Customer (dis)service
This week Don Joe – our undercover agent in the corporate world – explains why speaking to someone in a call centre turns us all into rabid wolves.
First, you have to spend hours navigating the options menu:
* Welcome to customer services, for options in English press One.
* Para el espanol prensa Dos.
* For Welsh please hang up and learn English.
* Press * to hear these options again.
* If you know the extension of the person you are trying to reach, we’ve changed their extension. For 1 press 2; press 2 for 1.
* Press * to hear these options again.
* We are sorry but all of our representatives are busy at this time. We would like to remind you that your call is very important to us. You can currently expect to wait 2 minutes.
* Press * to hear these options again.
* We are sorry but all of our representatives are busy at this time. We would like to remind you that your call is very important to us. You can currently expect to wait 7 minutes.
Come on, that’s five minutes more than two minutes ago! How has the customer-services team managed to figure out time travel and not why my printer doesn’t work? And when you finally do get through...
* “Hi I’m Julie, can I verify the first line of your address? I’m sorry could you hold the line for one second? [Allow time for the seasons to change].
* Sorry to keep you waiting, I’m just talking with Julie number two about her new man. Apparently he’s hung like a racehorse but she doesn’t trust him; won’t be a moment.”
Call-centre conversations usually involve two people who don’t want to speak to each other about something neither wants to care about but are obliged to. Cold-calling involves two people, one of whom definitely does not want to speak to the other. Whenever I receive a call from a telemarketer, I either offer to call them back at their house and see if they like to be disturbed at home, try and sell them something myself or conference call another telemarketer and let the two battle it out for sales supremacy.
So much for customer service. Real Business is taking excerpts from Don Joe's hilarious new blog "Workforced." You can read more at www.workforced.com
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