While I was listening to a secretary the other day and the way she was handling a phone call, it reminded me of so many things we should never do. She had a very irate woman on the phone and the secretary was not in a position to help, so she told the woman who was screaming the two people who could help her were available and she would connect her to one of the women. In the course of getting the first woman to help the person on the phone, she told her the woman was very irate and very nasty, so guess what happened? The worker who was told this, told the secretary to give the call to someone else. The secretary then tried to send the call to the second worker who she also told was made by a very irritated and cranky person, so of course the second worker said she was too busy to take the call. There is a lesson here we can all learn and that is just switch the call to the proper person and say nothing.

Another mistake made by some workers is very insulting to customers. It has to do when there is a computer glitch and the customer is told after they complain it was impossible for this to happen. I saw this in action and have spoken about it before, but I will repeat it for this article. I was in a bank and instead of tellers it had all machines with a round information area in the center of the machines occupied by a lady who was located there to help. One man went up to a machine to take fifty dollars out. He punched in his code and pressed the correct button and waited for his fifty dollars. The machine charged him for fifty dollars and his receipt came out, but no money. The man got upset and went to the lady at the information booth and told her the story, how he had gone to the machine put it his code, requested $50.00 and got a receipt, but no money and she said “impossible”. Remember this, nothing is impossible when it comes to machine errors and telling the customer he is lying, because basically that’s what she did, is about the worst thing you can do for customer relations.

One of the worst things a worker can say to a customer after a mistake has been made is, “there is nothing I can do.” How many times has this happened to someone who has reserved a room in a hotel only to find out when they got there it had been rented to someone else and they were told there were no more vacancies? This is not as uncommon as one would think and certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the customer who will probably never go back to that hotel chain again. It would’ve been much better if instead of being told this the staff would have apologized and made arrangements in another hotel for the customer. While this may have inconvenienced the customer somewhat, to make up for it they could give him a discount coupon for his next stay which would prompt him to come back. This is just good business.

There are certain things which are insulting to customers and while a worker may not think what they are saying is insulting they are wrong. One of these things is telling the customer no one else ever complained about this before. It makes the customer feel like a jerk. On top of that being connected to someone who doesn’t completely understand what I’m saying makes matters worse. How many times have you had to call to try and straighten out something which happened with an Internet purchase? It hasn’t happened to me very many times, but when it did I had a couple of bad experiences. One of them was caused when I called a particular company about some software I had purchased which had a problem. The representative answering the phone said to me this was not his department, but he would switch me to the correct one. I thanked him and waited, waited, and waited. Finally another representative picked up the phone and when I told him the problem guess what he said to me? He told me he didn’t know why I was switched to his number and wanted to switch me back to the first number I had called originally and said the first representative didn’t know what he was talking about. These are the kind of things which stop people from dealing with certain businesses. One of the other things is calling and getting someone who doesn’t seem to speak English. They think they speak English and get agitated when you ask them to repeat what they’re saying. The reason you’re asking them to repeat is you can’t understand what they are saying. This is probably more aggravating than anything else.

We all know people can get aggravated when they have a problem with a product and as hard as it may be, the worker should never take this personally. A little sympathy doesn’t hurt either. A worker should try and put himself out a little bit to try and help the customer. If the customer is very irate he should try and calm the customer down and tell you he will go to his supervisor with their problem and see what he could do for them. There is usually something that can be done in most cases which might satisfy a customer. If they are trying to return a product after the warranty is over perhaps giving them a discount on another product would satisfy them.

When it comes to bringing something in to be repaired one of the things that sends chills down our spine is when somebody looks at the item and says something like “oh my God” or “what did you do to this thing?” This has probably turned off more customers than anything else. I remember one time something took place in a barbershop which was very embarrassing to the customer. A barber was cutting a man’s hair when he started saying wow I’ve never seen hair growing in this many directions at once and started calling other barbers over to look at the customer’s head. Needless to say that man never went to that barber again and I have a confession to make I was that man. Of course that was in the days when I had a lot of hair.

I could be wrong, but it seems workers and stores were a lot more friendly years ago and workers never would’ve thought about keeping a customer waiting while they talked on the phone to their friends. On top of this they never would have used foul language in front of these customers while they were on the phone. Having said this there are still some places where a customer is treated very well and all we can do is hope this will expand to other areas of business.