Basic Call Etiquette – 4 Rules Miss Manners Won’t Teach You

Even in today’s more casual society, rules and etiquette are far from forgotten. Though we’re long past the days when you were even expected to slurp soup a certain way, a little politeness can go a long way in making your support phone call a little smoother.

 1. We can hear EVERYTHING – Okay, I admit that this one benefits the CSR’s whose ears you are innocently assaulting, but with the things I’ve heard over the years I can’t help but think that people just don’t realize how much comes in through our headsets. You might be surprised how many phone calls are accompanied by the beautiful background music that only the bathroom can offer. Try explaining the technicalities of a cell phone bill with someone crunching potato chips in your ear. Have you ever wondered why you got a slightly colder tone from your rep when you got back to the phone? It’s because we could hear you beating the snot out of your kid.

 2. There are such things as stupid questions - When it comes to getting service, there are such things as stupid questions. These are questions that serve no purpose other than to hinder the speed and thoroughness of your answer. One obvious example is, “Are you new?” This has been aimed at many a CSR who either a) Gave the customer an answer he didn’t want to hear and so he assumed that the person must be incorrect or b) the rep IS new and therefore sounds a little uncertain. In either case this question serves no purpose other than to be rude to a person who you’ve called to help you. If you’re not sure an answer is correct, ask instead for more information, a little proof. Asking an old hand if they’re new usually puts that person on the defensive, making communication between you difficult. Ripping apart a newbie only serves to make them more nervous and less likely to remember all the information they need to help you. In either case, the situation typically ends with you having to start all over again with a different rep wasting your time when you could have just asked a more productive question.

3. Don’t Stereotype - Personally, I think this one should be a life tip, but I digress. Communication between a customer and a CSR is roughly like an American tourist asking directions in France.  Both sides speak English, but one of us isn’t willing to admit it. Stereotyping your rep based on gender or ethnicity only serves to add another hurdle that needs to be jumped before your situation can be resolved. The last two years I worked as a technical support rep for a company that hosts websites. How many times a day did I hear “Can you transfer me to technical support?” when I answered the phone. The implication here is that these people thought I was a receptionist. Immediately, before I’ve even gotten your name, I’m on the defensive and you’re uncertain that I’m qualified to be giving you technical support.

One of my former managers is named Sabiha. She was in New Accounts, a team that assists customers through the initial start up process. As part of her job, she had to talk to her customers at least once to walk them through the basics of their website. She had a customer once that would not respond to e-mails trying to set up an appointment. Finally, the customer e-mailed in saying that she didn’t believe she and Sabiha would be able to understand each other and could she have an American rep. Sabiha is American and has a perfect command of the English language with absolutely no accent. This customer wasted 2 weeks of her time and her 30 day trial because of an assumption.

4. Remember we’re professionals - There are certain rules that society has when it comes to interacting with men and women, young and old. These rules should not prevent you from viewing your CSR as a professional. I had a customer once immediately request to speak to a male representative when he heard my voice on the phone. Besides making me angry, this lead to about five minutes of me attempting to explain that I was just as qualified to help him as every male in the department. As it turned out, the customer hadn’t wanted to show me this website whose design he wanted to emulate because it had a picture of a woman showing off her scantly clad derrière.

One of my friends once forbade his girlfriend from going to her chosen OB-GYN because he was a male.  He said that obviously, this man must be a pervert. Now, in normal society you probably would object to another man putting your girl’s legs up in stirrups. But a doctor is a trained professional looking out for the health and wellbeing of your significant  other. Most people would agree that in this case, the rules can be bent. The same should be said of any professional. Remember that we don’t live in a world of black and white, and let your representative help you. It’s what they’re paid to do.

The Buck Stops Where?

I’m going to let you in on perhaps the biggest tidbit of insider information you can ever know. Realizing this one fact, believe it or not, can save you countless otherwise fruitless hours of frustration and anger. However, I’m telling you now, you’re not going to like it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ready?

The customer is almost always wrong.

Since you’ve been hearing the exact opposite all of your consuming life, let me give you some credentials, if you will.

When I was 18 I worked for ConsumerInfo.com, otherwise known as FreeCreditReport.com. For all of you who just scoffed and said, “Free credit report my ass!” you would be one of the legion of the wrong. For those who haven’t had the pleasure let me explain. You can get a truly, 100% free credit report from FreeCreditReport.com. The vast majority of the calls I received in the 2 years I worked as a customer support e-mail and phone representative focused on one thing.

“You bastards said it was free, and you charged me!” Bait and switch was thrown around a lot. So was the word scam.

For the moment, I digress. Let me tell you where I wandered after I left ConsumerInfo.com. I spent the next year doing customer support for an alarm company that I won’t name, and I’m fairly certain you haven’t heard of them anyway. They were relatively small time players, and I believe they’ve since thrown in the towel.

From there I spent 6 months each doing customer support for AT&T/Cingular/AT&T, and a fancy bath fixtures company. I’ve been at my current company for about two and a half years now and while I’m FINALLY done with customer support (sorry, can’t say that I miss it), I did answer phones and e-mails for Realtors whose websites my company hosts.

I’m like McDonalds over here, 15 billion customers served. One wicked case of headset hair later, the universal truth is that the customer is almost always wrong! The problem lies in the fact that they’ve been told over and over again that just by the virtue of being customers, they must be right.

In the ever wise words of Jedi Master Yoda, “You must unlearn what you have learned.” The reasoning here is simple. You can’t be open to a solution or explanation your hapless customer support rep is going to give you if you go in with the preconceived notion about whatever you think the problem is.

Remember the supposedly free credit report and the extremely peeved customers who were scammed? They were all wrong. There was no scam. Essentially, every single one of them had read the words “Free credit report!” and then had conveniently forgotten how to read. The rest of the website, save the one sentence, was entirely about the service ConsumerInfo.com provides: the credit monitoring system. You got a free credit report and 30 days, cancel anytime. It was all there in plain English on the homepage as well as on the sign up form, ABOVE WHERE THEY REQUEST YOUR CREDIT CARD INFO. I don’t mean to yell, but honestly, even if you missed the whole homepage, one would think that as you’re happily typing in your credit card number, you might be concerned as to why.

I tried to explain countless times, after I’d processed a full refund (no questions asked), but time after time my customers worked themselves into a tizzy of curses and ranting. That can’t be healthy. I guarantee you they hung up the phone with a foul taste in their mouths, convinced and traumatized that they’d been taken when in actuality they’d made a mistake in not reading what they were signing up for and I’d issued a refund within the first 5 minutes of what turned into a 20 minute call.

How about the 4-5 Cingular customers I’d get every day who called to dispute the random charges on their teenager’s cell phone. “My teen would never run up text messages like this!”

Um, yea. They would.

“No, I already asked her, and she swore that she didn’t do it.”

She lied.

When I spy a random charge on my bank account or my credit card, my first thought is not “What’d they do!?” it’s, “What’d I do?” All being a constant victim is going to get you is frustration, anger and more time, which my customers always screamed was so valuable, out of your life. These companies aren’t out to scam you, or make your life miserable. Not to be cliche, but help them help you. I can’t help a person who’s telling me what the problem is and what the solution should be when reality dictates something completely different.

Swallow your pride, and at the very least admit that it’s entirely within the realm of believability that you made a mistake. The buck stops with you.