Over the limits

I’m not some kind of self-help guru or big social engineer but I have phoned customer support. A lot. So in case I have some sort of brain-fart in the future and decide that this is the last call I’ll ever make to customer support and it will all go well, here are some general nuggets of advice I’ve collated over time. As a prologue to this, I am in no way extroverted or comfortable on the phone, I despise indirect forms of communication and I count the phone as one of the worst so phoning customer support is not one of my favourite things; I don’t go baiting telecoms operators or Russian-roulette which company I’ll phone and berate today. I have also never worked in a call centre, so this is purely from a consumer point of view.

1. First and foremost is to form the reason why you’re phoning customer support. In no way are you phoning for social reasons (or if you are, seek professional help); whether the call is just for information, to get something delivered, make a decision etc. Keep this reason in mind because whatever else the person/people on the other end say, they are putting obstacles in the way of you getting towards this goal.
2. Think out the ways in which your goal is going to be achieved. If it’s about getting something delivered, start thinking about Post Office delivery times, meeting couriers; if it’s about a faulty item think about replacement, refunds. The big “trick” is to recognise when customer support is bullshitting and when they’re actually helping.
3. Have a written list of everything you know. Keeping a paper trail is absolutely critical. This includes customer reference number(s), what the problem is, things that have or haven’t happened, past calls you’ve made. Everything. Keep this open on screen in front of you or on a piece paper with a pen handy, this is where you’re going to write notes on how customer support is going to make your goal happen, who said it and when.
4. Have a mental list of everything they’re likely to ask and decent answers to questions. This is above and beyond what’s written on your list in point 3; it’s answers like where you’re going to be tomorrow for delivery or what phone number you have at work. I used to have little monologues of vitriol that I would form before I called and while therapeutic, they’re not conducive to getting things done and you will more than likely never, ever get a chance to use them.

Everything outside of these points is really common sense and mental acuity. Keeping calm is paramount, you want to be forceful and get your point across without sounding like a raving lunatic. Start calm as if everything is fine and this mishap (whatever it may be that caused you to be routed to a call-centre) is just par for the course; this tests the waters and lets you gauge just how helpful people are going to be to your particular problem.

Never, under any circumstances allow yourself to be railroaded into them saying “We’ll call you back.” It is the death-knell for your customer support experience and will probably mean you calling back angry half an hour later and having to explain the entire situation to a different company representative. If they need to call another department to verify, get them to put you on hold, while you are on hold they cannot receive any other customer calls so you are the priority.

If it all boils down to them phoning you back, get a number that you can call which will bring you directly through to them or to their department. Don’t settle for going through the “You are in a queue” nonsense again. Give them a time-limit on when they should phone back: “By 2pm” or “In the next half hour”. This means you can come from the phone call and go do something and know precisely when you need to phone them back instead of sitting on your hands and waiting. Before they put the phone down or if they are going to send you any information (e-mail, phone, post) make sure they have the right information. Ask them to confirm what they have and offer corrections if and when they are needed. This eliminates the possibility that you’re sitting and waiting for a call which won’t come because of bad information.

It’s worth reiterating that anything that customer support say that isn’t helping you get to your goal, be they defensive apologies or reasons why things aren’t moving, is an obstacle and should be treated as such. This is customer support so you are always right even when you’re wrong, this is about what they are doing or going to do for you. This is different from being unreasonable though, recognising when something is genuinely out of their control (strikes, floods, shortages etc.) is different from when they’re trying to cover up their inadequecies (which is what you’re trying to overcome).

At the end of the phone call before the representative has done their “Thank you for your call”, restate exactly what you have taken away from the call, what is going to happen, pertinent information etc. This crystalises the information in your head and gives the representative one last time to make any amends. It goes without saying that you should get names and times of all calls you make, this goes back to the idea of making paper trail.

Probably the hardest point to achieve is: do not put the phone down until you get closer to your goal. That is getting confirmation that you are in a better position as a customer and a consumer than you were when you started, beyond the obvious being ten minutes older and slightly more annoyed.

Fundamentally, all of this sort of “advice” boils down to common sense. Some things are worth stating simply because they’re applied common sense, the kind you only get through tormented and wearying phone-calls that make you wish you’d said something just a little more vitriolic.