The Customer

[funeral979]

Nicely said.

I've done every office job from reception to management. Dealt with all of it.

When I've had with a rude/impatient/pissed off person on the phone that I've contacted for nonbusiness reasons , I diffuse their attitude with one simple question:

Are you having a bad day?

It catches people off guard and always makes them change their attitude because I've called them on how they are coming across.

I have worked in management for close to 20 years now, and could never bring myself to ask a customer this.

On the other hand, I usually pose this question to the wife at least once a week.

Its never met with good results

[all4greed]

I have worked in management for close to 20 years now, and could never bring myself to ask a customer this.

On the other hand, I usually pose this question to the wife at least once a week.

Its never met with good results

Man, did I really not clarify myself on this or what? Oops.

I am the customer! So it's a rep/manager/whatever that I'm dealing with for my own personal issues/business that's taking his/her bad day out on me.

Hope that makes more sense!

[vinylweatherman]

"The customer is always right" was never meant to be taken LITERALLY. It was more a guideline to the attitude a business would have towards the customer.

The real problem is that industry always tries to shift the blame for something elsewhere, be this the customer or quite frequently "one of our contractors".

Customers know what they saw, but they may not understand it. Problems often arise when the business rep tells the customer that they could not POSSIBLY have seen what they did see, and that if they continue to say they DID see this, they are lying. Rather than getting to the bottom of what actually happened that manifested itself as the impossible in front of the customers' own eyes, the business just wants to bury the issue because it cannot have happened, and the customer just gets "stonewalled".

Take a specific example from the online casino industry. Many players KNOW that Neteller is INSTANT, so when they are told it takes 5 days for money ALREADY SENT to reflect in their Neteller account they know damn well they are being lied to, because the delay is REALLY down to the "middle man", the casino processor, and what has ACTUALLY happened is that the casino has released the withdrawal for payment, passing the money to the processor with instructions to pay it out to the player. This delay, along with the casinos insistence on NOT explaining what is happening, but shifting the blame to "Neteller systems", which a simple phonecall to Neteller will expose as completely bogus reasoning, causes a more aggressive attitude from the customer, which increases with the length of delay.

Sheer incompetence also creates friction between customer and business. This can happen when different people all give the customer different and conflicting stories. For example:-

Yes, we did receive your documents.
We don't have any documents on file, could you send some.
Yes, we got them, but they are unclear.
No, we can't help any more than to say they have not been verified, so please could you send them again.
We still have no record of you EVER having sent in any documentation.
We have lost your documents, could you please send them again.