Is this rude?

[Rapscallion]

But (1) I say that with a smile,

I think the situation is important to note for differences. Over a bar counter is one thing - they can see you and your body language. Ont he phone, in a situation such as Iradney has, is not as easy to deal with.

Rapscallion

[Kara]

I don't believe it's rude. Rude is interrupting me when I'm trying to talk. Especially when I'm trying to address your question/complaint/whatever (see my thread from yesterday about how cranky this makes me : http://www.customerssuck.com/board/s...ead.php?t=9912 ). You can ask someone to shut up without being rude. I usually say "I'd be happy to go over that with you, but I'll need to be able to speak so you can understand," or "I can understand why you're upset, but I do have to ask you to give me an opportunity to go over this with you."

I don't know about your employer, but we have to maintain "Call Control," meaning we don't let the customer run the conversation. If they get off topic or start rambling or what-have-you, we gently steer them back to the direction of the call. If you let the customer go, you'll never get rid of them (and yeah, sometimes this is unavoidable).

[chainedbarista]

after reading everyone's responses, i amend my thoughts to this:

it depends on the situation (face to face, over the phone), whether or not it's better to have one angry person vs. many angry people who were forced to wait, and tossing in a bit of your good, old fashioned personal judgment.

i don't think you were rude, iradney, (i get the feeling that the person you dealt with was one of those 'no matter what you do, you lose' types), so you deal with them in the best way you can as the situation allows.

that's why i enjoy this site; it's helped me so much with how to deal with situations that i never thought would come up (and have ).

[Freemage]

I think a lot of it depends on your situation at the time.

As noted, not interrupting could make the call last longer. In some circumstances (many call-centers, for instance), this is going to be a problem, because you need to clear the queue, and you've possibly got some sort of timer tracking how long your calls take. In this situation, absolutely, head 'em off at the pass.

When I'm on phones at the paper, OTOH, it's usually pretty quiet. So long as I don't have any other calls backed up, I'll let 'em rant it out--many times, they're just grateful to have an actual human being listen to them. If they're being angry but not directing it at me, I'll use active-listening cues to help them wear down ("I understand; I see where you're coming from, Sir; Of course; etc."). If they're being rude (but not rude enough to justify a hang-up), then I just sit in silence until they finally run out on their own power. I read webcomics til they're done.

[iradney]

Generally, if a customer only interrupts once or twice, I don't really mind. Hell, it's hard to get mad at a kid who is SOOOO excited that he's got a phone with internet access.
However, I spent 45 minutes on the phone with the customer yesterday, and I wish I was kidding when I say that he interrupted every single thing I said. If he hadn't interrupted me so much to waffle on and on, I would've had him for 15 minutes max.

Working in a call centre, we're encouraged to have lots of minutes and lots of calls. Contradictory? Yes. Allow me to elaborate. If it's a busy busy day, with loads of calls, then minutes don't count as much as volume of calls. If it's a slow day, drag out the call for minutes. Yesterday was a busy day. I could've helped at least 5 other people in the 30 minutes that he wasted. Eventually, I had to say something to get him resolved and off my line.