I am going to verbally bitchslap you as soon as you call back! (kinda long)

[LizaMarie]

About a week and a half ago I got a call from a customer who had received his order twice. It's annoying for me, but it was our fault after all, so I tell him we'll send a call tag with UPS to come and pick it up, no problem! I get off the phone with him, go to pull up his order to see what we're picking up and realize it is a gigantic, thousand+ dollar order. I'm going to need to send about 5 separate call tags before we get it all.

It's very annoying to have to answer calls while you're trying to get something fixes, such as five extremely annoying call tags, but eventually I was successful. Just in time to take a nice four day weekend (I personally am very thankful for Thanksgiving!), because its always good to do your homework before you go outside to play.

Enter monday morning. I am grumpy, it's 40 degrees outside and raining, I had to drive in traffic for an hour and a half, and I haven't even finished my coffee yet. I check my email, expecting community announcements, maybe a chain letter or two, but not much else. Instead I find a big ugly email from my coworker, letting me know that UPS has sent her an exception alert, informing us that customer ID blahblah590 refused a call tag, saying "He would just keep it after all."

Now, keep in mind that I wasted hours sending these call tags out, and more than $150 doing it. These things aren't free!

I never got a return phone call from this customer, I don't know if he expected UPS to do his dirty work for him or not, or if he thought by not calling us we would forget about his order and not charge him the thousand or so dollars it will cost him to keep all that pretty fair trade gourmet coffee and chocolate. Either way, he is SO getting his ass chewed out by yours truly, as soon as he gets back from vacation.

Asshole.

[Enigma]

Oh dear, I would be looking up his number and making a special call from a payphone.

[LifeCarnie]

Speaking purely as a customer service supervisor:



This whole situation started with your company making a mistake. From the sound of things, the only thing the customer did wrong is choose to do business with your company, which in turn has made them a bad customer.


I'm not all that familiar with UPS, since my company uses Fed Ex, but I can't believe that there is that much of a difference in rates. But, anyway just how does five call tags cost you $150?

They're about $5.00 a piece for the ground tags and $.50 each for the email tags. And, it takes about....3 minutes to process a request for either.

Regardless of how long this took you and how much it cost, your company made the mistake, which started the whole process, the customer didn't.

So why are you mad with the customer again? Oh, that's right, you're company, which you represent, made a mistake. That makes total sense....to someone, somewhere, maybe, or not.



This is the part that really gets me though.

I never got a return phone call from this customer, I don't know if he expected UPS to do his dirty work for him or not, or if he thought by not calling us we would forget about his order and not charge him the thousand or so dollars it will cost him to keep all that pretty fair trade gourmet coffee and chocolate. Either way, he is SO getting his ass chewed out by yours truly, as soon as he gets back from vacation.

This happens.....everyday in B2B customer service.

Call tags are sent, but in the interim the customer decides that they do have the money, demand for the product, and the additional space to keep the duplicate order. So rather than having the vendor incurr the additional expense of also having to pay the return freight, the customer keeps the product in leiu of a fuure order. Which actually helps your company (the vendor) financially, since they now don't have to pay the additonal return freight charges.

There was no malice in your customer's actions. Other than they could have made up their mind sooner, but again, if your company hadn't screwed up in the first place, than they're wouldn't have been any need for any of this to occur.

Most companies invoice customers and in those instances that the customer do receive a duplicate order, they're either invoiced twice, or they just need to be add-billed for the additional product that they received.

Granted the customer could have made up their mind about keeping the product, before the $25.00 in call tags were issued, but by your own account, your company is now $975.00 up in additional sales, thanks to this customer being cooperative enough to absorb your companies mistake.

And this customer is an asshole....why?

I hate when people try and give me money too!!

[Alpha Strike]

I would imagine that the original poster is upset because the customer's decision to keep the additional product without informing her company cost the company $150 plus the time and effort put into to doing these call-tags.

The issue wasn't who made the mistake but rather the follow-up work involved.

[myswtghst]

So why are you mad with the customer again? Oh, that's right, you're company, which you represent, made a mistake. That makes total sense....to someone, somewhere, maybe, or not.

Maybe I'm crazy, but it makes perfect sense to me. Mistakes happen, and in the grand scheme of things, this is the better kind of mistake, as the customer still received what he paid for. The customer initially was a good customer, as he called in to let them know about the mistake.

The aggravation comes in first in the fact that the agent was not aware it was such a large order, and the initial attempt to resolve this quickly was made a long, stressful process because of that. I've had to arrange for a pallet to be picked up from a customer and shipped back to our warehouse, and working with UPS on that was a headache. Technically, this isn't the customer's fault, but he can't be unaware that this isn't a simple problem, given the size of the order.

To me, the suck comes in when the customer decided to keep the product, without notifying the company, without offering any form of payment, and did so by denying the UPS pick up that he had requested. (I've had customers decide to "cancel" an order by refusing delivery of a package, which I think is equally obnoxious). While the customer may not be acting shady on purpose, it does come across that way - it looks like he's hoping they'll forget that he received this extra shipment and will let him keep it, free of charge, which seems asinine, to me.

[Jester]

I have to side with LifeCarnie here in that there is absolutely no reason I could see to chew the customer a new one.

Customers do things all the time that annoy us, but that does not mean we have the right to "verbally bitchslap them."

Yes, as a server it is very annoying for me to have a party that has a ton of modifications to their meals, that wants separate checks, that wants this on the side or none of this or extra this....but part of my job is dealing with that to make the customers happy and enjoy their stay and their meal in my establishment, and so I do it, even if I want to roll my eyes at how anal they are. They customers are well within their rights to ask for these special orders, and it is my job to make sure they happen, if my kitchen can do it. There are some we can't, and it is then my job to inform the customers of our inability to meet all their needs.

In the OP's case, it is the customer's right to change their mind and keep the duplicate order as long as they pay for it. (If the customer in the OP did not expect to pay for it, then he is in fact an SC and deserves to be reprimanded. And as far as I'm concerned, he can take Gravekeeper's advice on the best recreational uses for a sandpaper-covered coatrack.) It is not their job to be concerned about how much effort they just put the OP and the OP's company through. It may be a bit RUDE of them to do that, and not call the OP's company back to inform them of this decision, but it is still within their rights.

One day I may have my own bar. Probably in Mexico. Who knows? But if I do, there are certain things I will certainly allow my employees to do, including telling off asshole customers. But I will certainly NOT allow them to tell off a customer just because the customer is annoying them by asking them to do what is, in essence, their job.

Nothing personal against the OP, but if I ran their company and this situation occurred, and the OP did, in fact, "verbally bitchslap" the customer the next time they called, the OP would be looking for a new job before the business day ended.

Folks, we are in "customer service." If you can't handle the annoying parts of this line of work without berating a customer for something minor like this, you probably should not be in this field at all.

[LifeCarnie]

To me, the suck comes in when the customer decided to keep the product, without notifying the company, without offering any form of payment, and did so by denying the UPS pick up that he had requested. (I've had customers decide to "cancel" an order by refusing delivery of a package, which I think is equally obnoxious). While the customer may not be acting shady on purpose, it does come across that way - it looks like he's hoping they'll forget that he received this extra shipment and will let him keep it, free of charge, which seems asinine, to me.

Why I doubt the customer had anything dishonest in mind when the call tags were refused IS the fact that the customer notified the company that the order was duplicated.

The customer acted in good faith. Besides, if the call tags were sent last week, a holiday week, he probably received the tags before anyone could be told he that he had changed his mind.

[bainsidhe]

Folks, we are in "customer service." If you can't handle the annoying parts of this line of work without berating a customer for something minor like this, you probably should not be in this field at all.

More than anything, I have to agree with myswtghst. Still, Jester makes a valid point. I work in CS in phones/order entry/sales where we ship manufactured instruments. Mistakes happen. Sometimes my fault, shippings fault, QA's fault. Hell, there's a list of people down the line and this is before UPS even gets involved. (UPS is great BTW, UNLESS you have a problem. Then it's a real pain in the ass).

I interpreted the OP's thread as a chance to vent, rather than really talk dirt to a customer. When I'm getting real upset at work, I make angry sounds and strangling motions at the phone in frustration. I growl at the phone (it's annoying being interrupted as I try to "fix" a problem) when it rings. But I still put on my fake-pleasant voice and take care of the customer. I think evil thoughts, but I don't act on them. Because this is just a way for me vent frustration.

And yes, this customer would have ticked me off. Because he/she would have put my efforts to waste, after I spent a great deal of time and aggravation handling the problem. I agree that this customer probably didn't mean any harm, but I would find it damn frustrating. ~growls at computer screen~

Anyway, thanks all for the different points of view. I really enjoy this site and the varying perspectives.

[Jester]

I agree.

Venting in private, making faces when the customer can't see you, muting them and talking shit to them when they can't hear you, or silently cursing their very existence mentally are all great ways to relieve stress.

But verbally berating a customer that has either done nothing wrong or may have been guilty of being a bit inconsiderate is just not acceptable in customer service. This is the kind of thing that happens every day. It is just like waiting tables and getting the occasional crappy tip--it's going to happen, you have to know it's going to happen, and you have to be able to deal with it professionally, even if inside your head you already fantasizing about the firebombing of the offending idiot's village.

I'll be the first to say that a truly sucky customer that is trying to get things for free or who is being abusive to staff or who is an entitlement whore or is just a general horror should occasionally get a comeuppance. But it has to be the appropriate instance, and not just whenever something somewhat irritating comes along. Being irritated and being able to deal with it is, actually, part of the job we all signed up for.

Ain't it fun?!?!?!

[LizaMarie]

I interpreted the OP's thread as a chance to vent, rather than really talk dirt to a customer. When I'm getting real upset at work, I make angry sounds and strangling motions at the phone in frustration. I growl at the phone (it's annoying being interrupted as I try to "fix" a problem) when it rings. But I still put on my fake-pleasant voice and take care of the customer. I think evil thoughts, but I don't act on them. Because this is just a way for me vent frustration.

And yes, this customer would have ticked me off. Because he/she would have put my efforts to waste, after I spent a great deal of time and aggravation handling the problem. I agree that this customer probably didn't mean any harm, but I would find it damn frustrating. ~growls at computer screen~

Anyway, thanks all for the different points of view. I really enjoy this site and the varying perspectives.

Cheers. That's what this site is for. I wrote this immediately after I heard from my coworker that the call tags had been refused, and was immediately...not quite incensed, but certainly pissed. I've had a chance since then to actually double check what actually went down and have discovered this is not actually the thousand dollar order that I sent 5 call tags for, but a different account entirely (Amusingly enough I got a call back from THAT customer saying that those call tags never showed up, but that's a whole different story). So original customer is let off the hook to a certain degree, but am I completely unreasonable in being annoyed that the customer couldnt be bother to shoot us an email letting us know he was keeping the product?

[Jester]

No, it is not completely unreasonable to be a bit annoyed about that.