How many times have you heard those words in your lifetime? This call “may be” monitored and/or recorded for quality assurance. It’s the reassurance of knowing that whatever you discuss with your bank, phone carrier, cable company, insurance company, etc., is being listened to by some higher power or being recorded to make sure that you are being treated fairly, kindly and given the correct information. Well, I have news for you… 99.9% of the time, no one is listening. In fact, if you were to call back and ask someone to review the call, there is no where for them to review anything, aside from the notes that your customer service representative may or may not have entered into your account.
So what are we to do when we waste hours of our day, waiting for someone to help us and then get the wrong information? Call back? Go through that nightmare all over again? No thank you.
And don’t get me started on the automated system that you have to get through to get to an actual living, breathing person. You very clearly ask for customer service and it says something else like, “Did you say carrot cake?” After you shout the words as slowly as you possibly can and make sure to annunciate, you finally give up and then the computer says “we’re sorry we are unable to understand you, please hold while we connect you with a customer service representative. {head slap} It’s like their goal is to aggravate you from the start.
Today, I called my bank’s dispute department because I noticed that there was a duplicate charge on my account for over $500. Instead of disputing the duplicate charge, the customer service representative disputed the valid charge, resulting in a huge mess. When I tried to explain why I needed someone to look at it closer, I was yelled at and then told there was nothing they could do.
First of all, why am I speaking to someone who:
a) hasn’t been trained on their business but instead reads from a script over and over again, hoping that after the 3rd time they repeat themselves, that you will just be so annoyed, you’ll just pretend you understand and hang up.
b) really doesn’t like people in general, but instead, took this job because it’s all they could get at the time. They make your day so much worse than it already was, that you feel even more defeated and hang up.
c) decides that it’s never their department that needs to help you but instead, the department YOU JUST SPOKE WITH! Then once you share your dilemma again with that new person, they tell you that they aren’t the right department and send you back to the original department. This goes around and around until you get annoyed and hang up.
d) isn’t willing to even entertain your side of the story but instead, continuously tells you that you are incorrect and then proceeds to read from their script again until you get annoyed and hang up. See the pattern here?
e) will never transfer you to a real supervisor, but instead, will transfer your call to the representative in the cubicle next to them who has no more knowledge than the first person, aside from giving you a fancy title that they probably made up themselves. So you explain your story (again) in hopes that this person really is a supervisor, though you know the chances are slim to none, and that person reads from the same script over and over again until you get annoyed and hang up.
f) has no intention of making your experience pleasant, but instead, is waiting for any excuse to hang up on you. They are doing the work for you in this case. And in fact, this happened to me with Paypal today. The “customer service representative” told me to be quiet and when I asked her name, she HUNG UP ON ME. I’m not even kidding. Is this real life?
So, if these call centers mission is to get you annoyed and get you off of the phone without actually helping you and solving your problem, what exactly are these big companies paying them for? Wouldn’t it be in the company’s best interest to hire people who have a desire to help customers, train them PROPERLY (that’s the key word) and really make the customer’s experience so satisfying that they tell all of their friends to use that company too?
Believe it or not, I’m on a call RIGHT NOW with my bank. I’ve been on the phone for 2 hours (45 minutes of that waiting for someone to answer), been hung up on twice and have been through 5 different representatives, none of which think they are the ones who are supposed to help me, so they keep transferring me back and forth. I’m personally over it.
I don’t want to have to yell, cry or beg to get a situation fixed and I surely don’t think I should have to waste such a chunk of my day to do it. I want to be able to have a polite conversation where the person on the other line genuinely wants to help me and wants me to hang up from that call so happy that I’ll want to do business with them for the rest of my life. If you’re a large company and you aren’t offering this, I beg of you to rethink your customer service practices or hire someone that cares more about it, because eventually, we will all get fed up and find alternatives to your company.
How Do You Feel About Today’s Customer Service?
I can’t be alone here. Do you ever feel this way? Comment below and let me know!
By the way, shout out to supervisor Matthew at Paypal who found the issue and solved it in less than 5 minutes. Give that guy a raise!
I hate those sentences, they will say this will be recorded, but when ask if they can pull the history, they can’t. I wonder if they delete it afterwards, haha. Great post.
I can’t say the amount of frustration that I get whenever I get into this situation. We definitely need better customer service and better trained professionals in every field.
Ugh yes, I cannot stand bad customer service. I hate when I have to call, because normally I get someone who doesn’t even speak English. Normally if things go bad, I ask for a manager. I remain polite, but I only have so much patience. I had to chew out a Verizon person for charging us incorrectly when they kept insisting I was wrong even though I had it in writing that I was correct. It was a mess but I eventually got a manager who fixed it. I’m glad your issue was fixed too!
I hear your pain. I’ve had it happen to me. You took the words right out of my mouth. Many of these customer service call centres seem to forget that they are there to service customers. SERVICE! That means, they are there to help fix the problem. As somebody who’s worked in marketing, one of the key places people get their perceptions of a brand are when they deal with customer service people. Smart companies make sure that their people on the front lines dealing with existing customers keep to the brand values and solve the problem satisfactorily. After all, you don’t want to lose a loyal customer that it’s taken time and potentially some investment to get in the first place (think of all the marketing $ put out to attract customers). I walk away from those companies and services and I usually, through word-of-mouth, spread the message about poor service. It’s no wonder some companies end up failing. It sometimes starts with something as simple as bad service when you call for help.
OMG, I LOVE THIS POST! YES, I’ve been there and it is so aggravating. I used to work for a financial advisor and I did my best to be nice to clients, help them, and solve their problems. I don’t understand people taking a customer service job and not giving clients good customer service.
I used to work in customer service and I can tell you that it is hard this is to be in, But I was always concerned about the customer. Is wrong with those people did to you and I am hoping that it got resolved for you. It boils my blood when I see stuff like this.
Couldn’t agree with you more. Try helping out elder parents and it just compounds the misery.