When you work in customer service, especially as long as I have, the amount of abuse can be staggering. It wasn’t always that way. In the good old days, customers were as polite as those behind the counter or on the phone, but now there is also email, and over the years people seem to be coming unhinged.
Here are some examples of Karen behavior–a term applied to those people who overreact to issues, negative or not–that I have encountered, so you can see how not to become just like them and have a better experience.
When starting to register a complaint, people have a habit of beginning with what I call the “break out the violins moment,” in which one opens with a sentence such as, “I have been with you for so-many-years.” Naturally most businesses value long-time customers, but our experience often is that you only contact us with a problem, so this sentence immediately prepares us for something unpleasant. If you want to mention your years of loyalty, save it until closer to the end of the tirade, when you are looking for a certain type of resolution. If the experience was really that bad as a loyal customer, you may get a better outcome this way.
The offshoot of this is the person who tells us that “every time I use you, it goes wrong.” Most places don’t stay in business if they consistently do things improperly, so you may want to consider that something else is happening to cause that outcome; or maybe you’re just torturing yourself.
Using what was termed in a Star Trek movie as “colorful metaphors” will also cause mental defensive maneuvers to be put in place. I have seen emails with the F bomb dropped, but also rather laughable terminology such as “pointless program” and “idiotic instructions” (note the use of the same letter in both words for maximum effect). If you complain with a thesaurus at hand, you’re just wasting time. Be succinct and simple (see, I can do it, too), and you may fare better.
Accusations about websites via email can be irksome. I wish I could watch a person actually navigate a screen before registering a complaint, because if a company’s website flubbed as often as they get comments about how awful it is, incoming business would shut down almost instantly, and the responsible site builders would be the laughingstock of the industry. Often people just don’t use the scrolling properly, enter data incorrectly or skip something that needs not to be skipped. Take your time; don’t try to do a process on your ten-minute break or lunch half hour.
Accusations are a real hoot, because often the charges have nothing to do with anything. Somebody this past week said the online staff were being “predatory” by not placing a specific option as a button on our webpage. That was a head scratcher if ever I saw one. If there were predatory behavior, it would be in the form of seeking out information, which often comes in button form. These types of negative comments usually lead to a back-and-forth conversation in which the complainer is determined to bully the staff into submission. It never works. Companies have terms and conditions, and they’re readily available. If you don’t like the terms, discuss and decide how you want to proceed, but seeking exceptions just because you are you don’t normally fly.
Mentioning one’s credentials to bolster a comment can also be hilarious. Emails with second grade spelling from somebody with a supposed four-year degree cancel each other out.
Another big complaint that has come down the line recently is the one about treating new customers better than the current ones. If I could respond to those jabs, I would tell them the story about a freebie I received for a magazine subscription, when a few months later the same magazine offered a different premium, and I wanted that one as well. That first premium was a cassette tape which has since been consigned to a used record store, and I’m glad I didn’t get a new one, because I enjoyed the first one, and it’s one per customer. If you didn’t get your one, that’s a different story.
Anyway, anybody who would cheat a new customer out of the same experience they had when they were a new customer is a bit of a boor if you ask me. Some experiences in life are designed to be had once.
I will now end this one experience you were kind enough to sit through, with a short tale; for the first time in ages, an email came from a customer who began by saying thanks for the services provided over the years, went on to say that he felt he may have done something to cause the problem he brought to our attention, and asked if we could help. Which was done easily.
Such interactions should not be the rarity. Just as Karens should not exist as a grumpy type of customer.
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