The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
What Makes the Customer from Hell?
Wednesday - October 05, 2005 10:59 AM in
Every customer service rep fears this call: the Customer from Hell. This is the caller who is angry, belligerent, and seemingly irrational. He or she may swear, make unreasonable demands, and insult the agent without provocation.
But the unfortunate agent who has to handle that call only sees half the story. Yes, the customer may be completely off his or her rocker, but most people aren't that way naturally. Usually there's something that went horribly wrong before the call which left the customer feeling confused, helpless, and ignored. Kristin Wells, who pens the Greedy Kristian blog, has just such a story.
It isn't clear exactly what the sequence of events was, but apparently a fairly trivial screw-up at Dish Network led to the company attempting to extract $301.46 from her bank account every fifteen minutes for two solid weeks. Earlier calls trying to fix the problem led nowhere, leading to the creation of a Customer from Hell.
The net result: two different agents received (by Kristin's account) the tongue-lashing of their lives because of events they personally had nothing to do with. This can't be good for morale at Dish Network, and probably did little or nothing to solve Kristin's problem.
Could this have been avoided? Almost certainly.
Posted by Peter Leppik
It isn't clear exactly what the sequence of events was, but apparently a fairly trivial screw-up at Dish Network led to the company attempting to extract $301.46 from her bank account every fifteen minutes for two solid weeks. Earlier calls trying to fix the problem led nowhere, leading to the creation of a Customer from Hell.
The net result: two different agents received (by Kristin's account) the tongue-lashing of their lives because of events they personally had nothing to do with. This can't be good for morale at Dish Network, and probably did little or nothing to solve Kristin's problem.
Could this have been avoided? Almost certainly.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 10:59 AM by | | | |