my grandad used to say - put yourself in their shoes

[cardi88]

ive been a hotel receptionist for 15 years and im giving up the will to live with customer satisfaction - every day im faced with my customer service not being up to satisfaction - its so hard being in customer service these days when all guests are concerned with is how much money they can knock off a bill with complaining.

[B00]

Yep, totaly agree. Working within customer service for anywhere truly sucks. I'd like to tell you it gets better, but i'd be lieing...lol, sorry.

[mccfluff]

cutomers never right, and i always am :-)

[cardi88]

this morning i had to argue with a customer who thought that raising his voice and intimidating me in front of a que of people would get him off paying his bill because his bedside lamp had blown at 2am - this is what i have to deal with every day - an because i work in 'customer service' i cant say what i want to say!!

[lizzydrippin]

cardi88 I honestly couldn't do your job for all the tea in China. Ive always thought that working with the general public in that kind of job where the customer is supposedly always right (and very rarely is) would be an absolute nightmare. I'd go home totally wound up at the end of every working day. I hope you are paid a fortune for your patience (but I have a feeling you arent). If I had a hat I'd take it off to you.

[Goodsoulette]

I hate customers. I really do lol which is amazing that I worked with them for so many years.
I used to work somewhere where a lot of office workers would cram in at lunchtime. They would queue 30 feet to wait to order a coffee and then be shouting when it wasn't ready in 30 seconds because they had to get back to the office cos they had spent all their time queuing. I even received a phone call one morning to say a customers daughter had food poisoning from a take out sandwich. I started to get out the appropriate forms to send off, asked the lady when she had eaten the sandwich, she told me in the evening, on asking where she had kept the sandwich all day, she informed me, in her bag. I asked her if she had seen the "keep refridgerated" sign clearly on the front and back of the packaging and she told me not to be a sarcastic, stuck up b1tch and she was going to report to my regional manager. So I gave her his number and she didnt even embellish what I had said, so nothing was done. Customers are majoratively wrong in my experience.

Although the most unneccessary whinging I have ever experienced was whilst I was on the maternity ward. I have never heard anything like it... very glad to get out of the door.

[leelapops]

cardi, I couldn't agree more: you do a really dificult job. It doesn't hurt for customers to be polite and sympathetic, as I am sure you are to them in your work.

I worked in a general kind of shop (well-known) for almost 3 years. The use and general cr*p I was expected to put up with was overwhelming. The managers undermined you at every turn. I have been shouted at because the card system was down, shouted at because customer didn't bother to check which vouchers we accepted before filling a trolley full of Chrsitmas stuff...What annoyed me most was that some customers didn't even acknowledge your existence as you processed their transaction. Some people are just intolerable.

Is there anything else you would like to do? It's not fair that you have to "grin and bear it".

[cardi88]

the good customers who really appreciate what we do kind of makes up for the bad ones - what gets me as well is the ones who moan always end up slagging the hotel on review sites, i read them and something in the review rings a bell and i recognise the person but the stuff they've made up to bolster their review makes me laugh! especially when you read the other reviews they have written and there's always something wrong with everywhere they stay!