In my company I'm the lowliest staff member, but I'm also the first point of contact before you can get through to speaking to an engineer or manager. Because it's a given that all the engineers and managers are constantly busy, I will most likely 'lie' to you and say they are unable to take your call. If my company were a castle, I'd be the moat. If you are rude to me, you will drown in the mire.
I answer the phone as such: "XYZ Company, Zombietron speaking". Here is the part that most people never learnt. It's now your turn to say your name, what company you belong to, the general outline of what you need and who you wish to speak to. Was that so hard?
An appropriate response to "hello" is not "Bob please, now". Speaking monosyllabically is not going to get you very far. Telling me how urgent your problem is and how you need to be put through RIGHT NOW will not get you very far either. I can assess how urgent your problem is. Yelling at me because you made a mistake will not get you any assistance. Asking me if I am satisfied with my phone plan will not get you very far either.
The majority of my day is spent checking emails. I keep my Outlook open constantly, and not only do I check my own inbox, but most other staff member's as well. I'm basically a personal assistant to everyone, if that makes sense. As such, I have a few handy tips for how to compose a business email correctly.
- Use capital letters. And punctuation. And proper spelling. Jesus fucking Christ.
- Ensure you have an email signature. It's not rocket science. Usually, it's set up for you when you start working for a company.
- Learn the difference between a Subject line and a Message field. No really. This happens more often than you think.
- If someone sends you an email, generally the next step is to actually reply. I know that you received it.
- Start with Hello, end with Goodbye, Thank you, Cheers, ANYTHING. It's not hard.
- Keep in mind that text is not a great conveyor of emotions. So keep it bland and straight. I find that a lot of people's emails come across as extremely rude, mean, haughty and well, repulsive, when they were probably going for sarcasm. Or they could just be assholes.
These things can be incorporated into outside-work life too, to make interactions with people a little bit more polite and less straining. I guess the bottom line is, I don't want to be here as much as you, so let's make this all as painless as possible please?
Oh..I've joined Twitter. Mostly so a friend of mine and I can trade inane statements. Like about airplane food and those things on the end of your shoelaces. What is the deal? So if you wish, follow me.
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I love my job too. customer service is rad!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds a hell of a lot like my old job - except for a recruitment agency. Executive recruitment too, so I'm talking positions for $100K and up. The clients were about 50/50 - some fantastic to deal with, and the others very much of the 'Bob, please' variety. The part that really got to me was when the actual candidates were rude to me or called me honey or sweetheart. It was a really professional atmosphere and for someone to talk down to me or to become rude pissed me off. I'd go and tell whoever was handling the position right away - no one wants to hire someone that's rude to lower staff. 9/10 these people would miss out on the position and it always made me feel that karma had been served :P Also I guess I was really lucky that all the senior staff treated my opinion with respect too.
ReplyDeleteI used to work as the customer service/phone dude for a courier company. Basically it was my job to get screamed at when things didn't get delivered .... and christ there are some rude bastards out there!
ReplyDeleteThe company I worked for was a heap of shit and probably did have delivery staff that chucked parcels into bushes etc .... but still!
Enjoyable blog as always ... not sure about Twitter, I waste enough of my time stalking my friends online as it is!!