Rudeness gets you no where

[dizzy_starshine]

Yesturday in the pharmacy i answered the phone and a lady starting yelling that her prescription hadn't been delieved and how dare we and blah blah blah. The following conversation happened

ME: Ok when did you request the script from the doctors?
HER: Last week! probably tuesday of LAST week
ME: ok and did you mark it with (pharmacy name)?
HER: Why the hell should I do that?
ME: Because ___ doctor surgery deal with many pharmacys in the area if they don't know the script is to come to us they won't send it.
HER: No I didn't do that
ME: ok what you need to do is contact ___ on this number. She works with the scripts and will be able to mark it to come to us and we can deliever it to you tomorrow
HER: YOU ARE NO HELP AT ALL, you are useless!! -hangs up-

I put the phone down looking rather bemused and my manager asked what happened. I explained the call and she said what a rude lady. About 5 minutes later my manager picks up the phone and its her again. I carried on with dispensing until the conversation caught my attention with this

MANAGER: Well the problem is ma'am slamming the phone down on my collegue who was helping you most professionally means I am in no way willing to send her out to your house to deliever the item. She in fact lives in the same street as you and would have had no problem in taking it to you on her way home.
-silence for a few mintues -
The problem is ma'am your behaviour on the phone and slamming the phone down on someone helping you means I do no feel confident in risking my collegues safety to send her to your home.

I felt quite touched by this. A mananger putting the staff before a customer in a rage. The ladie's medicine wasn't life threating and she did phone to apologise after about an hour, but it just goes to show how being irate and angry gets you nowhere.

[Arachne]

Agreed. SCs get terrible service from me. The moment someone starts behaving like an SC, I just shut down completely. I can't be bothered to do more than the bare minimum for someone who treats me rudely. Why should I care what kind of service someone nasty gets?

My nice customers, however? There's nothing I won't do for them. I have actually laid awake at night and worried that I hadn't given these angels of retail good enough service. I have taken large chunks of my spare time while at home to research things for them. (Not that they've asked me to do such a thing, but I wanted to be helpful.) It's more than just wanting to encourage them to come back; I like these people, and I want them to go away happy.

The moral of the story here is that even if being rude and nasty sometimes bullies weak-willed people into giving you free stuff, being nice will get you better service every time.