"Customer Service" Pet Peeves

by XJW4EVR 46 Replies latest jw friends

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  XJW4EVR

  Ask a question and they say, "I don't know," or if you ask them to lower the price because this is the last one and it is damaged and they just stare. The answer of, "I can't do that"....kills me. They can do a lot they don't know. Talk to a manager. Or most places in the mall or most anywhere give a 15 percent discount authorization to most all employees. If your business is customer oriented, most all can be done.

  Speaking of discounts, I used to work in a mall in a city with the highest population of Armenians outside of Armenia. At least once a day, I would get someone that was fresh off the boat, and ask for the manager in order to bargain on the price. My feeling is that if you want to haggle price, go shop at a flea market. However, in the case of floor models, I would always give a discount, and make sure that the customer understood that it was sold "as is." Even after doing this, they would still want to comeback and try to get a refund or exchange.

  One other pet peeve I have is being told, "Please hold," and then placed on hold. Nothing irritates more than that. Please ask permission to place me on hold, and when you do, please don't tell me, "I'll be back in a second."
• 

  Jourles

  The only way to get someone at Home Depot to help you is by tackling them as they walk by you for the millionth time.

  Obviously this must be an isolated incident/store. With the two HD's we have in town, the folks working there are tripping over themselves and bugging us if we need help in finding something. I generally know what I need when I go to HD, so I never have to ask anyone for help. It kinda bugs me that each time a rep walks by they say, "Are you finding everything you need?" Of course, there will probably be that one occasion where I need help and no one will be around.
• 

  daystar

  One other pet peeve I have is being told, "Please hold," and then placed on hold. Nothing irritates more than that. Please ask permission to place me on hold, and when you do, please don't tell me, "I'll be back in a second."

  Oh yes. Absolutely! Most CS reps never get any good training on how to, you know, actually serve customers. A lot of it is corporate culture though. If you're an individual paying $60/month for something, you are not very important at all in the scheme of things. And in a large corporation, they really don't care very much about you at all. So why would they pay for CS training for people who get paid very little to begin with and won't likely still be there in 6-12 months anyway? And then, the company expects certain numbers from the group as well. They very often care less about actual customer service than they do about the number of calls a rep "handles".

  I fought this for most of a year in the first call center job I had supporting end user PC owners for a major, major OEM. I had pretty bad stats because I refused to screw the client over. And my job was at risk more than once because I didn't rip off the customers by charging them for crap they didn't need or for fixing things that were not their faults.

  It's all about the money. See how they treat you when you represent a $2,000,000 corporate account. I bend over backwards for my high dollar clients, and am all too often told to bend even further.
• 

  Mysterious

  Dear Fast Food Customers:

  When we ask you if you want fries with that you tell us if you wanted them you would have asked. If we don't ask you get mad when you don't get them even if you didn't tell us. If we ask you if you want to supersize it and you say no at least we're sure where you stand. If we don't ask you then come back for a refund or tell us after we've already tendered the sale and then we have to do it all over. When you say you want a "number 5" you are saying you want the meal. If you do NOT want the meal then ask for the burger by name or say you just want the burger. ><

  Dear 411 Customers:

  "HUH" is not an appropriate response to not understanding. Pardon, would you repeat that please, or sorry I didn't catch that would all suffice. Yelling at the recording does not get you a real person any faster, it just ensures a real person gets to listen to you scream in their ear before they get to talk to you. Furthermore when it says what city and state do not tell us you are looking for burger king. When we tell you there is no listing do not say "look again" unless you have more information. We have already done the search doing it over will just waste more of your time and ours. ><

  Dear Grocery Store Customers:

  If you know you only have fifty dollars to spend don't put 400 dollars in your cart and then tell the checker to have the rest put back. Over by 2 items, fine. Over by 200 items bring a calculator. ><
• 

  jaguarbass

  I hate when I go in a store to browse or window shop with no money in my pocket, I am always inundated by sales people pestering me. When I have money and go in to make a purchase, I can never find a clerk or they are all busy.
• 

  bluesapphire

  I hate when there are 2 dozen check out stands with only 3 open and 8 people in line in each of them. Also, when there are no price tags on the merchandise and you have to walk 10 aisles looking for a CSR. That's why I avoid Walmart. I'll pay the extra 10 cents you're claiming to "roll back", thank you very much!
• 

  Finally-Free

  Dear Fast Food Customers:

  When we ask you if you want fries with that you tell us if you wanted them you would have asked. If we don't ask you get mad when you don't get them even if you didn't tell us. If we ask you if you want to supersize it and you say no at least we're sure where you stand. If we don't ask you then come back for a refund or tell us after we've already tendered the sale and then we have to do it all over. When you say you want a "number 5" you are saying you want the meal. If you do NOT want the meal then ask for the burger by name or say you just want the burger.

  Yeah, I've lost count of the number of times I've told them I DON'T EAT FRIES AND I DON'T DRINK POP and they give me a glazed look and ring in a combo anyway. I've lost track of the number of times I've gone through a McDonalds drive through and ordered a sausage mcmuffin with egg, only to have to drive back because they charged me correctly, but neglected to put the meat in the sandwich. I can go to the local Burger king and order a double whopper with cheese and a coffee, and instead they give me a bacon double cheeseburger combo. If they would just SHUT UP AND LISTEN while we place our orders without trying to talk over us there might be less confusion.

  I won't even start on the inability of cashiers to properly count back change.

  W
• 

  Mysterious

  And I won't even start on the abilities of customers to hand their money to us. They will pull out wads of money from their pocket not knowing how much they have and then when they come up short look like we have horns growing out of our heads. Or hand a bill to us with change on top through a drive through window and then glare when a penny falls off. Then there are people who when they get their food decide they wanted something else and change their order. Or the people that park so far away they expect us to lean out the window up to our midthighs in order to reach while they barely stick their fingers out their window and then laugh at us for trying to reach. Or people with loud trucks, loud music or loud passengers that complain they can't hear us when they are ordering. Or people who drive through to the window without ordering at all or at the window decide they want to add food that takes 5 minutes to deep fry and then complain when we ask them to park and someone runs their food out to themj instead of keeping the rest of the paying customers waiting. The customers that just point at the sign and say not a word throughout the whole transaction or the ones that come in once a month and expect any cashier on to know their order by heart.
• 

  Finally-Free

  And I won't even start on the abilities of customers to hand their money to us.

  But you did.

  W
• 

  5thGeneration

  Biggest Peeve for me was last week!

  Bought Zone Alarm's Internet security software (good product).

  Spent $80.

  Couldn't get it working.

  Find out that it's $3/minute for tech support! Not even a one time call offered! OUCHY!