Most customers are nice, polite people with decent levels of patience and understanding.
Those select remaining few however… You are the reason for my occasional loss of sympathy. You are the reason behind Zero Tolerance policies.
Understandably, as a customer you expect swift, high quality solutions to pretty much every aspect of your problem, and you expect them to be delivered in a polite, knowledgeable and professional manner. (So do I, but this is what Part II will address.)
But what you have to understand is this – it goes both ways. The way you talk and act sometimes is appalling. You are not always polite, 70% of the time you are not knowledgeable, and while you pull every string of patience within the other person, you yourself happen to have none. How would you react if I treated you the same way?
Exhibit A: You turn up an hour and a half late to an appointment, without any prior notice of your delay, and demand to be seen. Not only do you not care about our time and resources, but you are also unbothered about our other customers whose appointment times and schedules you are trying to mess up.
Exhibit B: You tell my receptionist that she should not talk on the phone in a language other than English because we are in an English-speaking country and it is not polite to the people waiting, while a minute later you answer your mobile – while sitting under the USE OF MOBILE PHONES IS PROHIBITED sign – in a language other than English. Flash news – our business is multicultural and so are our customers. The language spoken while answering customer queries does not concern you. If you have an issue with that, there are plenty of other places where you can receive the type of service we provide in English ONLY.
Exhibit C: You call on speaker-phone while walking down a busy street and accuse me of not speaking English when I tell you I can barely hear you.
Exhibit D: You are paying at the cashier in front of me, you ask that they double-bag your purchase, the employee asks whether you are sure as the item is quite light and your response is: “I don’t know what rules you have in your country but they don’t apply here. In this country you stick to our rules.” Huh?
Exhibit E: You make a scene every time you have to wait longer than 10 minutes, but also make a scene when you can’t be seen immediately when you come in unannounced. So you have an issue if an earlier emergency appointment has delayed our schedule, but don’t mind your emergency delaying the appintments of others?
Exhibit F: You call in clueless/with an attitude, you cannot or refuse to answer any of our questions aimed at identifying your problem, but accuse us of not knowing what we are doing.
Exhibit G: The shipment container carrying your work is being held by Customs at Heathrow Airport; you insist we get the job done regardless and immediately. In case you are not aware, we have zero influence over the imspections and processing times of a major international airport.
Exhibit H: You come in at 1:15pm for your 2pm appointment and sit down even when the sign on the door clearly states ‘Closed for lunch 1pm-2pm’. When we tell you it is our lunch break, you answer ‘I don’t mind’. Well WE mind, because now we cannot leave the premises to go grab a bite, we cannot run company errands that require us to leave the building, and we cannot all retire to the staff-room to enjoy a lunch break together because we cannot leave unauthorised persons unsupervised in an area which contains confidential information. So a member of staff has to sit outside and babysit you while waiting for someone to come swap them in order for all of us to get a chance to eat something. You are not concerned with any of this, you don’t mind, you are reading a magazine…
A career in Customer Service is a perfectly viable option that offers many wonderful opportunities, but no one tells you that having nerves of steel will sometimes be an essential requirement. Bob Hoskins had a great line in Maid in Manhattan: “Although we serve them, we are not their servants.” That is something I’ve told every person I have ever trained. The customer is always right is annimportant motto, but there’s always a limit to the amount of BS any one of us should have to put up with. Any manager who would allow a customer to be rude and abusive towards their staff, and/or other customers is not a good manager. Any company that allows such behaviour, and does not have policies and training programs in place to protect and prepare its employees, is not a good company.
Being polite costs £0.00, so be generous with it.
Career Clichés 