that exact same scenario. I've also had them cancel the card in mid explanation from me before I even knew they were doing it. At that point I became one of those customers you don't want to have on the phone.

[interes2012.livejournal.com]

life today is full of hypocrisy

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

I was a phone receptionist for three years and the most annoying thing about it was getting yelled at by customers because one of my co workers wasn't answering their phone. Like that was somehow my fault.

[ringsandcoffee.livejournal.com]

I work in insurance, in initial loss reporting. I have, on occasion, told customers that if the rep they spoke to couldn't answer the question, try calling again and you may get a more seasoned person. I have often been that seasoned person who could answer something. That only works in certain departments - some departments are not allowed to answer particular questions while others are. However, even with training, you learn more the longer you do the job, and after 6 months I knew far more than on day 1.

I do my best to keep people happy, and if they tell me I'm the 5th person they have talked to or have been transferred around, I then do my best to get them to the right person or team. I get grumpy people on occasion, sometimes grumpy at me, sometimes at the situation. I've had people do a 180 when they didn't like my answer. I have no control over most things, I just provide information, so I understand people get upset. However, we're human too, and so please be nice to us phone reps!

[howeird]

Did that job for half a dozen companies over maybe 20 years. I'm gonna just sit back and bask in the glory of Bill's and other people's answers.