It's not your money

[Mytical]

I am glad that I do not actually have to sell anything. Though I can and will place an order if the customer asks. I lost count of how many calls were about paying for ground shipping and then wondering why the item has not shown up 3 days later. Or paying for next day and wondering why it takes longer then 24 hrs (hint : Doesn't count processing time people..and weekend and holidays are excluded as well).

They all say the same thing. "Well..I think I should be compensated for this." Reading is fundamental, but they are doing it wrong. Everything is explained in the stores or on the website about how shipping works. A mentally challenged monkey could understand it.

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

Let me flat out state I work in retail and not a call center, so things may be slightly different, but I think the general point applies nonetheless.

My company makes a point in its LP policies that you SHOULD care abour various forms of shrink, because what it comes down to in the end is that the less profit that your store makes, the less hours in the budget to go around. This is a pain in the butt for the part timers, since full time employees get priority over the available hours (that's not to say the full time employees get off scott-free from an hours cut; full time minimum is 30 hours/week and most of them work closer to 40 when possible).

Companies are not stupid...they know shrink is legitimately bound to happen somewhere, and the goal is to keep it to a minimun. Sometimes, it is better to bite the bullet and cut someone some slack and give out the freebies, because the amount lost is still lower than losing ALL the customer's buisness.

Sadly, some people are aware of this or are just plain entitlement whores, and abuse this. And yes, it IS fine to be genuinely upset when it is being abused. That's your company profit going out the window. When companies don't start making their planned profit numbers, they'll make cuts...usually starting with cutting down hours, instating a wage freeze, or letting employees go to cut down their costs and keep profits up. It shouldn't matter that it's not comming out of your direct paycheck, because in the long run, it's very possible that it could be.

And if it's not that, the company will raise prices to overcomensate, and if you are a customer yourself, that STILL cuts into your own personal 'profits'.

No one said we actually had to LIKE every aspect of our jobs or every policy.

I have worked both retail and call center jobs and I can tell you the mentality is quite different at each. I found with the call center job that the company didn't care about satisfying customers as much as they cared about average call time and the number of upsells we got. I should note I didn't actually work for the company I took calls for, I worked for the company that ran the call center.

I can say I did take many calls in which the fault lay with our company, but I also got plenty of SCs and EWs as well.

I think its easier for call center people to not give a shit about customers because firstly they are not in front of you, they are just a voice in a speaker. And secondly because in a lot of instances if a customer is disconnected/transferred/Hung up on they will get a different rep on the line when they call back (ie they become someone else's problem).

I had a job to do. I showed up and I did it. I hated the work, I hated most of the managers and I hated the lack of morals and ethics at the company but in general I shut up about it. The only time I drew the line was when I was asked to do something illegal (alter a contract term without the customers knowledge. I wasn't fired for that.

[jackfaire]

you are in fact losing money and making your company a target for scammers.

*nods* A local Subway had a policy previously where if your sandwich was bad they would replace it but they have been being scammed so much they had to change it to you have to bring the sandwich back to get a replacement.

[Lace Neil Singer]

After reading this thread, I guess I'm lucky to work for a company which never hands out freebies like sweets to bad customers. While someone with a legit complaint will get a gift card, someone who's just bitching to get free stuff will be shown the door... tho, interestingly, they rarely take it and show up again the very next week.

I don't agree that to keep customers companies should have to give shitloads of money away. If you're giving every bad customer a £50 giftcard regardless of what their complaint is and whether it's genuine, you are in fact losing money and making your company a target for scammers.

[mikoyan29]

Since when is complaining about an unfair policy expecting a company to change to fit your ideals?

It's mindsets like that which create an authoritarian astmosphere in which nothing can be questioned.

And these types of authoritarian atmospheres are the things that lead to businesses collapsing. Employees are afraid to complain to their supervisors about issues. In turn, supervisors are afraid to complain to their managers about issues that they see wrong with things. Then managers are afraid to complain and so on. So what ends up getting filtered up to the top is a sunny view of how the company is functioning. But there are far too many executives who are content with that.

Japanese manufacturing is based on listening to feedback from the workers because those are the people that have to deal with stupid management decisions. Sometimes those folks on the floor know a thing or two on how to make things easier (and probably more cost effective). But instead we have some 6 Sigma Black Belt dictating that this is how things should be done (Yet he doesn't understand that the first step in solving the problem is understanding the problem....statistics aren't going to tell the whole picture).

[bara]

Sometimes, it is better to bite the bullet and cut someone some slack and give out the freebies, because the amount lost is still lower than losing ALL the customer's business.

Except I cant count how many times we have heard the phrase 'ill never shop here again!', then the very next day guess who shows up whether they got their way the day before or not.

A truly disgruntled customer who has a legitimate right to be upset are in my experience, very rare. With all the calls I took at the borgsphere cell phone company I can only remember two actual complaints where the company totally screwed a customer that we had no way at all of fixing and maybe 20-30 from word of mouth. Before I was a sup I averaged 60 calls a day. 6 months, 5 days a week, thats a lot of damn calls.(5 years at malwart, 1 1/2 at another big box from michigan, and 4 months at we B toys.) It was so rare to here of an honest problem the break areas were filled with talk about it because it was so far out of the norm.
The only place I worked that seemed to screw their customers over on a daily basis was the lawn care place. In the few months I was there, there were far more truly screwed customers than at all the other combined.

My point being that you really arent losing any business by giving in to scammers since they know they are scamming and will indeed shop there again.

[Cats]

Let me flat out state I work in retail and not a call center, so things may be slightly different, but I think the general point applies nonetheless.

My company makes a point in its LP policies that you SHOULD care abour various forms of shrink, because what it comes down to in the end is that the less profit that your store makes, the less hours in the budget to go around. This is a pain in the butt for the part timers, since full time employees get priority over the available hours (that's not to say the full time employees get off scott-free from an hours cut; full time minimum is 30 hours/week and most of them work closer to 40 when possible).

Companies are not stupid...they know shrink is legitimately bound to happen somewhere, and the goal is to keep it to a minimun. Sometimes, it is better to bite the bullet and cut someone some slack and give out the freebies, because the amount lost is still lower than losing ALL the customer's buisness.

Sadly, some people are aware of this or are just plain entitlement whores, and abuse this. And yes, it IS fine to be genuinely upset when it is being abused. That's your company profit going out the window. When companies don't start making their planned profit numbers, they'll make cuts...usually starting with cutting down hours, instating a wage freeze, or letting employees go to cut down their costs and keep profits up. It shouldn't matter that it's not comming out of your direct paycheck, because in the long run, it's very possible that it could be.

And if it's not that, the company will raise prices to overcomensate, and if you are a customer yourself, that STILL cuts into your own personal 'profits'.

No one said we actually had to LIKE every aspect of our jobs or every policy.

[Andara Bledin]

Sure it will: Be excellent to each other!
I feel this simple policy if followed would effectively end nearly all the worlds major socioeconomic problems.

Indeed. Once we've managed to take care of that, we can finally party on.

^-.-^

[Rageaholic]

Caring about the financial health of the company you work for is one thing, but expecting it to change to fit you ideals of how the company should run is dellisunual.

Since when is complaining about an unfair policy expecting a company to change to fit your ideals?

It's mindsets like that which create an authoritarian astmosphere in which nothing can be questioned.

[bara]

ps. one policy will not solve world hunger.

Sure it will: Be excellent to each other!
I feel this simple policy if followed would effectively end nearly all the worlds major socioeconomic problems.

Caring about the financial health of the company you work for is one thing, but expecting it to change to fit you ideals of how the company should run is dellisunual.

Probably, and its why I will never answer or provide feedback when they do those fake polls that ask employees for advice on how to run the company and in fact make them force me to attend them.

A business exists to create value to the owner or stockholder (since they own all the liabilities and risk).

I cant think of any CEOs, shareholders, VPs, or any other such persons being held accountable for the poor and sometimes illegal decisions they have made which have caused thousands of others to lose houses, cars, retirement, medical benefits, and in some cases marriages, families, lives. Not to mention the fat parting bonuses some of these people receive that could be given to the displaced 'cogs' instead that would allow them to get back on their feet. A couple million goes a long way for us common folk.

[Mytical]

Thank you for summing up the reason why we are failing as a country. The owners and stockholders are not the only people the own risk in a company. The employees share a part in this risk as well. However, the modern MBA mentality seems to be that employees are just cogs in the wheel and could just as well be from India as Indiana. Never mind that employees can provide just as much if not more value than some MBA freshly minted out of an MBA factory.

QFT, QFE. Well said.

[mikoyan29]

A business exists to create value to the owner or stockholder (since they own all the liabilities and risk). This unfortunately means that non-executive personnel are hired and have accepted to be a specific cogs in the business plan they want to execute. Whether this leads to sucess or failure of the bussiness is inconsequential. The function is to execute the vision (or lack of) to the best of their ability utilizing the tools provided to them.

Thank you for summing up the reason why we are failing as a country. The owners and stockholders are not the only people the own risk in a company. The employees share a part in this risk as well. However, the modern MBA mentality seems to be that employees are just cogs in the wheel and could just as well be from India as Indiana. Never mind that employees can provide just as much if not more value than some MBA freshly minted out of an MBA factory.

[Mytical]

Absolutely Bara. At least the place I work for is consistent. I always get great reviews (when they listen in to my calls), because when my bosses say "Do whatever it takes." that is what I do. The customers never know, nor will they, that I think the rules suck. Cause I got a job to do. It is a job, that if not for the 'kiss the customers behind' I would absolutely love to death. I like helping people. I want to make things right for them, and to cause them to be laughing by the time they are finished.

Discounts, gift cards, and credits should be dished out to the good customers..and the ew's and scammers should be shown the door. No, it's not my money..and I will give it out like candy at halloween if told to..with a smile..but at the end of the day..they can't force me to like it or agree with it.

[bara]

Regardless of your personal feelings or claps from the peanut gallery, NO, you are not justified in your feelings. YOU personally are not providing any financial incentives from YOUR own money to the customer, and you need to realize that the company hired you to take care of the customer AND they have given you a GREAT tool to do this.

If doing the job that you're hired to do bothers you, then ask to move to a different department. The company has a policy thats working for them and shouldn't/and wont change it just becouse the person they hired to do a certain job feels that doing listed job is not 'fair'.

I disagree. Having worked as a call center sup for 1 1/2 years I can say that it smashes employee moral to hear 'Okay guys! DO whatever it takes, make the customer happy!' and then when you get to your weekly eval you hear 'You are giving away to many credits'.

One week I am instructed to tell them to give away credits like its water to dehydrated man in the desert and the next I am to tell them to stop giving away so much money. This applies to many of the policies we had/ didnt have/ had/ didnt have etc. A policy that had been in place for a year was no longer in effect and then just when everyone got used to it being gone, they put it back.They changed things so much and so often that people no longer knew what was expected of them and as their sup I was supposed to be able to tell them. I couldn't because my boss didnt know either.

At that point, your company doesn't seem to know what its doing anymore. Its not a matter of fair. Its a matter of 'Why the hell cant these corporate morons make up their mind?' Evaluations sucked because things were changing so fast you no one could adapt to the new expectations. It causes a loss of moral, and a piss poor customer experience as well.

Bonus: The call center I worked for was recently voted the number 2 hated company in the US for customer care.

[Mytical]

I am wondering at what point in time I suggested that the business needs to change to fit me. I do not recall ever doing so. I do not have an issue with giving good customer service, nor do I have an issue with spending a little money to make things right for a customer. If it is a legitimate complaint.

Have an item that is broken, damaged, or just doesn't work. No problem getting another item, and even a discount..if it was OUR fault. IE the item arrived damaged, etc. Promised next day and item shows up two weeks later? Yeah I don't have a problem refunding the shipping and a bit extra, because that is a legitimate complaint.

Yes, there is a cost of doing business..and I don't have an issue with that either. What I do have an issue with is the entitlement attitude that most who are demanding 'satisfaction' have. That and the fact that all the non legitimate complaints that the company pays out doesn't cost the company a dime. It cost the GOOD customers money. Because a business is in business to MAKE money..and they will raise costs, fire employees, etc if they are not doing so. So yes, I think it is a rather bassackwards mindset, and that corporate has their heads up their keisters.