Comment I call shenanigans. (Score 1) 799
You say that the CSR has no control over the script, and I agree, because customer service is my job and I do it quite well, if I do say so. I don't have any control over what I am supposed to say, but I always remember the reason that I'm there - customer service. I am there because a customer either has been, or feels, wronged, and it is my job to right it. If that means returning a product or issuing a replacement, so be it. If that involves letting the customer vent to me for 15 minutes before they get angry and leave, so be it. When my employer informs me that I can't perform the responsibilities of reasonable customer service, I am no longer working in customer service, whether I stay at that job or not.
When I called to cancel my cable and Internet service because I was moving out of their service area, and I was sent to the "Customer Satisfaction Specialist" who demanded a better reason for my cancellation (literally, threatened to not cancel until I had a better reason than the fact that paying them would not allow me to receive or use me a single service), I lost all respect for that particular branch of "customer service." I ended up having to call back, the next person said "maybe you could move somewhere that's still in our service area instead?" but eventually agreed to cancel. I had to pull up my bank's zero-liability policy for fraudulent charges to get him to do it (after he threatened to continue billing my card), but he cancelled and I haven't seen a charge yet.
I can appreciate that the CSR in the AOL case, as well as my calls, was just doing a job. But there is a point at which you have to put the smug satisfaction of retaining a "tough one" behind you and just do what the damn customer wants.
Yes, it's a job, but grow up and realize that you can't strong-arm everyone into staying, nor should you try. I know why those people are there - they're to keep people from cancelling because the service is too expensive or the service doesn't work, or whatever other controllable reason. But I was moving, and they don't even service my new place! And yet I was supposed to (according to the first guy) continue paying them for some unknown reason, or (according to the second guy) dump the apartment complex that my wife-to-be and I love and want to live in, lose my deposit, and start looking for a new place that's inside that company's tiny, tiny service area? That's not reasonable customer retention. That's an attempt to frustrate me into not cancelling, and it didn't work. Those people do not work in customer service, and if they're the "victim" for doing their job, then they should be reminded that employment in the U.S. is at-will, and they can terminate it at whatever point they see fit.
When I called to cancel my cable and Internet service because I was moving out of their service area, and I was sent to the "Customer Satisfaction Specialist" who demanded a better reason for my cancellation (literally, threatened to not cancel until I had a better reason than the fact that paying them would not allow me to receive or use me a single service), I lost all respect for that particular branch of "customer service." I ended up having to call back, the next person said "maybe you could move somewhere that's still in our service area instead?" but eventually agreed to cancel. I had to pull up my bank's zero-liability policy for fraudulent charges to get him to do it (after he threatened to continue billing my card), but he cancelled and I haven't seen a charge yet.
I can appreciate that the CSR in the AOL case, as well as my calls, was just doing a job. But there is a point at which you have to put the smug satisfaction of retaining a "tough one" behind you and just do what the damn customer wants.
Yes, it's a job, but grow up and realize that you can't strong-arm everyone into staying, nor should you try. I know why those people are there - they're to keep people from cancelling because the service is too expensive or the service doesn't work, or whatever other controllable reason. But I was moving, and they don't even service my new place! And yet I was supposed to (according to the first guy) continue paying them for some unknown reason, or (according to the second guy) dump the apartment complex that my wife-to-be and I love and want to live in, lose my deposit, and start looking for a new place that's inside that company's tiny, tiny service area? That's not reasonable customer retention. That's an attempt to frustrate me into not cancelling, and it didn't work. Those people do not work in customer service, and if they're the "victim" for doing their job, then they should be reminded that employment in the U.S. is at-will, and they can terminate it at whatever point they see fit.
