• Æsc@lemmy.sdf.org
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    9 months ago

    Usually when a customer talks to a customer service agent, that’s the only customer service agent they’re going to interact with that week. So they treat the customer service agent as though the converse is true, that they are the only customer the customer service agent will interact with that week, forgetting that they are actually the 10,000th.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      And that’s why mandatory customer service or retail job should be required for every 18 year old for like 6 months.

      It really doesn’t take long working as a waiter, cashier, phone operator to learn respect for the role.

      • Æsc@lemmy.sdf.org
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        9 months ago

        I don’t know whether that would help as much as you think it will. I just got out of the military, and there are definitely certain people who started out taking a lot of shit from people just like you did at that rank, but their motivation to rank up was because they couldn’t wait to become the people giving people shit.

        • RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com
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          9 months ago

          I’ve been working in customer support for three years and I absolutely despise people in that job that don’t try their best to help. This is their job, and if it’s so bad they can’t be assed to do it right they should work at another place. Sure, many customers are clueless assholes. But if I come up to them with all the respect and try to lay down my issue I don’t want to get treated like shit, no matter how hard their day was.

          If anything, my experience in this job made me less tolerant towards incompetent or disrespectful people.

        • corsicanguppy
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          9 months ago

          We’d put them into cust-supp after they’ve done their mandatory gap-year service. Waiting tables or trying to hear bubba over the dimestore drive-thru[sic] gear and his argl-bargle diesel F350 garage queen will DEFINITELY work the stick out from where it got lodged.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        9 months ago

        I never worked in one of these positions, but I respect the hell out of people who do. I did do a house cleaning job for a bit that was pretty bad and maybe that’s where it’s from, but I think I’ve always had that. I just respect people who do things for others, no matter what it is. I don’t think it needs to be required, but maybe have a system to report people and enough reports forces you to do “community service” in one of these positions.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      I used to try to be empathetic, but then I realized I’m just taking up even more of their time. The best strategy imo is to just get to the point as quickly as possible so both you and the rep can get on with things.

      However, if the call is going to be long regardless, I do banter a bit.

      The closest I had to that job was as an IT help desk person at a university working with faculty. I only had to actually interact with 3-4 people in a given day, so I don’t know if it really counts.