A lot of customers treat customer service like a psychological outlet, someone who is paid to take their abuse. I have seen and heard some pretty horrible situa

A lot of customers treat customer service like a psychological outlet, someone who is paid to take their abuse. I have seen and heard some pretty horrible situations of a customer who is clearly taking out their own emotional problems on a poor CS rep time and time again. I don't know many CS people who haven't ended up in tears at work at least once. It's a psychologically hazardous job, and it gets no fanfare. It doesn't help that the relationship between customers and businesses is so often just directly antagonistic, customer service isn't something that businesses want to do, it's something they have to do. CS people end up being the meat shield between the customer who knows they are being exploited or manipulated and the people in the company making decisions for little bits of profit or to cut costs here and there and never directly has to face repercussions for all the shortcuts they take just to bolster their personal KPIs. There's a reason people hate working CS and retail; it can be legitimately traumatic, and they often have to find themselves being the friendly face pasted over an uncaring machine. For all the hate that open offices get, I appreciate the fact that my desk is within earshot of CS taking phone calls. As a developer it's a hell of a lot easier to see what the downstream effects of the things you do and the changes you make are when you can hear the repercussions of them directly. It also definitely motivates me to try to find ways I can ease the burden on them. These stresses ought to be distributed as equally among a corporation as possible.