GTFO my business, bitch: Godawful Customers

RHwhatnow? If there is a larger forum for discussing the sillyness of being in the workforce, please point the way.

Not a forum, but of course there's always (The Customer Is) Not Always Right.

Also not a forum, but Retail Hell Underground does allow comments. Link

Dear used book store customers,

When bringing books into the store for cash or trade credit, please keep in mind the following:

1) No matter how bad you need the money, our cash buyer generally only buys in large quantities and only if the items are in exceptional condition or have great value. Your cheap, beat-up Harlequin romance novels don't count.

2) No matter how "old," "antique," or "ancient" you think your book is, it almost always isn't. Especially if it was printed in the 1980s. \

3) If you have been storing your books in the garage/basement/attic/front porch, please check them for the following before bringing them to us: Evidence of spiders, evidence of mice, evidence of other animals/bugs/creepy crawlies, weather damage, mildew, etc. If you bring them to us and there is evidence of this that we cannot get rid of, then don't be shocked that we automatically are unable to give you credit and the books will go in the trash immediately.

4) You do not know what will sell in our store and what won't. We don't always either, but we use a handy program that tells us how the book has done in our store in the past and what its sales rank is in general. If we tell you it just won't sell for us, that's because it probably won't.

5) We do not have an even trade credit policy (bring a book, get a book) because this is a business. There are bills to pay, employees to pay (including myself0, and taxes to pay. That means we need to make a profit, so, no, we're not just going to give away books.

If you can keep these simple facts in mind, I'm sure we'll all get along well. Please also note that our stock depends on what is brought it - we will not order it for you. And yes, every book in the store is used. So are the CDs, records, and DVDs. Yes, really. Yes, that's every book in the store. All around you. Yes.

Thank you and have a good day,

Sparrow, the exasperated clerk.

I work in telecommunications, mostly as a salesperson.

It is the WORST job. People obsess over their phones, and iPhone customers are some of the worst I've ever seen. Unfortunately, I have to agree with that statement of "the longer you work in retail, the more racist you become".

There are huge communities of African/Pacific Island refugees, Chinese students and Indians in my area, and there are definitely certain traits you see from them (such as the refugees trying to get discounts on things nobody can discount, Chinese students get very loud and stubborn about phone problems, and Indians will usually try to make things more complicated).

Regardless, whilst annoying, they have nothing on white people. Older white people are 50/50 on what kind of customer they will be. They're either very nice, or absolutely hell to work with. We see more neurotic white people than any other too - there's a certain lady's name that, when mentioned, causes one of my co-workers to get a pained expression on his face.

What I hate most is when people come in with broken phones. It gets seriously complicated, especially when people ever deny breaking their phone (liquid damage ones are good too - PROTIP: you might not have put it directly in water, but if you put a phone near steam of any sort, it'll get sucked into the phone and ruin it). The company has recently put a loan phone system in place too where you have to pay a bond in order to get one. It was done because when you don't have to pay for a loan phone, you can imagine what kind of condition they end up in. Still, people rant on about how we owe them a new phone for free because they've broken their own.

I seriously hate my job. I'd rather go work in the video game shop a few feet down. I don't care if I have to deal with whiny, confused mothers and get hit on by sleazy nerds, it'll still be better than dealing with the current crowd I'm with.

Can I rant for a minute about the issue of instant gratification? Just because something is on the Internet doesn't mean that it has a million operatives ready to spring into action and answer your question THAT SECOND. I've had support queries of my own, at different companies, pending for hours or a couple of days--it really doesn't matter, so long as it's not life-threatening or I'm not losing data.

We provide Internet phone service. You're not going to get cancer if you have to wait a little before I get to your support query. If you have to wait, it's because there are sixty open threads on this forum, many of which have twenty or more people clamoring for attention. How many people does it show in the "Support Staff Online" box? That's right. One. Sometimes two, if the engineers are pitching in. Be patient? Please?

But nooooo, if I don't answer right away, I get accused of being a scammer/racist against whatever they are/an idiot/someone devoted to insidiously ruining their world by not answering a routine question about their free phone program.

I. Hate. Customers. I was hired to write documentation; the support thing was supposed to be temporary while they got the program established. I'm getting twitchy and cranky and paranoid as hell, because when I cut the head off one support query, two more take its place. And they all want gratification NOW NOW NOW.

Tungsten Monk wrote:

/racist against whatever they are/

How can you be racist when you're operating from text?

Tungsten Monk wrote:

Can I rant for a minute about the issue of instant gratification? Just because something is on the Internet doesn't mean that it has a million operatives ready to spring into action and answer your question THAT SECOND. I've had support queries of my own, at different companies, pending for hours or a couple of days--it really doesn't matter, so long as it's not life-threatening or I'm not losing data.

We provide Internet phone service. You're not going to get cancer if you have to wait a little before I get to your support query. If you have to wait, it's because there are sixty open threads on this forum, many of which have twenty or more people clamoring for attention. How many people does it show in the "Support Staff Online" box? That's right. One. Sometimes two, if the engineers are pitching in. Be patient? Please?

But nooooo, if I don't answer right away, I get accused of being a scammer/racist against whatever they are/an idiot/someone devoted to insidiously ruining their world by not answering a routine question about their free phone program.

I. Hate. Customers. I was hired to write documentation; the support thing was supposed to be temporary while they got the program established. I'm getting twitchy and cranky and paranoid as hell, because when I cut the head off one support query, two more take its place. And they all want gratification NOW NOW NOW.

This, so much. And it's everywhere, too. My worst time of it was back at retail (again) when people started asking questions about software. Store had half an aisle lined with software, and if I didn't know the answer to a completely random question about a completely random piece of software, I was unhelpful, a waste of their time, and rude. Obviously, I should be expected to have professional-level knowledge of each piece of software because selling it means we're supposed to be able to answer questions about it. Never mind that if I had professional-level knowledge of a tenth of it, I'd probably have a job that paid more than minimum wage.

Eventually, I just sabotaged software sales, which completely removed the problem.

Customer asks: "Do you have Program XYZ?"

Appropriate answer is: "Yes" or "Not in the store but we can have it ordered for you."

My answer: "One moment, I'll check." *Puts phone on hold, does something completely unrelated, comes back a minute later* "I'm sorry, no, we don't carry that."

Customer asks: "How much is Photoshop?"

Appropriate answer is: "You're probably looking for Photoshop Elements, which is a somewhat stripped down version meant for home use instead of the expensive professional version, and it costs thirty dollars."

My answer: "$699.99."

Alhazred wrote:

I was unhelpful, a waste of their time,

Quote :

Customer asks: "Do you have Program XYZ?"

Appropriate answer is: "Yes" or "Not in the store but we can have it ordered for you."

My answer: "One moment, I'll check." *Puts phone on hold, does something completely unrelated, comes back a minute later* "I'm sorry, no, we don't carry that."

At least you aren't rude.

Alhazred wrote:

This, so much. And it's everywhere, too. My worst time of it was back at retail (again) when people started asking questions about software.

A little unrelated in the way you said it, but damn, I get heaps of people asking me software/general computer questions. For some reason a lot of people tend to think that if something is wrong with their computer, the internet must be causing it, thus the company providing their internet must fix it. 90% of the time it's something completely different, it didn't even have something to do with the net in the first place (which is working just fine).

What sucks the most is when people bring their laptops in, open them in front of me and demand I fix it. I'm a doctor salesperson, not a computer repairer, damn it! I'm not trained in anything technical, and no, nobody else in the shop would know either. I'm the most tech-savvy person in the shop, although that's not saying much. The best I can ever do is give them a tech support number or recommend they take it to an ACTUAL computer repair shop. I think they simply bring it to us regardless of the problem just so they don't have to pay a repairer.

Which reminds me now... customers are damn sexist.

And racist... I've heard some absolutely terrible things said about the Indian/Pakistani/Filipino staff working in call centers. Usually they're such wonderfully helpful people.

Sutremaine wrote:

Alhazred wrote:

I was unhelpful, a waste of their time,

Quote :

Customer asks: "Do you have Program XYZ?"

Appropriate answer is: "Yes" or "Not in the store but we can have it ordered for you."

My answer: "One moment, I'll check." *Puts phone on hold, does something completely unrelated, comes back a minute later* "I'm sorry, no, we don't carry that."

At least you aren't rude.

Actually, a certain amount of animosity goes a long way to a successful, large sale. People have an easier time saying "no" to friends, so the job gets harder if the customer views you as one.

I also never opened conversations with open-ended questions ("How can I help you today?") because it's easier to get someone to agree to something if you've already gotten them to agree to something once before. I'd open with yes/no questions ("Can I help you?" "Would you please follow me [to where we keep the type of item you're looking for?]")

Also known as the "foot in the door" effect, after door-to-door salesmen of old who would often force you to have a starting conversation with them by putting their foot in the door so you couldn't just close the door and be done with it. This is why the good ones would drag those conversations out as long as possible; they didn't start with "Hey, I'm selling encyclopedias, would you like to buy some?" They would start with, "I'm selling encyclopedias, can I tell you a little more about that?" It would be common to get a "yes" in response, with the potential customer thinking "I'll hear a little of what he has to say, then politely ask him to leave." It leads to "Would you like to see what the binding looks like?" "Sure." "Some words about nothing, also would you like to open one up and see the print quality?" "Oh, why not?" "Other pointless words, you know, that letter is kind of boring, would you rather see one for a more interesting letter?"

It's a pretty good sign a salesman in a brick n'mortar store knows what they're doing is if they wait to pitch the service plan to you until the very, very end. Much easier to sell those if you're manipulating the customer's responses than through convincing the customer its worth it.

Quote :

What sucks the most is when people bring their laptops in, open them in front of me and demand I fix it. I'm a doctor salesperson, not a computer repairer, damn it! I'm not trained in anything technical, and no, nobody else in the shop would know either. I'm the most tech-savvy person in the shop, although that's not saying much. The best I can ever do is give them a tech support number or recommend they take it to an ACTUAL computer repair shop. I think they simply bring it to us regardless of the problem just so they don't have to pay a repairer.

That exact thing happened to me all the time when I worked in my college's computer lab. The job was helping people with their school assignments if computer illiteracy was the thing causing them trouble. Didn't have any of the resources for Sys-Ops at all. One of the laptops someone asked me to look at had very clearly been thrown at a wall, so I told them it suffered Deceleration Sickness.

Quote :

Actually, a certain amount of animosity goes a long way to a successful, large sale. People have an easier time saying "no" to friends, so the job gets harder if the customer views you as one.

That makes absolutely no sense.

Maximilia wrote:

Quote :

Actually, a certain amount of animosity goes a long way to a successful, large sale. People have an easier time saying "no" to friends, so the job gets harder if the customer views you as one.

That makes absolutely no sense.

I think what Alhazred is trying to get at is if you make yourself out to look like too much of an accepting person, the customer will feel like it's okay to say no. It's weird, but sometimes when I'm a bad mood I'll get more sales that day. It's weird... Although on those sorts of days I tend to treat customers a little more like they're kids in a candy shop. They're fussy, have no real idea what they're after, and the only way you can get them to make a choice is by guiding them to it.

...If that makes sense.

Raine wrote:

Maximilia wrote:

Quote :

Actually, a certain amount of animosity goes a long way to a successful, large sale. People have an easier time saying "no" to friends, so the job gets harder if the customer views you as one.

That makes absolutely no sense.

I think what Alhazred is trying to get at is if you make yourself out to look like too much of an accepting person, the customer will feel like it's okay to say no. It's weird, but sometimes when I'm a bad mood I'll get more sales that day. It's weird... Although on those sorts of days I tend to treat customers a little more like they're kids in a candy shop. They're fussy, have no real idea what they're after, and the only way you can get them to make a choice is by guiding them to it.

...If that makes sense.

It makes sense. People want to be liked. If they feel as though you already like them, it's okay to say "no" to you. If they don't, it's harder to say no, because they feel like saying no means you won't like them.

Everyone can tell stories about people in sales positions who run the gamut from obnoxious to downright rude, and the story almost always ends with "I don't understand how they can still have their job!" Ever wonder what the actual answer is? Why the sales reps who are genuinely nice and put effort into staying nice even when they're so burnt out it's become an act don't move up all the time like common sense tells you they should? It's because the negative worker's attitude actually helps them generate more revenue, and the revenue everyone generates is what their performance is judged by. Note that there's a difference between this and being an outright jerk; you can't tell a customer off, of course, but you don't need to tell them off to be a little impatient and a little condescending.

It helps to think of a sales environment as an alternate universe. The normal way social interaction usually works is horribly, horribly skewed, and things function on an extremely mechanical, scripted level, because the way people behave when they're in the roll of a customer is very predictable. It's like how you call tech support and the first tech you talk to is following a script, except you're executing the script in person, to someone's face.

Another thing that helps with this is the last impression effect. Most customers judge their entire experience based on the last impression they get before walking out the door; if the cashier they take their purchase to at the end is overly nice, they'll forget if the sales rep wasn't.

Yeah, no. I call bullshit on that. Unless countries outside of America like that sort of thing--I note Raine's from Aussie-land, and I thought Al said he was from England (?) or someplace in another thread.

I've been in customer service and sales for fourteen years and people with bad attitudes get fired. Those that don't suck up to the boss(es) like you would not believe, to the point of almost going Human Centipede. I'm the complete opposite of them--I will tell co-workers and my bosses how things lay as bluntly as I can, and be sweet as sugar to the customers. And hey, it's worked as I have never had a complaint from a customer to me, can sweet talk customers from bad moods to good moods and have them leaving happy even though I did absolutely nothing to help their problem other than a 'I'll make sure my manager sees this', and have received many compliments both in person and written* from customers and co-workers alike**.

In training, especially corporate sales training, they stress being open and friendly with the customers, and asking as many open-ended questions as you can. They want you to establish a relationship--their words, not mine--with the customer. Choice Hotels even says to use their first names in conversation if they're checking in.*** Eye contact and listening skills are key. People spend BIG fuckin' money for that simple advice (basically it all boils down to what I said there, in essence) to train their staff on how to make sales. I can't imagine how it would be very different in retail stores, because it's the same thing. You have a product to sell, and a customer who wants to buy.

Also, while I can be mean to my friends, I have no compunctions about telling strangers to fuck off. It's a lil harder saying that to friends.

Second also, the rest of what you're saying is valid. Just the acting slighty-but-not-quite-rude-I-don't-give-a-fuck-if-you're-here attitude thing I have a problem with. If you couldn't tell from this stupidly long rambling post.

TL;DR -- Complete opposite of what Al said.

*A good example of written compliments is this last meeting we had. Some organization which I don't even remember wrote a four page single spaced letter on how awful their experience was. Concerned I was gonna get nailed for, I dunno watching movies or something, I asked a question and my FD manager waved it off saying, "Oh, not you. They LOVED you." I read the letter and the compliments came in the first paragraph for me, and our breakfast bar employee who is supa nice.

**I did have one complaint from a co-worker who was chronically late to relieve me in the morning. He kept getting later and later, and I kept getting more and more pissed until it was to the point where I was being out and out rude to him, calling him a lazy bum who fell out of bed when he felt like it...to his face. Out and out rude, I say. Anyway, he brought that to the general manager, and the GM was like, "What did you do?" The dude went, "Huh?" and the GM explained, "Max only gets pissed when people are screwing up, so what did you do?" Hehe.

***Yeaaaaah. Calling them by their first names as you greet them crosses a line for me. I just can't... do that. Upon check-out, maybe, but check-in? Creeeeeeeepy. lol

*Shrug* If your personal experience is different, I don't see the point in debating. My personal experience and the experiences of the people I worked with who chose to make careers out of it is exactly what I said. The only way for me to to make a career out of any job in the service industry I've ever had would've been to continue being an increasingly terrible human being, which I wasn't comfortable with, and, therefore, stayed at the bottom. I was good at my job because I learned the psychology of sales taking psychology as my electives in school, and applying the knowledge worked in spades. You can believe or disbelieve as you wish.

(Also, I'm in New England.)


ETA: Just for the hell of it...

Quote :

In training, especially corporate sales training, they stress being open and friendly with the customers, and asking as many open-ended questions as you can.

The orientation material I had to sit through at Staples actually taught this. I deliberately ignored it and worked the foot-in-the-door effect for all it was worth, and this one thing was largely why I made triple the sales of everyone in my department, I was the only one who ever broke the weekly quota for service plan sales. I eventually taught most of them about it, and everyone's sales improved exponentially. This being completely against policy, it became this bizarre open secret no one dared acknowledge out loud, because the store manager would constantly fret over policy being ignored, but constantly jizz in his pants over the way sales went up in the span of a week.

Maximilia wrote:

Calling them by their first names as you greet them crosses a line for me. I just can't... do that. Upon check-out, maybe, but check-in? Creeeeeeeepy. lol

Speaking from a customer's perspective, EXCUSE ME DID YOU JUST GO ALL INFORMAL ON ME? DID I INVITE YOU TO DO THAT? I'm your customer, no your friend.
Granted, German is one of those languages that has a more formal form to adress strangers, so going from that to first name is a much bigger step than in English. Still, people working in ~hip and trendy~ stores sometimes try to get all informal with young(er) customers, and I'm always YEAH, NO. GOTTA GO NOW.

grmblfjx wrote:

Maximilia wrote:

Calling them by their first names as you greet them crosses a line for me. I just can't... do that. Upon check-out, maybe, but check-in? Creeeeeeeepy. lol

Speaking from a customer's perspective, EXCUSE ME DID YOU JUST GO ALL INFORMAL ON ME? DID I INVITE YOU TO DO THAT? I'm your customer, no your friend.
Granted, German is one of those languages that has a more formal form to adress strangers, so going from that to first name is a much bigger step than in English. Still, people working in ~hip and trendy~ stores sometimes try to get all informal with young(er) customers, and I'm always YEAH, NO. GOTTA GO NOW.

Wow, that's really weird. It's the complete opposite in Australia - we love informality. It's rare for anyone to address you by "Mr" or "Ms", and practically nobody will ever call you "sir" or "m'am". For some reason they're seen as a sort of insult here. =/

Regarding the rude-versus-friendly issue--I think it depends on what branch of customer service you're working in, too. People may be more likely to browse in a store than they would, say, in a hotel; I know the only times I go into hotels is if I've either already gotten a booking there or am seriously considering it. In a store, on the other hand, people may linger for hours and never actually buy anything.

And in online customer support . . . Well, it's a push to even get them to see you as human. When I'm faceless "(app name) Support," I get twice as much shit as I do when I'm "(app name) (my name)." Either way, though, I'm just text on a screen, and that means I'm not worth a damn to them except as a means to get their problem fixed or as a punching bag. It makes me think of Chris-chan: NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!

I have a few, but they're not nearly as bad as some of the ones on here. However, I do have a situation where I have annoying customers who's attitudes are caused by bad co-workers.

I used to work at Superstore, a retail store that charges $0.04 per plastic bag. It is store policy to institute this charge. Almost all of the other tellers decide that they don't want to enforce this policy so naturally people just love them. However, when I choose to do the job I was paid to do, I get reamed out for it ("None of the other cashiers charge for bags!"). I didn't make that policy; if you have a problem, take it up with the head office.

Co-workers can even be just as bad ("Oh, we aren't supposed to charge employees for the bags." "Really? Let me call the manager and ask." ... "Nope, he says that's not true." "Well, no one else does."). Fuck off. Deliberately choosing to go against store policy could get you fired and I needed that job.

Nihilist wrote:

As long as nobody's pointing a gun at me it's good. Or in my cousin's case, a flathead screwdriver to the neck. More on that later.

I still want to hear this.

Yes, another one from me.

Dear customer,

Why, oh why, are you creating fifteen threads on the support board? I've already told you: we had to shut your account down because of illegal activity. Illegal. Activity. Repeatedly posting a contact number and saying "my problem is not yet fixed" over and over again is not only going to not help, but it's going to actively piss me off. I asked for an explanation which would let us unfreeze the account; why are you not listening? Do you have that flathead screwdriver of Nil's through your frontal lobe? If you do, please give it a couple of good twists and get the fuck off my board.

Love,

Tech support

Rorschach defeated by a screwdriver? God, this is the lamest adaptation yet!

ATTENTION RETAIL CUSTOMER SERVICE REPS

I'M SORRY YOU'RE ONLY MAKING MINIMUM WAGE FOR UNSKILLED LABOR WITH ABSOLUTELY NO QUALIFICATIONS WHATSOEVER

I KNOW IT MUST SUCK TO SIT BEHIND A CASH REGISTER FOR EIGHT HOURS WITH LUNCH AND SMOKE BREAKS AND HEAR THAT "IT DIDN'T SCAN THAT MEANS IT'S FREE RIGHT?" JOKE TIME AND TIME AGAIN

BUT I JUST SPENT THE LAST TWELVE HOURS OUT IN THE SNOW FOR OTHER PEOPLE'S AMUSEMENT

ALL I WANT IS A PEPSI

WILL YOU JUST SELL IT TO ME FOR CHRISSAKES