Working in customer service...

is a gigantic pain in the ass. Much more so when the product your company makes is a cordless telephone. Tell me your customer service horror stories to make me feel better. haha.

I never worked for customer service, but when I worked for community services I once accidently hit a 6 year old girl in the face with a shovel during a sandcastle building competetion. Only day in months were my supervisor was on site too.
The kid took it pretty well , still...

It's always going to be a pain in the ass, because "the customer is always right"....sooo annoying!

I work in retail, but the customer is never right here.

This should help.

Eh, I hate customer service and am dreading the day I may have to go back to it.

To worst is when the customer has crazy kids. Once I was working with a customer and her son started running around and trying to knock over signs and was screaming, throwing himself on the ground, tackling things he was seriously all over the place and everyone was staring. She just kept talking to me like nothing was happening.

I get yelled at by our "customers" for enforcing federal laws. Like I'm the dude with millions of dollars in my pockets from investors that passed the legislation.

If I could have one superpower it would be the ability to erase the feeling of self entitlement.

Ugh, just reading this makes my chest tight. I worked in a call center answering calls from angry customers for two years. The last 6 months I was there, we were pushed to try to sell things to the angry callers. "Oh hey, we fucked up your shit and now you're calling me names, but I can't help but notice you're not taking advantage of our broadband package." It was fucking awful.

Never again.

I worked in a call centre taking 999 calls for the police. Spending Christmas day listening to families stabbing each other over the dinner was probably one of the most harrowing... give me cordless phones any day.

Dealing with bitchy doctors and nurses who can never explain their problem and want things fixed instantly is fun.

Half of my calls usually are something like this:

Me: Ok, do this real quick.... (insert something here)
Them: No, why would I do that? What do you know? Stop wasting my time. (then you usually hear them talking to someone else about how the guy on the phone is an idiot)
Me: Just give it a shot.
Them: *siggggggggggh* fine. *they do my suggestion*. Oh, that worked, bye. *click*
Me: Face, meet desk.

The other ones are:

Them: The thing on my computer doesn't work.
Me: What exactly are you using on the computer.
Them: What? The thing I always use.
Me: What does it look like?
Them: I don't know, fix it, don't you know anything?

my customers are always old. they want to change settings on their phones, and it literally takes 45 seconds if they just ask a grandkid to help. old people are the bane of my existance.

@ harleen: that does suck, i would agree. probably a bit worse than cordless phones.

Old people are my favorite. It always takes forever to get them to do anything right, but they are always polite and extremely patient.

Customer service should be your motivation to get a better job.

I learned to really hate people when I did it...except when I worked at a sEx shop,there I felt I was helping.

I've worked for Verizon 411 for over 7 years. The stories I could tell you of the levels of retardation and asshatery amongst the general public I've personally witnessed in that time would make your job look like Playboy Mansion Pool Boy by comparison.

-TM

You know, I bitched about it a bit too when I worked in more directly-customer-facing roles, but what have still always pissed me off more than irritating customers are all the shitty customer service reps out there.

True story: when you put a little effort into providing good customer service, customers tend to suck a lot less. Not saying anything about the kind of service anyone here in particular provides, of course, because I wouldn't know--but if you pay attention to the kind of customer service you tend to get most places, it'll probably be a lot easier to understand why a lot of your customers come to you already kind of pissed and fully expecting to be disappointed and irritated by you.

Honestly, when I hear the phrase "customer service horror stories," about ten different stories involving me as the customer come immediately to mind, and I have to think quite a bit harder to remember horror stories involving me dealing with a customer.

That's a good point Necia. I have a lot of people who already call in mad because some of my co-workers aren't that great, and they will say that. I usually just ask them to calm down a bit and explain that I'm a different person and will get their issue fixed right away. Then they walk away happy...but always ask to be transferred to me next time they call in.

So should this.