Abby's Tips for Decent Customer Service

I just got off the phone with Auntie M, who has been going through her own special Hell with AOL.

Considering the holes in walls and my dashboard from various recent interactions with Kenmore/Sears, Sprint/Nextel, the Title Company From Hell, and a wide variety of other largely Satanic entities, I thought I'd throw out a simple set of concepts that might be helpful to any of my loyal readers who are thinking of starting their own business that might require, you know, customers.

1 - Everybody has a supervisor. If you are not empowered to help whomever you're talking to, you're also not being paid enough to cover for the people who can. Don't tell me you don't have a supervisor - I bet you don't own the company, and given that, I bet there's someone who ensures you show up and put on your headset every morning.

2 - Greet people. I know that some customers like to rattle on a little, but I bet you're being paid by the hour. Answering a call with an abrupt "ThankyouforcallingEvilConglomerate, GiveMeYourTenDigitPhoneNumberAreaCodeFirst," is a no-go. Particularly when you're passing a customer up the food chain - if I've been on the phone with you for an hour, you're aware of my phone number. Stop asking for it.

3 - Don't give your phone reps a stupid script. If I've been struggling mightily to resolve an issue and your representative has been unhelpful for twenty minutes, I do not want to hear "thank you for calling EvilConglomerate, I hope you've had a wonderful interaction with our company today!" Are you fucking insane? My interaction with your company has been the customer-service equivalent of a nasal hysterectomy. It's bad enough if you're evil, please don't also be stupid.

You know, there seems to be a theory out there that providing a lot of terrible customer support is as good or better than providing good customer support. But it ain't so. Putting people on the phone who are not empowered to do anything might allow you to hire people who cost next to nothing, but wading through human ferns costs you money by pissing off customers. 100 useless monkeys could probably be replaced by 20 empowered and functional representative who can operate without a script, and they won't create an entire demographic of people who are entirely willing to burn your headquarters to the ground.

I cannot think of a single company I deal with, whether buying gas, ammunition, internet access or plane tickets, that is a sole source. I can always go somewhere else. So can everyone else in the world. Dealing with large companies is slowly becoming so painful that we're all going to start building our own shit rather than doing it. When you think about the red-hot-poker-in-the-eye that is, say, NorthWest Airlines, it doesn't make getting a pilot's license and buying a plane sound so crazy, does it?

It's all too much. I'm going to take my grumpy ass off to bed. Perhaps I'll take a nice warm shower (water heated by Atmos Energy - where the ladies who answer the phone call you by name and act like they give a shit), then read a little (light provided by Commerce energy, who turned my power on with a minimum of drama, exactly when they said they would). But first I'll lock up the gunsafe (made by Sentry, who will send you replacement parts if you break your shit and be cheerful about it), and ensure my bedside handgun is where it belongs (which I purchased from Kastle Keep Firearms in Largo, Florida, because the sales guys are smart and helpful).

I'm seriously just focused on the day when I can be a hermit in a cabin and don't have to deal with anyone ever again.