The only thing worse than calling customer service is working in customer service. The bigger the company, the worse that job might be. Let’s start with those who work in call or contact centers. This is not where the company invests heavily. The idea is to spend enough on customer service to mollify you but not satisfy you.
Federal prisoners have more freedom than call center agents
They measure everything—I mean everything, including bathroom breaks and how long they last. It’s been 20 years, and I still remember my days on the front line. As a call center agent, my boss would show me weekly reports of how long my bathroom breaks lasted. I’d also be informed of the number of times I put a customer on hold and how long my calls were. Then I was instructed to listen to a recording of the worst call I had that week. Every CEO talks about the importance of taking care of the customer. Yet, time after time, they hire people they don’t trust and then put them in charge of making customers happy. One spring morning a decade ago, I had two teary-eyed employees in my office. One was an excellent frontline customer service rep, and the other was her manager. I couldn’t make out much of what she was saying but heard enough to understand a customer called her a F’ing B*$%! I did my best to console them and assured them I was on the case. Within minutes, I was listening to the recordings from the interactions—there was no polishing this turd. This was a bad call. She was a saint, but the customer was relentless. Let’s just say my already expansive profanity dictionary expanded by a few words. Apparently, there were six similar unreported calls from this customer that were just as inflammatory. I reached out to my bosses and requested a rubber stamp to end this customer relationship. They looked over the… For more order your signed copy