It sometimes frustrates me, and I’m sure it does you as well, when you call to get customer support and you hear that recording, “Your call is very important to us. Please hold for the next available agent.” And, then they make their customers hold for a length of time that would make most people wonder if their call really was important to them.
Or how about when you finally do get to the customer support rep and they don’t treat you like a person. They are impersonal and treat you like an account number. They answer the call with a stoic and less than enthusiastic tone of voice and follow with a series of impersonal questions about your account number, the last four digits of your social security and your mother’s maiden name, only then do they ask what they can help you with.
It frustrates me when the customer service people act with apathy. Don’t they care about us? After all, aren’t we the people that pay their salary? Don’t they know what their job is? Here is my thought. Even though they were hired to answer questions and solve problems, they actually have a number of very important responsibilities.
I spoke with Janet Poklemba, a customer experience manager for a home warranty company, at a recent conference. The company sells home warranty programs and when something breaks, customers call in to place a claim for service. Her customer service mantra for her employees is simple and effective, and is the perfect way to sum up this short article:
We are people helping people, not people processing claims.
Author: Guest Author
Published On: 2nd Mar 2016 - Last modified: 6th Feb 2019 Read more about - Archived Content
I provide customer service in a call centre environment, and can tell you from personal experience that sometimes it can’t be helped; if we’re not immediately able to resolve the caller’s query we will have to put them on hold. I have a few ideas on how to mitigate the frustration. They involve getting a detailed description of the caller’s issues to pass to someone else and keeping the caller informed as to what is going on. They’ll actually forgive us a lot if we explain what’s going on.