Adventures In Customer Service (or Trying Not To Be The Bad Call)

I’ve worked in customer service for many of my day jobs. Most of the time, I’ve been interacting with customers in person. But with my telesales job and my current box office job, I’m just doing customer service work on the phone (or in a chat feature like at my current job).

When I worked in telesales, I did discover that I was being much nicer to telemarketers on the phone. I didn’t hang up on them (unless they were robo calls) and if it was something that I know I wouldn’t be interested in, I would politely ask to be put on the do not call list.

But things have changed since I started my current box office job. I’ve had some really crazy customers since day one. I’ve never been threatened more at a job than with this one. Customers tell me that they are going to have me arrested to show up at a show and demand to see me so I can apologize for doing whatever they believed is wrong.

First of all, what saves me every day are my co-workers. While none of us work in the same city (I think only 1 other employee works in California), we are able to chat with each other through the chat feature while we work. We can ask if someone had previously spoke with a customer. Many times, customers will say that someone else told them that they could do something that is against the rules. I check with my co-workers to see who spoke to them and exactly what was said. That way, I can let the customer know that the information that they got from one of my co-workers is correct and I’m not able to bend the rules for them.

For some of the more detailed issues, we just direct them back to the location that they are attending. This is all done by email, so we have records of when we passed on a customer. Since a lot of the tough issues are not dealt with the box office, I’m grateful for that.

But ever since starting this job, I’ve noticed a change in how I deal with customer service people on the phone. I don’t believe that I have ever been mean to anyone, but I’m learning what preparation goes into making sure everything is done correctly.

For example, I ordered a DVD box set for my brother for his birthday. It was a pre-order so I knew it would take a bit of time to be shipped. I got an email 2 weeks ago saying that it would be shipped then, but there was no tracking number. I also had a charge and a refund on my credit card.

Before contacting customer service, I gathered all the information that I had gotten from the company. I knew when emails were sent to me, when the charge and refund was on my card, and when they claimed they would be shipping the DVDs. When I got a hold of customer service, I presented all my information and she was easily able to find out what happened and what went wrong (they are finally shipping the DVDs this month now).

I also recently called an Orangetheory location down in San Diego. I will be there for Thanksgiving and my dad, my brother, and my aunt all want to take a class with me on Thanksgiving. When I called the first time, the guy I spoke to seemed very confused by my request to schedule a class. He took down my information, but nothing seemed right.

After going to my Orangetheory and getting some more information about my membership from them, I called the San Diego location again to get everything straightened out.

The woman who I spoke to on the phone the second time kept saying how great it was that I was prepared to schedule everything and that I had all the information in front of me. It made her job simpler and allowed the problems to be corrected (it was mainly some typos and the previous employee using a different account to schedule my class).

Basically, from being yelled at on the phone every workday at least once, I’ve really learned that there is no reason to not do everything that I can do to make a customer service call as easy as possible. It’s not just about being nice (although that helps and I wish more customers were nice to me), it’s about knowing what had happened with your interactions with the company in the past and knowing what you need to have accomplished (as long as it is possible and not breaking any rules).

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