I love working with people. At the airport I probably meet a thousand of them each day. Short conversations, lifelong stories – The sweetest people on Earth and the most irritating ones.
But who do I consider as the worst? The ones who don’t appreciate you because you are a customer servant. I’ve heard too many times the insults like “fuck you”, “shut up” and “you don’t know anything”.
And of course everything is the customer servant’s fault.
There are different types of customer service workers. There are the ones who absolutely love their work and the smile will last on their face forever. Then there are the ones so fed up with their own lives that they don’t care about their customers. And in between there are the neutral ones who you will remember as the ok service because they are only doing it for the paycheck.
Have you ever been so angry to the customer servant that you have yelled at them or said what you have to say in the most unpleasant way?
I’m guilty for that.
But believe me, after being in that position of a customer servant I’m very careful to who I yell to. The worst feeling that you can get as a customer servant is that you have done everything you can to make the situation go smoothly and when the situation ends up bad you get the blame and the insults.
(Sadly, some people don’t understand that shouting to a customer servant for example at the airport doesn’t ease their journey one bit – it will make it worse or even prevent them from flying as being a threat for the other passengers. Mostly the anger comes out of anxiety and that is very common especially at the airport.)
A good thing to remember is that customer service workers are paid for serving you. Many times they won’t be able to affect the big scale of how things are run in the company but they will do their hardest to serve you the best way they can and help you out.
If the customer service workers don’t give the best service, then to my mind it is okay to be a bit upset. But then again, the customer service workers fed up with their lives won’t be cured by you yelling at them. Writing feedback, as stupid as it sounds, is the way to make a difference.
What gets on my nerves everytime is when a customer servant is rude to me. I agree that as a customer you can get a bit off the politeness when that happens. Luckily social media makes it hard for a company to survive with bad service.
The most important thing that I try to say is that when a customer service worker tries his/her best to serve you, please don’t treat the person like crap even though there are some things wrong. Just inform the things that are wrong or ask for the supervisor. Written feedback will be taken in many cases seriously. If you need some compensation of what’s happened, being cool helps you to get a better deal.
I admit that there are exceptions. Unfortunately.
We all should also remember to write good feedback! I never remember. But I would like to get it as a customer service worker. It would mean that someone really appreciates my work and has put in all the effort to write the feedback. Verbal feedback is also a great way to show gratitude but written feedback will be seen by supervisors.
In conclusion: treat customer service workers as human beings and remember to thank for the good service.
Smile.
Photo © Antti Helin