Tweet
I've worked in customer service for a very long time, 18 years in fact. By now, one would think I would have been a supervisor or manager. Yet, I have not been wanting it due to having to be a wimp or pushover when it comes to nasty, ugly, rude, and arrogant customers like we have in Florida.
I worked for Publix in the late 1980's and early 1990's and thought things weren't so bad then. You dealt with customers face to face, and many did not do the things they would do on the phone. Occasionally you still would have the troublemaking customer, like the woman who refused to put out her cigarette while shopping. I had to ask her to leave (while being a front end in-charge one night), but was later berated for it. My boss told me I should have just let her keep on smoking her cigarette, despite it being a law that smoking was not allowed anywhere in the grocery store!
When I started working for Bellsouth, I finally found out how brave customers are on the phone that they are to your face. Over the years, I became an occasional relieving supervisor in customer service, and that's where I really saw this. Much of the time, I would hold my ground if requests were ridiculous, like the guy that wanted a $50 credit on his phone bill because he was out for one day and lost some business. Turned out he was a residential customer who was not paying for business rates and therefore did not have a business listing. Also, his phone service was only $30 per month, which comes to $1 per day. When I gave him a credit for the one day of outage at $1, he got upset and went through the entire line of managers, all the way to the corporate level. In the end, he got it, and the rest of us were all spoken to for not giving in to this guy from the beginning.
Bellsouth also used to have a goodwill credit of $25 for a missed appointment in all nine states. This was stopped in Florida shortly after the 21st century rolled in due to the high abuse by customers on it. You had customers who were requesting it for things like "I don't like how that rep treated me earlier", or "I got a crank call and want that $25 credit for it." Even if you explained to the customer what that was really for, the customers usually got it in the end. I gave it when it was necessary, but always did what I could not to give it to people like this.
I look at myself as a person who does the right thing, so therefore, I know if I were a supervisor in any business, I would have to wimp out and give in to customers I would prefer did their crummy business elsewhere.
I worked for Publix in the late 1980's and early 1990's and thought things weren't so bad then. You dealt with customers face to face, and many did not do the things they would do on the phone. Occasionally you still would have the troublemaking customer, like the woman who refused to put out her cigarette while shopping. I had to ask her to leave (while being a front end in-charge one night), but was later berated for it. My boss told me I should have just let her keep on smoking her cigarette, despite it being a law that smoking was not allowed anywhere in the grocery store!
When I started working for Bellsouth, I finally found out how brave customers are on the phone that they are to your face. Over the years, I became an occasional relieving supervisor in customer service, and that's where I really saw this. Much of the time, I would hold my ground if requests were ridiculous, like the guy that wanted a $50 credit on his phone bill because he was out for one day and lost some business. Turned out he was a residential customer who was not paying for business rates and therefore did not have a business listing. Also, his phone service was only $30 per month, which comes to $1 per day. When I gave him a credit for the one day of outage at $1, he got upset and went through the entire line of managers, all the way to the corporate level. In the end, he got it, and the rest of us were all spoken to for not giving in to this guy from the beginning.
Bellsouth also used to have a goodwill credit of $25 for a missed appointment in all nine states. This was stopped in Florida shortly after the 21st century rolled in due to the high abuse by customers on it. You had customers who were requesting it for things like "I don't like how that rep treated me earlier", or "I got a crank call and want that $25 credit for it." Even if you explained to the customer what that was really for, the customers usually got it in the end. I gave it when it was necessary, but always did what I could not to give it to people like this.
I look at myself as a person who does the right thing, so therefore, I know if I were a supervisor in any business, I would have to wimp out and give in to customers I would prefer did their crummy business elsewhere.