Battling with Customer Service: How to Win the War, Part 1 of 2
Customer service, how I loathe thee. Let me count the ways. The never-ending loop of obnoxious hold music. The pressure to buy new products and services. The poor-quality, outsourced call to a distant land.
A call to customer service can be an infuriating ending to a frustrating experience. Youre upset and looking for empathy, but all you encounter is disappointment. Could Company X have done something differently? Probably, but if you follow these tips when dealing with customer service, youll be in the drivers seat for the next dispute.
1. Be prepared.
Seems basic, right? Unless youve called Company X several times, youre probably not familiar with their required information. Have every tracking number, account number, itemized statement, and order number before you call. Customer service representatives are held responsible for torturous call-handling metrics designed by masochistic management. Length of call, resolution (if the customer calls back to the company within an allocated amount of time), and randomly monitored calls are measured stringently. Bottom line: they...