4 ms·
in the early days of my company i had to yell back at a few customers - they were highly competent, technical people, who seem to deal with anxiety/loss of cont
by iamacynic 9y ago
in the early days of my company i had to yell back at a few customers - they were highly competent, technical people, who seem to deal with anxiety/loss of control by yelling at someone they perceive to be beneath them. scumbags.
i remember one time i was getting berated, and i straight up told the guy "do you want me to listen to you yell at me, or do you want me to try to fix the problem? it's your call." right then and there he realized he was dealing with an adult, and not a child, and changed his tune real quick. reality check.
i've lost a bit of business because i and my team weren't supplicants. but those customers were the worst of the worst - nobody on earth would want to deal with their shit. they tend to be the kind of person who thinks in order to run a company you have to be a dickhead.
i've also just hung up on people, and have instructed all of my employees to immediately hang up if anyone ever gets out of line.
i wish more of that happened in normal lines of business.
- tyingq 9y agoI do this with my ecomm business as well. It doesn't happen often, but I have no issue parting ways with verbally abusive customers. I try not to have a short trigger, but for example, the second or third chewing out for something UPS did, and that I gave a full refund for. At that point it's easy to push back.
- dqv 9y agoIt's refreshing to see someone push back on bad behavior. You're making your business better by allocating your skills to the customers who deserve it.
- tyingq 9y agoThanks! I can see, though, how it would be hard to scale up to a bigger business. Since it's just me a few others, we can rely on trust and common sense. It's somewhat easy to tell when you're being yelled at because of some unrelated thing that has the customer upset...And, so give them a little more room. Other times, it seems more clear it's just an entitled prick. I don't know how you would make guidelines or training on how to scale that. Or maybe I'm making bad judgement calls sometimes? In any case, life is too short to take excessive crap just to make a living.
- odonnellryan 9y ago> they tend to be the kind of person who thinks in order to run a company you have to be a dickhead. Often they are also the kinds of people who will cost you long-term: in legal fees and so on.
- dqv 9y ago>they were highly competent, technical people, who seem to deal with anxiety/loss of control by yelling at someone they perceive to be beneath them. Sounds like HN. I'm actually surprised anecdotes haven't popped up where people describe why they're justified in treating people like trash. It's such a breath of fresh air to see someone saying this :) I'm not sure how any company can promote morale by allowing customers to take out their unrelated frustrations on employees.
- jschwartzi 9y agoI worked with a guy once who bragged about how much free stuff he got just for being an asshole to CSRs at different companies. I had the displeasure of listening to one of his calls once and I was shocked at just how badly he treated people. He treated his girlfriend the same way, too, and I'm surprised she didn't dump him for it.
- iamacynic 9y ago> He treated his girlfriend the same way, too, and I'm surprised she didn't dump him for it. many women, like many men, actually want to be abused.