What is Rudeness?

[Brighid45]

That's a tough one. In my experience, it depends on why the customer is going on and on. Some people tend to naturally use a sort of broken record technique, where they will say the same thing a half dozen times. Others just talk to hear themselves talk. With the first customer, you can usually break in and not get them upset. With the second, it's a lot more tricky. Again, in my experience the second example tends to be self-absorbed, petty and much more apt to whine or demand ridiculously unacceptable terms.

If you use a polite, respectful tone, short, to the point sentences, and offer real help when you interrupt an endless rant--nope, not rude in my book. However, depending on how invested the customer is in his/her rant or monologue, it won't matter if you're polite--to them, you're rude just for speaking up and not letting them run on for half an hour.

If you do end up with an irate customer, make sure you document as much as possible. If your company does QAs/monitoring on phone calls, you might be able to pull the tape and prove that you were not rude. Make sure your manager knows what happened too, before s/he gets the story from either the customer or someone else.

[DesignFox]

If your manager is good, he/she will also base their decision of whether or not you were rude on experience with your past behavior. I had a lady try to snipe my head off and insist that I was rude merely because I told her she could only use 1 coupon on a transaction, not 2. After I told her "no" all of a sudden I was rude, and snippy and she "wanted to deal with someone else!" I even apologized if she perceived my explanation as sounding rude, and she stuck her hand in my face/continued to bite my head off! I told my manager what had happened (I was basically in tears over the situation as I had just started retail and well...my skin wasn't as thick as it is now) and she piped up: "I would NEVER believe you would be rude to someone! That lady is a jerk; don't listen to her." She based this opinion on her observations of my past behaviors. And it didn't hurt that one of our regular customers came into the back room and told me that I was the sweetest girl she had ever met, and that she would never believe I would be nasty to someone. (I wrote about that customer in the praising section ) My past manager was not a great manager in the least- but to her credit, that is ONE thing she always backed me on.

[protege]

Rude people suck. When I had the paper route, I had a few rude assholes to deal with. When they'd be rude, I'd simply remain calm and polite. The ruder they got, the nicer I got. Trust me, nothing torques them off more than seeing how you're not replying in kind

I did, and still do, take great pleasure in adding to some asshole's stress level. If they want to have a heart attack why their paper is late, well, I'm only too happy to oblige