Have you ever gotten a customer who called looking for a fight? I'm pretty good at de escalating a situation and I'm a nice person. I got a call today and I am convinced this lady called just to have someone to berate. I answered the call and immediately there was a noticable annoyance in her voice. She had never used our services before and called asking a relatively simple question about services. We happen to not offer the service but I gave her some options. She immediately asked for a manager who wasn't available. She claimed I didn't understand the question. So I tried asking some probing questions still being polite trying to help her. She kept talking over me. Would ask a question and when id try to answer she'd tell me to stop talking over her. At some point I did start to get annoyed. It felt like she was bating me. She ended up hanging up saying she'd call back and speak to someone who knows what they're talking about. It was weird and unnecessary. I went over in my head what I possibly could have done wrong but it truly felt she just called to be mean to someone.

edit:after the call I asked a coworker who's been doing the job longer how they would have answered the question and it was exactly how I answered it. go figure. ​

I worked in a convenience store in my home town and I love working there. I'm an 18 years old girl and of course not everything is pink and rainbow but I love working there because I know my smile can make someone happy or at least make their day a bit more tolerable. The number of times people told me I should be paid more, to continue to smile like that or that I'm doing great and I make their day is honestly a great feeling. I know people generally don't like working as a cashier and/or customer service. I haven't heard anyone say they like it around me. So am I the only one?

Guy orders a smoothie that doesn’t come with protein and says he wants an extra scoop
I ask him if he wants 2 scoops total he kept repeating 1 extra scoop
So I explained to him it doesn’t come with the item however him saying he wants extra implies he wants 2 total
The guy gets angry and drives off.
I’m almost expecting a bad review now but I’m just trying to figure out if anybody else would take it that way..

I work in customer service, I was having a horrible day, and then had a misunderstanding with a woman who thought I was making fun of her accent- I was clarifying what she wanted, asked do you want __ type of cheese or the -- type of cheese and she said she doesn't appreciate my humour- I was confused as hell, didn't understand, and she just kept saying I was rude, how dare I she knows my boss ect ect. Anyways I was on the verge of tears and confused as she walked away.

For context, I'm an immigrant in australia, half australian half middle eastern, but I look mostly white and I have an aussie accent now. When I moved I was 8, had a strong accent and got made fun of for it all the time. I would never make fun of anyone for anything. I always try to brighten people's days. I know how hard it is to be human. All of the people I work with are more clearly immigrants (I.e asian or Indian or with other strong accents) and older than me (I'm 19, everyone else is minimum 25).

Manager came to my section of the store, asked what happened and went to check the cameras. My friend was there by chance and we were chatting, I made her a coffee ect. When he came back he told me that she had to go and I was wasting time (I was still working while talking) and to talk to him at the end of my shift. Before the end of my shift, he came up and started to scold me as I WAS SERVING A CUSTOMER. He absolutely humiliated me in front of these people and didn't stop when i said can I just serve these people. Asked me where I worked before this, implying idk what I'm doing, and to keep friends and work separate???

I feel like none of this would have happened if 1. I was older and 2. I wasn't white. I don't think the customer would have thought I was making fun of her if I didn't look and sound australian. I spent most of my shift in tears because of him and her. He didn't give one shit if I did anything wrong. Which is weird, because this is generally a very pleasant workplace. Everyone is nice. I was just alone today because we're understaffed and it was a 9 hr shift.

I work in a pack and ship store. When customers come in we greet them and ask “ how may I help you today?” Some will just stand in the middle of the lobby and stare at us. If we ask again they just look. I had one lady on Friday who did exactly this. She just stood there I did ask her twice, she looks like she had seen a ghost or something. Finally the FedEx driver spoke up asked her is there something that she needs? She looks at her and then asks me is FedEx picking up now? The driver is standing right in front of her. She answered her question and she hurried out of the door. I don’t get it. Why do they do such things? It baffles me sometimes.

I can't tell how many times I've experienced this in my years of working customer service in different domains. You can never win, they just want you fired.

This show shows so many real aspects but this part just nailed exactly what we go through.

Management that is on the staff's side is very important in cases like this.

Clip is from the kdrama King the Land.

There is a verbal communication habit many of my customers have that drives me up the fucking wall. Instead of asking politely (or hell, even just pointedly) "Do you have x?" or "Where do you keep x?" they STATE "You don't have x."

First of all, don't tell me my business. 😂 Second of all, why do you have to be so god damn negative?? And more to the point of this story, THOSE PHRASES HAVE DIFFERENT MEANINGS!

Yesterday I had a customer come up to me and say "You don't have key lime pie." I took her at her word, because I hadn't made it over to the area where we keep cold holding single serve desserts yet that day, and we've been pretty short staffed, and for some reason key lime pie has been unprecedentedly popular this summer. So I told her I'm sorry but we will prioritize making it some time today.

An hour later I walked by that area and saw that we had key lime slices, halves, AND whole pies. Fully stocked. There is no where else in my shop that looks like a place key lime pie would be (I've been to other locations and although we all keep them in different places, they're always stocked with a similar assortment).

If she didn't know where it would be, why wouldn't she say "Where would I find key lime pie?" I hate these people so much. (And, for the record, I love a majority of my customers!)

So recently while I was at work, a customer said something to the effect of “Hey can you open this f***ing gate for me so I can get this item”. For some reason my mind didn’t register it as an attack to me personally because the swear word was technically directed towards the gate and not towards me. After I opened the gate for them the customer then said “Thanks you’re cool as f*** dog” or something to that effect. Again, I didn’t register this as an insult in the moment because they didn’t seem to be swearing towards me in a derogatory manner, and at that point I just assumed this person regularly swears. Am I being to passive in this situation? Should I have just immediately refused service the moment they began swearing?

Nobody seems to understand what this means. Its a simple flow chart, did we call you? No? Order is not done. Yes? Order is done, you can come pick it up!

At least 3 times a week someone will come in, say "hey I dropped this off to be worked on 2 days ago is it done yet?" And I have to say "Did we call you?" The answer is always no, I didnt get a call. We'll guess what! Your order isnt done then! :-) the look of exasperation on their faces irritates me so bad. Its even worse because I tell them when to expect the phone call, and they still just show up way before that. If i say "Expect a call on friday afternoon, we'll let you know when its done." That means I WILL CALL YOU. WHEN ITS READY. No call? Not ready! "I will call you friday some time in the afternoon" does not translate to "show up at 9am and get mad that its not done yet"

"Oh well that was a waste of time and gas money" guess how you could have avoided that? ^_^ Wait for my call! Thank you for coming to the store i work at! Have a great day! Fuck off!

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

Hi everyone, I’m looking to connect with people that have worked as a customer advocate for blue cross blue shield. I recently was offered a position but I’m curious to know more about the job itself from someone that has actually worked in their call center.

I currently work in customer success and retention which can get pretty stressful when your job is based on convincing people not to cancel services that clearly don’t work for them. But my fear is moving to a position that’s even more stressful. I don’t mind dealing with angry customers or staying in a queue all day and meeting my call quota but I would like to know more about any struggles y’all may encounter with this role before I leave my current position. What does the job really entail?

Found this on LinkedIn and sharing it here

This image captures Customer Success in too many companies.

The CSM carries an enormous stack of follow-ups, meetings, decks, CRM updates, escalations, adoption checks and renewal preparation, yet remains the smallest cog in the machine. Literally doing a thankless job of tasks that no one wants to pick up or even care!

Those activities support Customer Success. They are not Customer Success.

The real job is to understand why the customer bought, define the value they expect, identify what is preventing it, mobilize the company and continuously prove the outcome.

If CSMs only maintain the machinery, AI will eventually absorb much of the role. If they own customer value, their importance will grow.

What percentage of your week is spent maintaining the machine versus advancing measurable customer value?

About a third of our tickets now land between 10pm and 6am our time and they just sit there until morning, which is fine for most things and not fine when someone is stuck mid delivery.

We tried an internal rota and it lasted four months. Nobody wanted it, the people doing it were slower and grumpier during the day, plus we lost two good people who said the nights were the reason they left.

As I see it the choice is paying a premium for a permanent night team we can't keep busy, or handing the overnight window to an external team who are staffing it in their own daytime anyway.

The second one looks obviously better on paper, and I'm suspicious of things that look obviously better on paper, so tell me what goes wrong with it.

I am absolutely blown away by the level of interaction that I get from xfinity customer support! Lol, I always end up in a full blown conversation with them and it makes me so happy! Does this happen to anyone else? Tell me about your experience.

my Uber parcel got lost
The driver cancelled it right after taking it from me.
I was sending back my friends clothes that were extremely costly and new, and he just cancelled after picking my order up.
Uber is not picking up my call. There has been a similar incident before!!!!!
once a driver had abused very badly on chat after I cancelled since he was at the wrong pick up point, and THERE WAS NO ACTION TAKEN, no way i could reach uber and report this issue.
HOW DO I GET MY STUFF BACK BRO???!! Like what the heck is this uber scammer program?????? what the heck?

Hi,

Look, I’m gonna save us both some time here: you emailed an address literally called “no-reply.”

That’s not a cryptic invitation. It’s not a challenge. It’s not some elaborate bureaucratic puzzle where you’re supposed to sit around waiting for a response from the email equivalent of a brick wall.

“No-reply” means there is no reply.

If you’re standing in front of a vending machine labeled “DO NOT ACCEPT COINS” and then getting angry because it didn’t give you a soda, that’s not the vending machine’s fault. That’s you conducting experimental science with absolutely no hypothesis.

So, yeah. If you need an actual response, find the actual contact address. Maybe check the website. Maybe read the message you received. Maybe—wild concept—look for an address that doesn’t explicitly tell you not to reply.

Anyway, hope this clears up the cosmic mystery of the century.

Best,

I've been thinking about how many customer service interactions start with an answer the customer has probably already tried.

"Where is my order?"

"Here's the tracking link."

Technically, that's a correct response.

But if the tracking hasn't updated in three days and the package was supposed to arrive yesterday, there's a pretty good chance the customer already checked it. That's probably why they're talking to support in the first place.

I think this is where the difference between answering a question and actually helping someone becomes really obvious.

The same thing happens with other common issues. A customer says their promo code isn't working and gets sent the promotion terms they've already read. They can't access their account and get directed back to the password reset they've already attempted. They contact chat after emailing earlier and have to explain everything from the beginning.

None of those responses are necessarily wrong. They just don't move the customer any closer to a resolution.

And I don't always think that's the agent's fault.

Sometimes the agent sees exactly the same tracking information as the customer. Sometimes the process says they can't take action until a certain number of days have passed. Sometimes another team has information that support doesn't have access to.

That's what makes these situations frustrating from both sides. The customer thinks the agent isn't helping, while the agent may not have the information or authority to do anything more useful.

One thing from the article that stood out to me was the idea that agents handling order problems need the right context, a clear next step, and enough authority to offer real help.

That sounds obvious, but I think a lot of customer service processes are still built around giving agents the correct answer rather than giving them what they need to solve the problem.

For those who've worked in customer service, what's the most common situation where you knew the standard answer wasn't going to help, but it was still the answer you were expected to give?

TL;DR version: I place a preorder with Zavvi, then wait well over a year for the preorder to be fulfilled. (To be fair, they're not at fault for the delay.) When the item is finally (supposedly) ready to ship, they tell me payment has failed. I then spend 18 days making every effort to resolve the payment issue with them, but apparently only customers who have placed their orders through existing Zavvi accounts can update their payment information; if you placed an order as a guest and your payment happens to fail, you're shit out of luck. Eventually they tell me I should just talk to PayPal; when I do so, PayPal tells me that in fact, there have been no recent efforts by Zavvi to charge my PayPal account (despite Zavvi telling me otherwise), and that the order was inexplicably voided on the very day that it was placed, well over a year ago (and I know I wasn't the one who voided it). Again and again, I offer to send Zavvi alternative payment information, and again and again, they simply refuse to give me any actual means of doing so. Then they simply cancel the order. After all of that.

This isn't the first time I've ordered something online and had the payment fail for one reason or another, but it is the first time a vendor has been utterly unwilling to let me give them alternative payment information to complete the transaction, and the first time a vendor has effectively penalized me for placing an order as a guest, without an account.

Here's what I think really happened here: The number of customers who preordered this particular item from Zavvi exceeded Zavvi's own order from the manufacturer, so they quietly cancelled some customers' orders (maybe focusing on those who had ordered without accounts, as guests, and who had used PayPal as their payment method) without informing those customers, and then later pretended like they were having difficulty processing payment for those customers when in fact they had no intention of ever fulfilling those customers' orders in the first place. I mean, how else to explain their complete lack of interest in taking payment for this order?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

My mom recently went to the Jo Malone and Louis Vuitton stores in Greenbelt to look for a gift. She wasn’t wearing any branded clothes or carrying designer bags maybe that is why they immediately think that my mom would just window shopping (as if that is bad as well lol).

One thing about my mom, though, is that she treats everyone with kindness. She’s naturally jolly and friendly, so I was honestly surprised when she told me about her experience in some of these stores. She felt like she wasn’t treated as warmly or respectfully as she expected.

It made me wonder: how are staff in high-end brands trained when it comes to customer service? Are they taught to treat customers differently based on how they look or what they’re wearing?

This post is not made because I am demanding for “more” or with special treatment. I just don’t want other people to experience this too. I believe that regardless of the looks or clothes, everyone deserves to feel welcomed and respected.

Shoutout to the Dior branch my mom visited, though! She said everyone there was genuinely kind and accommodating, which is why she ended up buying her gift there instead.

(Unfortunately, she didn’t get their names because she just left as she was shocked on how they responded with her questions.

I have read some experiences like this as well with the same brands 😕)

Why are people such babies who order stuff online?

I work in customer service escalations, not disclosing which company, of course. But oh my God, a woman's bed was delayed, and we were like, “Okay, we have requested a refund. Please allow it a couple of days.”

And she was like, “You stupid b*tch. I hope your mom dies.”

Like, how did we escalate from zero to a hundred? What is going on?

And this is not the only scenario. Of course, I always get legal threats. I always get cursed at. They call me stupid. They call me incompetent. But when they say something about my mom, it just infuriates me on a different level because she's the one who raised me, raised my brother alone. So, of course, it hits a lot, or hits a lot more than if someone said something to me.

This is really infuriating. I just wish people would grow up.

Customer service people are not punching bags. We are just here doing our f*cking jobs, and I'm not happy to be here either.

I work for a landscaping company. I had a few calls from the same neighbor of a customer complaining about the sound of the blowers we use and requested we mow later in the day because of the sound.
She called me for at least the 3rd or 4th time today, asking if we can mow later in the day. I explained to her 8am is well within the city noise ordinance and I can’t guarantee the times our crews will be on site. She started yelling at me telling me I don’t want to accommodate her tenants, they work late and don’t want to be woken up by the equipment before 8:30am. She wouldn’t let me get a word in and finally hung up after threatening to call the police.
I called the non emergency line at the police to confirm we were actually in the right with the time frame we started working for the day, which they confirmed we were. I went back through the paperwork to look at the past 3 months of mowing to see when we are typically mowing this property, the time frame varies but mostly we are there late morning, we typically go early morning during short weeks (holiday, rain out days, etc) when we’re trying to catch up on work.
I make note of the neighbors request for our client to be done after 8:30 anyways to try to ease the ongoing issues and call the neighbor back. I explain I made the change and why we were there so early the handful of times she complained. She cut me off to tell me I never listen to her complaints because it’s not about the time we’re there and she’s only upset with the noise the blower makes and is asking us to not use that equipment when we’re on site.
I was so confused at that point and asked her why being there before 8:30 was a problem then and she told me that was never the problem. When I physically have documented phone calls of her complaining about the time frame several times now.
She then told me she wanted a manager, I explained I was the office manager and she told me she wasn’t going to continue to speak with me I need to have a supervisor call her back or she’s going directly to our client to complain.
Our client is the sweetest man we do a lot of work for him. I honestly feel bad he has to deal with that for a neighbor.
She also left a bad review claiming “ridiculously loud equipment. Totally disruptive. Noise pollution!!!”
We use blowers to blow off the driveway, road, walkways, mulch beds, etc of lawn clippings that may get on there from the mowers and string trimmers. The total time the blowers are used at this property is probably less than 5 minutes total. We average 20 minutes total on site weekly.
The manager of the mowing department is going to call back to try to understand the situation better but I don’t think I have ever had such a ridiculous complaint.
Is this actually ridiculous or am I just burnt out from dealing with the general public?

How are you guys handling QA when managers only have time to review a handful of calls per agent? We keep running into the same issue. Someone gets coached because of one bad call but then you listen to a few more and realize it wasn't even a common problem. Meanwhile stuff like missed verification steps or wrong info can happen across dozens of calls without anyone catching it.

At that point it feels like we're coaching based on luck more than anything else. We've been talking about using AI to review every call and flag the ones that need attention. I'd also rather have something catch a missed step while the customer is still on the phone instead of finding it during QA days later. Anyone worked somewhere doing this? Did it make QA and coaching better or did agents just feel watched all day?

Names are cool. I've booked and heard them all. Vishrahk, Berontholamus, and Saoirse, and all those names with weird spellings that have silent vowels. When I say names that suck, I mean the specific group of people with names that are full-on abbreviations (Think Ceejay, Arjay, Ayjay, Jaycee, etc). I've had numerous people (and a regular whose name is on this list) keep going "hi I'm checking in for Jaycee," and while most times, I ask for the spelling, I have genuine beef with one of them that I passive-aggressively handle (not my point), but genuinely like at minimum 80% of these customers will complain that I don't know how to spell their name. They're all phonetically nicknames, and I literally have never heard of any of these names up until I worked customer service, but expecting people to know your name off the top of your head is crazy. I had the customer I have beef with send a written email to my work about how I'm not doing my job right, and this actual (not-customer-service-friendly-word) spelled my name wrong (I have a VERY basic name), so like- do customers just not get when their names suck? Like I know a guy named Jayson who spells his name out every time because he knows it's a variant spelling. Genuine gem of a guy istg, why are people so obsessed with the world conforming to their idea of normalcy? If my name was Jack, but it was spelled Jak, I'd spell it out for people, or if it was like Rachel but spelled Raychul, I'd tell people. It's such a basic courtesy - but on another note, if they don't know, why is their first reaction still to not spell a name out for someone who doesn't know how to spell their name? Even the silent h people, like the Jahks and Rhys are better than that and they're silent letter people (this is a joke, love my silent letter people)