Hateful Customer

I had a happy experience this week. Happy in the sense that, well, it wasn’t at all happy. As I have mentioned, I work in customer services, processing orders and dealing with myriad customer issues. I like doing my job, I take pride in it and I have said on more than one occasion that I wish to treat my customers as I would like to be treated myself (I have very high standards when it comes to being a customer). I have completed two award levels through the Institute of Customer Services (http://www.instituteofcustomerservice.com/) and coached two more people to success in the same award.

I answered a call on Tuesday from a customer who wished to speak with my employer’s sales director. Following procedure (set in place to filter cold callers etc) I directed his call to one of two other colleagues who take any requests to speak to the MD or a director, neither of whom were at their desk. Rather than dump my caller onto voicemail, I offered to take his telephone number and pass his request on so someone would call him back.

At this point he demanded to know where my organisation’s head office is (USA), their telephone number, my name and the names of the staff (the team leaders who oversee customer services) who have told me I have to try these two colleagues for calls such as his.

Unfortunately for him, due to protestors, my organisation has a no-names policy, which in my case I am not allowed to divulge my (or any colleagues’) surname. He informs me he will be telephoning my organisation’s head office to get one or both of the team leaders fired for not letting me put his call directly through to the Sales Director or the MD (whom he has now requested to speak with as well).

He then proceeds to tell me a long-winded story about how he was pressured into attending an interview with one of the armed forces way back when, how one of the interviewers (a brigadier, if I recall) said something which he took as an insult, and how to exact revenge for this slight, later called said officer a rank below that which he was. Can you say petty?

The point of my caller’s story was thus: if I can’t think for myself, and if I can’t think to ignore the instructions laid down for me then I should tell my superiors where they could stick their rules and resign.

Yes, this customer was telling me to leave my paid employment (of over five years), in this financial climate, with the daily horror stories coming out on the news about forthcoming private sector job losses, with no job to move onto, solely because he couldn’t speak to the person he wanted and because I wouldn’t (and couldn’t*) do anything about it except remain calm, listen to all he had to say without interruption and repeat my offer to have someone return his call as soon as.
I don’t think so.

If I hadn’t been so angry I’m positive I’d have been in tears. You may say, oh, what an adult reaction. Indeed, however in the time I’ve done this job, taking 150 calls a day (approximate average) I’ve cried once over awkward customers, once when I was new and a bag of nerves.

*I couldn’t because we don’t have an official receptionist so calls which would ordinarily be dealt with by that role (such as this one) are dealt with by my customer service colleagues and me. (I will iterate here that I am not a receptionist and I have a bloody good idea of what that role entails, it actually being my previous salaried role. In the call centre environment I am employed in, I have specific, measurable targets to meet.) Reception-style calls as efficiently as possible using the two staff members who filter such calls on our behalf.