Working in Customer Service
Working in customer service sucks. I mean it really, really, really sucks. There is nothing worse. I have seen this show on the Discovery Channel called “Dirty Jobs” and watched the man “sexing” alligators and even that would probably be better most days than working in customer service. Trust me, I know, I have been doing it for a while now.
You sit in your cubicle. If it is like mine, it is in a windowless interior room. It’s like working in a cave. You are tied to the desk with the headset on your head. The headset, if it is like mine, presses against your ear and usually leaves it aching by the end of the day. Your calls are recorded. Then you have the joy of listening to that call in a small room with your supervisor at some point. They sometimes count how many times you say “um” and “uh.” Points are deducted. You have to reach a certain point level to get a good review.
The people you talk to are generally belligerent. As I have mentioned before, people do not call customer service lines to tell you what a wonderful job you are doing. No, they call when things have gone so horribly wrong that they are ready to kill someone. Throw in an automated phone system with a lot of menu selections and by the time they get to you if they could kill you with their mind, they probably would.
So, it was with mixed emotions that I listened to this recording that has been going around the internet of a guy trying to cancel his AOL account. You can find the link to listen to this yourself right here: http://insignificantthoughts.com/2006/06/13/cancelling-aol/. Now, AOL has become legendary for being a pain in the butt to cancel. My own father once made an attempt to do so and he still has AOL so that tells you something.
Now there has been some debate over whether or not the guy taking the call here decided to do all of that hassling on his own or was following AOL’s orders. My bet is that AOL does extensive training and has extensive bonuses and incentives for people who manage to retain customers. I am betting AOL does not care how you manage to retain customers. If you do so only by completely exhausting them and beating them into submission that really doesn’t matter. If you do it by offering them more and more and more it doesn’t matter. If you could send large men named Vito to their house to smack their kneecaps with ball peen hammers I bet they would do that too.
So, I am betting that everything the guy on the phone did was encouraged by AOL. AOL has allegedly said they fired the guy and the guy who made the call to cancel the service says he did some follow-up and found out the guy actually was fired. However, others have done follow-up calls to AOL and found they still have problems cancelling their service, so some things have not changed over there.
My personal philosophy is to answer the question of the person who is on the phone with me, answer nothing but the question they ask, and then get them the hell out of my ear as quickly as possible. One thing has definitely occurred during my time doing customer service and that is I have begun to loathe most people in general. It was something that started back when I was working in retail. People often tease me because, as a customer, I never ask for help when I am in a retail establishment. The one exception might be if I were having a heart attack. However, having worked in retail, I know that when you ask a stupid question the employees of the store spend a lot of time making fun of you after you leave. We sure did at the music stored I worked at, anyway.
I think everyone should take the time to work in retail or in customer service. I am exceptionally nice on the phone with customer service people. I can empathize. I understand how hard it is to deal with idiots on the phone.
When I worked in retail we were merciless in making fun of customers who asked stupid questions. The customers who were absolutely certain we had some mysterious “back room” where we kept extra CDs and cassettes. As if we were hoarding that monk chant CD for ourselves. As if putting out every one we had would be better for business than hiding cases of the stuff in the back.
We had special nicknames for the repeat customers who were a pain in the butt. There was one woman who always came on the senior citizen day even though she herself was not a senior citizen, but her husband was. Don’t ask me why she felt she was entitled to this. It never made any sense to us and no matter how fiercely we argued our case to her she would not budge. Our manager finally stepped in one time and insisted that if she brought her husband back to buy the stuff he would get the discount. Sure enough she brought him back later that day and he had the exhausted look of a man who has a shop-a-holic wife and this was not a new thing for him. Anyway, we hated this woman so much we would deliberately put loud, obnoxious music on the store sound system in the hopes of driving her away.
As far as it goes, that is how you survive working day-to-day with the public. When we hang up the phones we often spend time making fun of callers and utter horrific names for them just after they have hung up. Hell, I got fired from the worst place in the universe to work, Aon Consulting (really, the company sucks from top to bottom, hate them, loathe them, pelt their management with eggs), for uttering a bad word about a female caller. Customers only see their own problems and assume that you will drop everything to help only them and will not stop until you have helped their problem out. They don’t understand that we are required to do what we can and get back on the phones to help some other moron as quickly as possible.
So, while I certainly sympathize with the guy trying to cancel his subscription to AOL. Had I been the customer service guy at AOL, I would have just shut the service off and gotten off the call as quickly as possible. However, I can also sympathize with the customer service rep because I know what it is like to have all of your managers sitting over your shoulder listening to what you are saying and telling you what to do. It sucks.
So, try to be kind to the next customer service guy or gal you speak to. Unless it is a 911 operator, they are probably just doing the best they can. You are probably the 400th person to call up and complain that day. They probably have a headache. Their ear probably hurts.
Most importantly realize that, despite being on the very front lines for that company, they are the lowest paid and at the lowest possible rung of the ladder of that corporation. It really does suck.
