I spent years doing customer service and tech support on the phones before finally getting out of that hell, and I can tell you that most customer service people hate their job. Sure, a lot will argue that they have been doing it for years and enjoy helping people, and for some who love to chat all day it truly is a great fit. The rest see it as a last resort, or a jumping point.

You’d be surprised to find out how many customer service reps go to therapy weekly. I myself went through depression and nearly broke down because of the job. It isn’t the one caller who is unreasonable, although I have seen reps yell back at the customer before throwing their headsets down and walking out (and this person was a friend of mine who smiled and was usually pretty cheerful). It is the constant, unending wave of people who are upset and have problems.

While it might seem unfair to have to pander to the person who is supposed to help you, consider what the end goal is: Do you want to be pampered without getting any real value back from the call, or do you want that extra 5% off your bill for the next few months by being friendly, gracious, and simply nice to the person who is working to help you? If your ego can’t take a step back for the chance to get free services or extra goodies, then by all means be a jerk on the phone and wind up upset after the call is over when the rep refuses to help you out.

I can tell you now that call centers measure absolutely every statistic imaginable to rate their representatives, including how long it takes the rep to dial a number out when calling someone back. Yes, how fast a phone number is dialed is actually measured, and I have seen supervisors question people who take longer than a few seconds on why they dial so slowly. The biggest metrics are call time, time in-between calls, and time a caller is on hold, all in averages across the number of calls you take per day (which is a huge statistic in itself), as well as First-Call-Resolution. To clarify what FCR is, call centers consider each call to cost them a certain dollar amount. If you call back, then they believe that the rep who helped you the first time did not resolve your issue and cost them money by you calling back in. Call centers are seen as a loss by the company – they simply stem losing more money by increasing retention of customers via service and support. Thus, although a call center will at times talk about increasing quality if customers get too upset, these ideas all go out the window when they realize how much more money they are losing and how many more customers are waiting to talk to a rep as the quality of the call increases.

So, we have to look at what is valuable to the rep per call and maximize their happiness so that you can get something in return:

• A call that includes a reasonably quick resolution, and just enough chit-chat inbetween to kill dead air and increase quality assurance scores.
• Balance of statistics – Sometimes, to get other stats down, or just to get a mental break, reps will increase call length. I’ll get into this more later.
• Friendliness from both sides
• A resolution for the customer where the rep can be confident they will not call back.

Most articles on the topic of calling customer service preach about being nice. I cannot recommend this highly enough either, but to say that is the end-all to getting what you want out of customer service is ridiculous. Still, absolutely call in and try to be nice, no matter how upsetting the issue is for you. The only time it is reasonable to be unreasonable is after the company has failed twice or more to correct the issue for you, at which point you should be talking to supervisors and allow them to see how angry you are. To be very clear, showing your frustration is different than taking it out on representatives or supervisors. These people did not directly try to make you have a bad experience, and most of the time it is not their fault in the first place.

The first thing I will say is that representatives are trained to be efficient call-taking machines and they know how to guide you to get what they want out of you. Go with their flow and do not start speaking without it being in direct correlation to question asked. It may sound script-like, and sometimes is a script, but letting the rep get through what they are programmed to do helps them, as you going off on a tangent can make them forget to get important pieces of information. Here is an example of an opening that I always used that gets me the exact information I needed, satisfied all my quality, yet still was friendly and conveyed that I wanted to help out. Keep in mind I did tech support for a cell phone company, so realize that some parts will obviously be different based on the industry you are calling. If you were the caller, this is how you should be answering these questions.

Me: Thank you for calling -company-, my name is Chris, may I have your name please?
Caller: Hi Chris, my name is Ineeda Somehelp.
Me: Thank you, Mr. Somehelp. What cell phone number are you calling about today?
Caller: 281-555-4512
Me: Alright, thank you, and I see we have a password on this account, would you please verify it for me?
Caller: Password.
Me: Thank you so much. Mr. Somehelp, how can I help you today?
Caller: Well, my cell phone is not getting reception right now and it usually works just fine.
Me: Well, I’m certainly sorry to hear you are having trouble getting reception on your cell phone, but I’ll be more than happy to help you get this issue resolved. Now, can you please explain to me when this all started?

Compare to this following example call, where things immediately start off negatively.

Me: Thank you for calling -company-, my name is Chris, may I have your name please?
Caller: Ima Reallypissed.
Me: Thank you Mrs. Reallypissed, can I have the cell number you are calling about today?
Caller: 770-555-6623, and this damn thing isn’t working again. You know my friend Jessie here has a phone with -competitor- and her phone works. I’m getting really tired of this.
Me: Ok, well I’m sorry you are having problems, but can I first get you to verify the password on your account?
Caller: Ugh, -password-…

Do people really act like this? YES.

So right off the bat, in the first 30 seconds of the call, the rep should have all the information they need by getting direct answers from you. This means less time on the phone, they are focused and in control of the call, and things are going smoothly. Alternatively, you can see the phone rep is already losing control and beginning to struggle to get answers. The longer you take whining, the longer the call takes and the less the rep wants to help you anyway.

Now from here, the call can veer in a million different directions, so I will bullet point tips.

• Reciprocate kindness. In the first call, the caller responded by first greeting me directly. This took 2 seconds and sets the tone that the caller has proper manners and greets someone equally. Say please and thank you. You would thank the guy bagging groceries for you at the store, manners should not go out the window when you can no longer see someone face to face.
• Take interest in what your rep has to say too. Most reps will ask how your day is going. First of all, don’t respond with the obvious “Well, it’d be going a lot better if this stupid thing would work!” They mean to create a personal connection with you to make you trust that you are in good care. Quite honestly, most don’t care how you are doing and in some call centers it is just a necessity to ask this. However, asking the rep how their day is going, even if they lie with the response (the real answer should usually be “horrible”), will make them care to help you a little bit more.
• Reps sometimes have to rush through calls. Reps know how to manage their time. If they are rushing through a call with you, don’t get offended, they probably had to talk to someone for half an hour before your call which should only take them 7-8 minutes to complete. If they can get that down to 5-6 minutes, they will have affected their average call handle time and will begin to increase the number of calls they take that day. Try to consider that performance bonuses are based much more on tangible statistics, and not how much the customer likes them at the end of the call.
• Be talkative if they are to you. Similar to the above post, sometimes a rep needs to make their hold and wait times (how long you are on hold and how long before they take a call after they are done) better by being on calls a little longer. This serves two purposes. First of all, they get to simply chat about news or weather and stop thinking about the work they are actually doing, so being friendly back to them just makes that minute a little better. Secondly, this gives the rep time to write up notes or do work that they would otherwise have to do while you wait on hold listening to that fantastic elevator music either during a call or while waiting for the next rep to come on the line. Really, you can view this as a benefit to yourself for not having to hear the crappy music too.
• If you have multiple issues, deal with them on this one call and praise the rep. Most reps expect 1 problem per call. If you have more, that’s fine, but say something to this effect: “I’m sorry, I know I’m taking some of your time with all these problems but you’ve been really helpful and I really don’t want to call back and roll the dice with another rep.” Make sure to say the part about not wanting to call back, as this will make the rep remember that a callback hurts them. Stick to what you are saying to, try to get everything out on one call. Even a call back just to give praise to the rep hurts their statistics, so if you want to do that, ask for their supervisor at the end of the call to say a few nice words.
• Don’t get upset if the rep cannot provide a resolution. Let’s assume in the above call that a tower is malfunctioning and that is the reason the cell phone isn’t going to work. I can tell you with 100% certainty that no, the rep will not drive out to the tower while you are on the call with them, figure out the issue, and fix it. If they have to create a trouble ticket to have a technician sent out, just deal with it.
• Don’t freak out over the time that your issue “might” be resolved if there is a ticket created for you. To cover their asses, companies mandate that reps give maximum times that it could take something to be fixed. At my company, common response was 3-5 business days. It can be scary to hear your service might not work for 5 days. However, most issues are fixed in 24-48 hours, and outages are usually fixed within hours.

Why go through all the hassle? First of all, being a good person is just going to bring you good karma. If you wouldn’t act like a spoiled 5 year old in public at a store (and you shouldn’t), then don’t do it on the phone. Second, if you are rude, most reps will point to escape clauses for the company to get around reimbursing you in some way. For cell service, this is exceptionally easy as your contract stipulates that the company cannot guarantee service anywhere by virtue of the technology. It is true that you signed a contract saying you are aware that you might not have service for undetermined lengths of time and the company is not responsible to reimburse you at all. Remember, the company persuades reps to not give anything out for free because they lose even more money via the call center that way, and this is another metric that reps are measured on. Here are how I would handle calls with a good and bad caller.

Bad call up to this point

Me: Well, the ticket is sent in, is there anything else I can help you with Mrs. Reallypissed?
Caller: Yeah, so I pay 80 bucks a month for this crappy service and it’s not even working, I want my account credited for that time.
Me: Well ma’am, unfortunately we won’t know how long the outage lasts until it is over and so I cannot give you credit.
Caller: What?! I can’t believe this, you guys sell service and it doesn’t work, I want money for this down time!
Me: Ma’am, in your contract it says that we cannot guarantee service 100% of the time and are not obligated to refund any money. I apologize but per company policy there is nothing I can do.

Good call up to this point

Me: Well, I’m all finished with the ticket Mr. Somehelp, do you have any other questions or concerns for me today?
Caller: Well, yes Chris, I was wondering if there was any way you could reimburse me for this down time? Normally I wouldn’t complain but this is really going to affect my business.
Me: Well, typically we’re not supposed to reimburse people, but I really feel bad about the problems you are having, so I can give you a one-time credit of -x- dollars which is how much your service costs per day.

Really good call up to this point (including the rep using a loophole to give you even more back)

Me: Well, I’m all finished with the ticket Mr. Somehelp, do you have any other questions or concerns for me today?
Caller: Well, yes Chris, I was wondering if there was any way you could reimburse me for this down time? Normally I wouldn’t complain but this is really going to affect my business and it is pretty discouraging that your company is failing me after I have raved so much about the great service up until now.
Me: Well we’re not supposed to reimburse for outages typically, but I see you are (a new customer OR a long time customer), and would hate to see you think negatively of us. What I can do is give you maybe some extra minutes to your plan? Would that be sufficient?
Caller: Well, I don’t really need the extra minutes since I stay under by a decent amount every month, is there something else you could maybe do?
Me: How about a 10% off discount on your plan for 3 months?

Trust me, the freebies are better than the 1-2 day reimbursement. Think about it: If you pay $80/mo for service, then on average you are paying about $2.67/day in a 30-day month. Sometimes, to be sarcastic to bad callers, I would credit them and proudly remark that I have credited them $2 for the downtime. You can tell when someone feels like an idiot after raising hell over being reimbursed over $2.

Also, it is OK to ask if the rep is clearly lowballing you with their reimbursement offer. A cell phone company would rather give out minutes than reduce your bill, as they know the minutes won’t be used and won’t roll over unless you have AT&T (in which case you probably already rolled over so many minutes that extra minutes are pointless). Reps are trained to give up reimbursements in succession – they know what the company wants them to do to make you happy, in a specific order. If you give a valid reason for not wanting that particular reimbursement, it’s fine to ask for an alternative when the call has gone well.

Another piece of advice is to consider the company you are getting service with from a customer support aspect as well. To compare companies, I worked as an outsourced representative for one cell company that has been hemorrhaging customers. The service was terrible, the reps weren’t even part of that company, and would get screamed at for the poor service. The company also offers things very cheap to combat the poor service, so you get customers who are not willing to pay for quality for the most part, which makes the calls that much worse. Alternatively, if you pay a little more for the much better company, then most of the customers are usually content and more pleasant to deal with. This rubs off on the reps because their days aren’t as bad, and you have a better chance at getting an in-house rep who takes pride in the company they work for.

Lastly, examine yourself as a customer. I’ve heard talk about keeping index cards for calling in, and that is something you should do only if you know the issue will not be resolved in one call or on something major such as an issue with your mortgage. If you must write down information, pick it up during the conversation, do not specifically ask unless it is something that you absolutely cannot get otherwise. It will put a negative tone on the call if you start the call off asking for the rep’s full name (something many reps might be hesitant about), their ID number, and talk about how you are writing everything down. If you are calling in so much that you need to keep detailed records of everything, then the rep will notice your call patterns from the notes left by other reps and will be more determined to not give in to you as they will suspect you are calling in to scheme for yet another freebie. I’ve seen some notes with the honest truth about callers from other reps such as “Called in to get ask for overages to be credited again, repeat offender, advised we cannot continue to give credits.” All the notes are timestamped as well, and reps DO check in the very beginning to see when the last time you called. If you call in just a minute later, they’ll know, as most note taking systems also mark when any rep opens up an account (thus, even if you try to beat the other rep to them finishing off their note about your call, the new rep will still see at least when you last called in).