I was accused of being racist yesterday. Long read. Kind of irked.
- Thread starter Eric
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Yeah, that's the one thing you could've done differently, Eric, is just to serve the jerk in order of arrival. If there's one thing these guys can't stand, it's being disrespected or put off somehow. When I'm dealing with an a-hole/narcissist/bully-type customer, I try hard to stay as professional as I can, do my job, and minimize any feather-ruffling. And by feather ruffling, I mean I keep in mind how fragile their egos are, how sensitive they are to any signs of disrespect, being ignored, etc. It's basically just a CYA move -- my real impulse is the same as Cody's (to tell the guy to go f*ck himself), but I know where that would end up, so I just bite my tongue and focus on doing my job as best I can.
People who work in customer service types of jobs just have to learn how to deal with jerks like this, think of it as a learning experience. The best thing to do would have been to help him first since he was there first and get him out of there as quickly as possible, skipping him when he was already showing signs of being combative just added fuel to the fire. Don't let the racist comment bother you either, if you know you aren't a racist it shouldn't really matter what some guy who knows nothing about who you are as a person says/thinks.
Eric, don't allow people like that to make an impact on you.
How do you guys deal with morons in higher professional fields? I had a call from this crazy lawyer yelling at me...because I'm an auto insurance agent and I sold a minimum liability coverage policy to one of his clients and he was angry that he couldn't sue my insurance company for more money. He said that we are a bunch of money-hungry agents that just sell s*** to get customers...
How do you guys deal with morons in higher professional fields? I had a call from this crazy lawyer yelling at me...because I'm an auto insurance agent and I sold a minimum liability coverage policy to one of his clients and he was angry that he couldn't sue my insurance company for more money. He said that we are a bunch of money-hungry agents that just sell s*** to get customers...
I have run into a lot of d*ck lawyers. That is a profession filled with some seriously disturbed people. (No offense to anyone in the legal profession here -- I know there are good ones, too).
If someone is yelling at me, I just end the call. I'm not going to listen to that. Customer service and keeping narcissist's egos intact is one thing, but I'm not going to let someone just abuse me. Sometimes I'll give them a warning and see if they self-correct. Other times, I'll just say something sarcastic ("thanks for the feedback") and hang up. Then I document it. I then go talk to a colleague about it, to vent and have a laugh.
If it's internal to my company or a customer / partner I always keep my cool and stay polite and calm. And you often don't know who you are dealing with. Which is another good reason to always stay calm and professional. That guy yelling at you might be the head of a division of the company you work for.
Any other situation hang up or otherwise end the conversation and go on with my day.
My job involves mostly dealing with other employees of the company I work for. We create / deploy / support several applications and there are both "users" to deal with as well as the "important users" who help define what we actually work on. (like the main user in charge of the other users who tells us what features need to be added / fixed)
So we describe them as "customers" to remind ourselves to be patient. Because man does it take patience sometimes. People can be rude, they assume to know what they are talking about when diagnosing problems, often they ARE the problem but you have to tactfully tell them they are, etc.
And it still blows my mind how often they don't seem to get what piece of software they are using. The applications we build are almost all web based, and a good percentage of the time I get some complaint call it's for the wrong application. Yes, you were using our application.. but when you clicked on that Word Document, and it opened in Microsoft Word... you don't complain to me if you can't figure out how to fix the wide of your table cell. lol
Any other situation hang up or otherwise end the conversation and go on with my day.
My job involves mostly dealing with other employees of the company I work for. We create / deploy / support several applications and there are both "users" to deal with as well as the "important users" who help define what we actually work on. (like the main user in charge of the other users who tells us what features need to be added / fixed)
So we describe them as "customers" to remind ourselves to be patient. Because man does it take patience sometimes. People can be rude, they assume to know what they are talking about when diagnosing problems, often they ARE the problem but you have to tactfully tell them they are, etc.
And it still blows my mind how often they don't seem to get what piece of software they are using. The applications we build are almost all web based, and a good percentage of the time I get some complaint call it's for the wrong application. Yes, you were using our application.. but when you clicked on that Word Document, and it opened in Microsoft Word... you don't complain to me if you can't figure out how to fix the wide of your table cell. lol