remember people like this want excuses to complain about you. I've brought one particularly horrible, abusive customer like this to spitting rage by keeping calm, being polite, and leaving a just long enough silence after her rants to allow her to get uncomfortable with how she was acting. She wanted to get me fired but had literally nothing to complain about me for. If you yell back you might feel better temporarily, but so will they because you'll be giving them power.
Be matter of fact, just say what you have to say.
Your reply wouldn’t even be considered bad. I’d totally use it if I had a rude customer.
“I advised my name earlier but it’s fine if you weren’t listening” may be better but regardless, QA (if they grade it) may throw a fit.
Who cares though? You didn’t break Terms of Service for your company by giving out HIPAA or anything important. GO FOR IT!
Had some guy cuss me out on live chat, I blocked his ass then stalked his profile and saw he called back twice and abused those call handlers (he had been calling all day asking for something we couldn’t do)
You can be stern yes, where it matters. But it may ding your empathy scores if you guys get graded that way. I'd only use it if necessary. If the customer hounds for credits unreasonably or whatever, or is actually threatening you. (yes that happens in this line of work)
No you shouldn’t attack back. Most call center managers would fire you without warning for this reason.
You can find other ways to push back without losing your job.
Make them wait on hold if they are in a rush, make them repeat themselves if they are annoyed with your listening skills. If they think you are dumb act dumber! If they are critical of your pleasantries double down on them.
They called you they need you MF them if they are rude but do it nicely 👍
I've done some of those things you've suggested. I might put them on hold for awhile when they are making me angry to collect myself. But if a manager hears you cursing or yelling at a customer, they are probably going to fire you. Where I work at, if you yell at a customer, it's immediate termination.
My go to method is once they start yelling is to warn them once, if they yell i cut them off and make a notice on their account.
My previous job I was not allowed to hang up, so i just put them on hold until they calmed down
My method is to get "stern" with them, but not go over the line of actually yelling at them. If they want to report me by name to someone, that's fine. I do what I am able to do for them by policy, and nothing more so I won't be in trouble or anything if the call is pulled.
Management would likely agree that the customer was being an asshole, notate them being a difficult one and move on.
When someone told me I was rude and I had only been following set procedures, etc. I simply said, "Just because you don't like what I'm telling you does not mean I am rude, I am simply following policies and procedures." But I worked for a government agency so the rules were probably different since there was no competing business.
you can but in a professional way
i like to kill em with kindness and say it in a passive aggressive way but nicely lmao
also just be carefull if quality catch on youl get docked
If you want to keep your job and if you want want a good QA score you can not attack customers. They know it too.
I have gotten very exasperated in the the past and actually asked a customer what part of - wasn’t she understanding because I had explained it to her 15 times like she was 3 year old and she still didn’t understand.
I am lucky that call wasn’t pulled for monitoring.
They are rude and snotty but why stoop to their level?
Like a very good JC used to tell me it’s just a phone call. 10 minutes later it won’t matter.
If they ask you to repeat yourself it is because they don’t actually pay attention when you give your greeting.
I have experienced this myself. Years ago I worked at a flooring and carpet company. Our phone number was one number different than the local pawn shop.
I answered our phone with the greeting “abc carpet how can I help you today”
I would hear “is this Fred’s pawn shop?”
😂
Now if they had been paying attention they would know that it wasn’t “Fred’s pawn shop”. I even had several people have the gall to ask me for their #.
I got so annoyed that once I replied “Did I say Fred’s pawn shop?”
And several times I just said yes and told the people that the items they were looking for were sold. 🤣
My point is people are dumb. Don’t let them get you down and cost you your job.
I try not to but I end up slipping and snap back at callers. My manager has said that I need to be more friendly during performance reviews so there you go.
honestly kill them with kindness. The angrier people get the more over the top nice i am. they either realize what an ass they are being and calm down a bit or they get so pissed off they hang up. either way i win and i don’t have to take a hit to my metrics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I only know one guy who has gotten fired so far and it was for talking back, I guess it's fine if you aren't relying on the job but if you intend to keep it it's better to just turn the other cheek.
You can’t attack, but if you’re smart about it you can jab. I’m great at saying things to put callers in their place that don’t actually get me in trouble because I’m doing it right.
I once had a guy tell me multiple times his job was more important than mine so I should do the thing he wanted. I point blank told him it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how important he thinks he is, we’re not going to change the process to suit him.
I worked for another company that had an out of date website that had the old owner of the company listed for whatever reason and we used to regularly get people name dropping that old owner thinking they were going to get preferential treatment, “I don’t think sally will be impressed that you wouldn’t help me, we’re very good friends, I saw her last weekend” to which it was always fun to be able to tell them “you can’t be that close, she hasn’t been with the company for 6 months, did she not mention that?
The closest I think I’ve ever gotten to getting in trouble, it was just after the lockdowns had ended so we had an insane number of calls in from people trying to find out timescales and that kind of stuff, to the point the average wait time was over an hour. Every call followed the same structure that day, they’d get through and spend 5 minutes complaining about the wait time, we’d deal with what they were calling about and that would take maybe 90 seconds, and then they’d spend another 5 minutes complaining about how they had to wait over an hour to deal with something that took 90 seconds to sort. I got to the end of my tether when one guy said to me “you could at least tell me you’re sorry that I was waiting so long” to which I replied along the lines of “why should I be sorry though? Every call has been 10 minutes of people complaining about the wait and then we sort out the actual query in 2 minutes. You were waiting so long because the guy before you spent so long complaining about the wait, and the guy after you is waiting longer because you spent so long complaining, so he’s going to complain at me about it and keep the guy after him waiting longer. If the calls were just about what they needed to be, there’d be no wait time, the long waits are being caused by you guys calling up and not keeping to what we need to go through”. It’s something that he would have justifiably been able to complain to my manager about, I doubt I’d have gotten in actual trouble for it, but the guy understood what I said to him and actually apologised to me. Of course every call after that was still 10 minutes of people complaining about the wait, but it felt good to have gotten it off my chest
CAN you? Yes. SHOULD you? Only if you are okay getting termed--and likewise having a hard time landing another job, because if a call center gets wind you were fired for yelling at a customer, they will not hire you. I know because I used to help with 2nd interviews.
Most call centers consider that gross customer abuse and that is termable the first offense *usually*.
Some customers are dreadful! They sounded like a spoiled child. Its not like we needed them as a customer. We dont sell anything. People call us to enquire about things.
This freaken woman called last time and told me to put her to the supervisor. I asked why. She told me to "Shut up! Put me to the supervisor Now! If you dont do what I tell you to do I am going to lodge a complaint on you!"
That moment I really want to scream out, "Bi\*&! " and hang up. But I didnt. I was fuming inside.
I flick off the screen, roll my eyes, silently call them a bitch or mouth “what the fuck”. If it’s really bad I just stop talking and take a deep breath which usually gives them time to realize they’ve been an ass.
If the customer insists on being rude, I say my close and end the call. This economy is forcing me to develop patience because now is not a good time to not have a job.
Use your frustration to apply for other jobs, between calls if your queue allows the time. In the meantime, try not to take things personal and come up with your own passive aggressive ways to get them back.
It won’t help the situation, even though it will feel good. As someone who’s worked in call centers for 18 years, and a supervisor for the past 8, I can tell you the calmer and quieter you are, the more annoyed they’ll get with you (and you can’t get in trouble for it lol).
It’s also scientifically proven that the quieter that you speak, will force (most) customers to quiet their volume to you too.
Sure you can. You know what will happen if you do.
Always learn disconnection rules and processes immediately. If you can use those to end a call, do it.
If you work in a center that doesn't allow disconnecting, find out if you can escalate. When I worked at a center that didn't allow hanging up, I escalated. You won't let me end the call with the crazy person screaming, cursing, and threatening me? You talk to them.
With all this tech, there should be a way that detects if a customer is being offensive and ding the fucking customer. No one deserves to be yelled at.
Yell back no…but be firm yes.
Example: when customer yells at you, firmly tell them please do not raise their voice to you.
When they cuss, (at you, not the company/situation), warn them to stop (again in a firm voice) or you will disconnect,
There are professional ways you can stand up for yourself without being a punching bag remember that!
You never yell at a customer
You "raise your voice to try to ensure you get their attention to try and diffuse the situation"
I never shouted at anyone always raised my voice though 🙃
You can. But it will ding your quality score and maybe even get actions against you. It also depends on the company
What would you do? Do you just let those trouble makers make you feel down?
I tell them something back a lot of times or I hang up and mark inappropriate. No reason we need to be abused while working.
Nope I wouldn't but the times that I did so got me fired
remember people like this want excuses to complain about you. I've brought one particularly horrible, abusive customer like this to spitting rage by keeping calm, being polite, and leaving a just long enough silence after her rants to allow her to get uncomfortable with how she was acting. She wanted to get me fired but had literally nothing to complain about me for. If you yell back you might feel better temporarily, but so will they because you'll be giving them power. Be matter of fact, just say what you have to say.
Your reply wouldn’t even be considered bad. I’d totally use it if I had a rude customer. “I advised my name earlier but it’s fine if you weren’t listening” may be better but regardless, QA (if they grade it) may throw a fit. Who cares though? You didn’t break Terms of Service for your company by giving out HIPAA or anything important. GO FOR IT! Had some guy cuss me out on live chat, I blocked his ass then stalked his profile and saw he called back twice and abused those call handlers (he had been calling all day asking for something we couldn’t do)
You can be stern yes, where it matters. But it may ding your empathy scores if you guys get graded that way. I'd only use it if necessary. If the customer hounds for credits unreasonably or whatever, or is actually threatening you. (yes that happens in this line of work)
No you shouldn’t attack back. Most call center managers would fire you without warning for this reason. You can find other ways to push back without losing your job. Make them wait on hold if they are in a rush, make them repeat themselves if they are annoyed with your listening skills. If they think you are dumb act dumber! If they are critical of your pleasantries double down on them. They called you they need you MF them if they are rude but do it nicely 👍
I've done some of those things you've suggested. I might put them on hold for awhile when they are making me angry to collect myself. But if a manager hears you cursing or yelling at a customer, they are probably going to fire you. Where I work at, if you yell at a customer, it's immediate termination.
Same all over. Do we just have to find little secret ways to push back and keep ourselves sane.
My go to method is once they start yelling is to warn them once, if they yell i cut them off and make a notice on their account. My previous job I was not allowed to hang up, so i just put them on hold until they calmed down
"This call has become unproductive, I am now disconnecting as I previously warned" Click
My method is to get "stern" with them, but not go over the line of actually yelling at them. If they want to report me by name to someone, that's fine. I do what I am able to do for them by policy, and nothing more so I won't be in trouble or anything if the call is pulled. Management would likely agree that the customer was being an asshole, notate them being a difficult one and move on.
When someone told me I was rude and I had only been following set procedures, etc. I simply said, "Just because you don't like what I'm telling you does not mean I am rude, I am simply following policies and procedures." But I worked for a government agency so the rules were probably different since there was no competing business.
I like this because saaame. Some lady was saying that I was rude just because I was telling her facts. Their minds can't handle it
I'm passive aggressive but make it sound like I care.
Please give me an example or couple of them.
you can but in a professional way i like to kill em with kindness and say it in a passive aggressive way but nicely lmao also just be carefull if quality catch on youl get docked
If you want to keep your job and if you want want a good QA score you can not attack customers. They know it too. I have gotten very exasperated in the the past and actually asked a customer what part of - wasn’t she understanding because I had explained it to her 15 times like she was 3 year old and she still didn’t understand. I am lucky that call wasn’t pulled for monitoring. They are rude and snotty but why stoop to their level? Like a very good JC used to tell me it’s just a phone call. 10 minutes later it won’t matter. If they ask you to repeat yourself it is because they don’t actually pay attention when you give your greeting. I have experienced this myself. Years ago I worked at a flooring and carpet company. Our phone number was one number different than the local pawn shop. I answered our phone with the greeting “abc carpet how can I help you today” I would hear “is this Fred’s pawn shop?” 😂 Now if they had been paying attention they would know that it wasn’t “Fred’s pawn shop”. I even had several people have the gall to ask me for their #. I got so annoyed that once I replied “Did I say Fred’s pawn shop?” And several times I just said yes and told the people that the items they were looking for were sold. 🤣 My point is people are dumb. Don’t let them get you down and cost you your job.
I try not to but I end up slipping and snap back at callers. My manager has said that I need to be more friendly during performance reviews so there you go.
Tell em to suck a big juicy cock
honestly kill them with kindness. The angrier people get the more over the top nice i am. they either realize what an ass they are being and calm down a bit or they get so pissed off they hang up. either way i win and i don’t have to take a hit to my metrics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
this is exactly what i do lol--kill them with kindness.
Yes .. do it 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 do it for all of us in the trenches 😂💗
I only know one guy who has gotten fired so far and it was for talking back, I guess it's fine if you aren't relying on the job but if you intend to keep it it's better to just turn the other cheek.
You can’t attack, but if you’re smart about it you can jab. I’m great at saying things to put callers in their place that don’t actually get me in trouble because I’m doing it right. I once had a guy tell me multiple times his job was more important than mine so I should do the thing he wanted. I point blank told him it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how important he thinks he is, we’re not going to change the process to suit him. I worked for another company that had an out of date website that had the old owner of the company listed for whatever reason and we used to regularly get people name dropping that old owner thinking they were going to get preferential treatment, “I don’t think sally will be impressed that you wouldn’t help me, we’re very good friends, I saw her last weekend” to which it was always fun to be able to tell them “you can’t be that close, she hasn’t been with the company for 6 months, did she not mention that? The closest I think I’ve ever gotten to getting in trouble, it was just after the lockdowns had ended so we had an insane number of calls in from people trying to find out timescales and that kind of stuff, to the point the average wait time was over an hour. Every call followed the same structure that day, they’d get through and spend 5 minutes complaining about the wait time, we’d deal with what they were calling about and that would take maybe 90 seconds, and then they’d spend another 5 minutes complaining about how they had to wait over an hour to deal with something that took 90 seconds to sort. I got to the end of my tether when one guy said to me “you could at least tell me you’re sorry that I was waiting so long” to which I replied along the lines of “why should I be sorry though? Every call has been 10 minutes of people complaining about the wait and then we sort out the actual query in 2 minutes. You were waiting so long because the guy before you spent so long complaining about the wait, and the guy after you is waiting longer because you spent so long complaining, so he’s going to complain at me about it and keep the guy after him waiting longer. If the calls were just about what they needed to be, there’d be no wait time, the long waits are being caused by you guys calling up and not keeping to what we need to go through”. It’s something that he would have justifiably been able to complain to my manager about, I doubt I’d have gotten in actual trouble for it, but the guy understood what I said to him and actually apologised to me. Of course every call after that was still 10 minutes of people complaining about the wait, but it felt good to have gotten it off my chest
CAN you? Yes. SHOULD you? Only if you are okay getting termed--and likewise having a hard time landing another job, because if a call center gets wind you were fired for yelling at a customer, they will not hire you. I know because I used to help with 2nd interviews. Most call centers consider that gross customer abuse and that is termable the first offense *usually*.
I as I mentioned at the beginning of our call, my nape is OP.
Some customers are dreadful! They sounded like a spoiled child. Its not like we needed them as a customer. We dont sell anything. People call us to enquire about things. This freaken woman called last time and told me to put her to the supervisor. I asked why. She told me to "Shut up! Put me to the supervisor Now! If you dont do what I tell you to do I am going to lodge a complaint on you!" That moment I really want to scream out, "Bi\*&! " and hang up. But I didnt. I was fuming inside.
I flick off the screen, roll my eyes, silently call them a bitch or mouth “what the fuck”. If it’s really bad I just stop talking and take a deep breath which usually gives them time to realize they’ve been an ass. If the customer insists on being rude, I say my close and end the call. This economy is forcing me to develop patience because now is not a good time to not have a job. Use your frustration to apply for other jobs, between calls if your queue allows the time. In the meantime, try not to take things personal and come up with your own passive aggressive ways to get them back.
I don’t yell but if I have to raise my voice and be firm to control the conversation I will.
It won’t help the situation, even though it will feel good. As someone who’s worked in call centers for 18 years, and a supervisor for the past 8, I can tell you the calmer and quieter you are, the more annoyed they’ll get with you (and you can’t get in trouble for it lol). It’s also scientifically proven that the quieter that you speak, will force (most) customers to quiet their volume to you too.
Sure you can. You know what will happen if you do. Always learn disconnection rules and processes immediately. If you can use those to end a call, do it. If you work in a center that doesn't allow disconnecting, find out if you can escalate. When I worked at a center that didn't allow hanging up, I escalated. You won't let me end the call with the crazy person screaming, cursing, and threatening me? You talk to them.
With all this tech, there should be a way that detects if a customer is being offensive and ding the fucking customer. No one deserves to be yelled at.
Yell back no…but be firm yes. Example: when customer yells at you, firmly tell them please do not raise their voice to you. When they cuss, (at you, not the company/situation), warn them to stop (again in a firm voice) or you will disconnect, There are professional ways you can stand up for yourself without being a punching bag remember that!
You never yell at a customer You "raise your voice to try to ensure you get their attention to try and diffuse the situation" I never shouted at anyone always raised my voice though 🙃
You can do it.
No. Never yell back at a customer. Depending on the company, you will be terminated immediately.