To start with, some links:
-"Customer" of free email provider loses her emails because she went over a month without logging in to the account, sends emails to CS, posts excerpts from those emails on a blog -
Google Cache-The Consumerist openly mocks the CS rep and posts his picture -
Link 1,
Link 2Having worked CS for a while, I automatically suspect the customer, especially in cases like these where instead of the full email exchange I only see an excerpt. I also understand how frustrating it is to have customers demand something that you know from the last thousand times you've dealt with the exact same issue, will never, in a million years, happen.
My initial reaction is to label the "customer" a crybaby who didn't pay attention and lost something she was getting for free. The rep's later replies were certainly confrontational, and while I only lost my cool once* doing CS, I saw it a lot more frequently in my coworkers. Really, when you get a customer who will not take no for an answer, and who is demaning you break policy and issue a credit that *will* get you in trouble, you only have two options--pass the buck up the chain and waste someone else's time to salvage your own call handling stats, or bite the bullet and tell them a million times NO NO NO.
I know Ambulance Driver is in a related field, so I'd like to hear his thoughts, along with the rest of you. Did the customer have a reasonable request? Was she treated unfairly?
*Before anyone asks, the one time I lost my cool was when a young guy called in demanding more credits on top of the credits he had already received for a botched installation. Our policy was, if there's a problem with your initial installation, we give you a free install and a certain amount of cash on top of that. Of course, instead of billing you from the initial installation, we re-bill everything to the date of the correct installation. This customer had apparently bullied the earlier rep into giving him not only a free installation, but an entire month worth of phone service for free, all because his phone had to be installed three days after his cable and internet. Way, way more credit than policy provides for. But, since he was (actually) installed on the 15th and his billing cycle was on the 22nd, he was billed from the 15th-22nd. A prorated week on top of the normal 30 day cycle. Nevermind that he had already received about twice the credit he should have, he still wanted another week free. Basically, a free install (understandable) and a month and a week of free phone. For three days inconvenience. I politely told him, every way possible, that he was already getting a free install and a free month of phone, and that under our normal policy he would have received about half of that. So, finally, fifteen minutes in, he says he's going to call the BBB on us. I couldn't help it. I laughed at him. Not a loud, boisterous laugh, but a "heh heh" chuckle. He definitely heard it though. So I told him I'd check with my manager and see if I could work anything out for him.
So, I put him on hold and walked over to my supervisor's desk--and I should preface here that I won awards at this job, and everyone knew I never gave credits a customer didn't deserve and I never asked for courtesy credits. (A courtesy credit is a nice way of referring to a "shut up and get off my phone, you lying and/or moneygrubbing animal" credit.) For the first time ever I had to ask for one.
"Hey, Stacy, can I give this guy seven bucks to get him off my phone?"
"Does he deserve it?"
"Nope."
"How long's he been on your phone?
"Fifteen minutes."
[Checks the board to see our call volume] "Alright, go ahead. Use my initials."
I came back, and of course, the guy had hung up, to do what 90% of our customers do--call right back and hope they get someone stupid. I gave him the credit and made a note that no further credit was under any circumstances to be given for the same installation.
I guess that ran kind of long, but it's a major part of why I empathise with the rep in question--complaints like this aren't unique. Every day, multiple times a day, you get customers demanding credits against policy that no supervisor would ever give for things they don't deserve. And it can grate on you. There's really no nice way to say "what you are asking for is unreasonable and no one will ever do it for you. You are not a paying customer. We do not value your patronage and apparently you do not value our service as you haven't used it in over a month. Good-bye."
The only reason my supervisor let me issue the credit is because she was well aware that I knew policy like the back of my hand and that if I told this guy no again, she was going to have to take the call anyway and waste her time.
