Tag: customer service life

Guaranteed to Raise Your Blood Pressure—Just Add Customer Service

My cardiologist told me that I need to lower my blood pressure.
 I would love to do that—sadly, there’s no magic button or app on my phone that can make it happen.

I work in customer service, and let me tell you: working in customer service is practically a guarantee that your blood pressure will be high. It might as well come with a sticker that says “100% Guaranteed.”

Customer-facing jobs have never been easy or appreciated much. You need a strong personality to last in them. Apparently, I have one—I’ve been in this industry for over thirty years.

This week, our phones were out for a day due to a VOIP outage. Honestly, it was kind of great for a few hours… until they started working again. Then the ringing didn’t stop.

Technically, not a problem. But the first call I was lucky enough to answer?

No greeting. No polite chit chat. I was immediately yelled at.

I asked the customer to explain the issue, and she just kept yelling. I asked again, politely, but she continued, yelling about a conversation she’d had with someone else in the office—five days ago.

I tried to stop her to ask her name (which she never gave me, too busy yelling), and I explained I couldn’t continue a conversation I wasn’t part of. That only made her yell louder.

I wear hearing aids, so yelling on the phone goes straight to my ears—and it hurts. I asked her kindly to stop yelling. She didn’t. She just hung up.

I’ve been yelled at by customers before—this wasn’t new to me or my blood pressure. But I’m always perplexed when people think yelling or being rude will help them get better service.

In my experience, kindness goes a long way.

To my cardiologist’s chagrin—and my blood pressure’s detriment—I’m still here at my job. And I can’t wait for the next person to raise it.

#CustomerServiceLife #YouCantMakeThisUp #behindtheadmindesk #customerservicestories

My Emogi Stone

In July 1799 Napoleon’s army found the Rosetta stone and ever since then hieroglyphs have been interpreted and understood. This was a great moment in history for the human kind and as someone could finally interpret the hieroglyphs in Egypt.

And then in the 2000 we had another monumental discovery, emojis. Ever since then humanity went back and humans started conversing again in pictures, apparently the cave man had it right. I recently received a text from a prospective client of mine on my work phone in response to something I texted them. Instead of a real conversation I received a text back with 5 faces with tears, 10 praying hands and 3 hearts. Mind you, this prospective client is an adult and this was a business text. We have never met each other. As I am  an adult who only uses emojis in texts with immediate family and friends, I was a little dumbfounded as I had no clue on how I am supposed to respond to this. 

What happened to business writing or texting? A couple of years ago I took a great class through Coursera on Business writing, professional texting etiquette was not part of the course. Neither was interpreting emojis part of the course. I am aware I am a little older and don’t use emojis that often and I do use real words and sentences so I am not always sure what the interpretations for emojis are. I am debating creating an  “ Emogi Stone” to help people interpret what other people are texting us or to make sure we are not texting something weird to others.

However, in my own personal humble opinion, there is no room for emojis in business emails and texts unless you work for a software company that creates emojis as part of their business. It seems like we regressed back a couple of hundred of years. So in your personal life go ahead, and if you really feel inclined to send me a business text, please   📧 🔠🙏

The true judgment of character is how we treat other human beings.

I partially work in a front facing customer support job. Every once in a while we have that one customer that we all scratch our heads and do not believe they are real. We are a multicultural workplace, we are all multilingual and most of us speak more than 3 languages, so we are all fluent in ,most of the bad worse used.

We had a customer who we  could not assist with their request. We explained why and even spoke to the customer’s husband on the phone explaining everything. The husband was polite and understood where we were coming from. The wife was a different case, in the presence of her son she started cursing the office in her native language, which most of us understand and described us as having the oldest profession on earth. The words she used were very crude and yes, she thought we did not understand her  and we continued to smile politely while enduring all the insults. 

What did this customer get out of this, absolutely nothing. Besides venting her frustration in a very extremely poor manner, he taught her child that it is ok to abuse and mistreat customer service people, definitely taught him a word or two that he did not need to learn at his age. Did she achieve anything, nothing at all. We all remember her now and like any business we have the right to refuse service.

The big picture is why do people treat customer service in this way? When has rude and crude behavior become the acceptable norm.We have noticed more mistreatment especially after the pandemic. People have become more impatient, rude and expect everyone to answer them asap if  you can not.  I was always taught that if you treat people nicely you will be treated nicely back, the old saying – you get more flies with honey, still stands true in my opinion. And just because you treat a server, cashier or anyone else in a rude manner does not make you better than them. There is no justification for rude behavior and being an asshole

The true judgment of character is how we treat other human beings.