Service - Mental Wellbeing & Kindness reciprocity

I received a call at a calm mid-day, only to understand that a customer is shouting abuse from the other end at an immeasurable limit. As an Area Service Manager, what is expected out of you? You hear, obviously. I introspect, how much? Okay, what am I talking about in here? As per customer, he doesn’t care about the police. He has a million followers at social media accounts & he is also affiliated to the ruling political party that he can made bends to harm others. He said that I am telling you this on record. In less than 20 seconds, I understood that I am the wrong person he is talking to. This territory concern to other person. As much as I try to tell him that, he thinks that I am crossing him & in no time I was the subject of his pitiful abuses. I held on to my patience, but I couldn’t anymore. In the heated up moment, I don’t reconcile what I said to him, only that please stop the bullets! I cut his phone call because he was way too magnanimous. It was a rarity of all the moments in B2C Customer service.

Immediately, he called me back. This time, no stopping. He grilled me inside out. He abused my family, my regional belonging and he pointed me out in a disgust that I am a job man. This time, I heard all ear. I was now acting as a Area Service Manager. I was quiet. I did not even smirked. His words was deeply penetrating to my identity. In those few moments, I was introspecting deeper. I was thinking about my brand. I was also thinking what if he actually send someone to do something to me! To everything he was telling, I never felt any smaller than ever before. Loyal to my brand, I stand guarded to the incessant hails. I was seeing him as a customer & customer is the king who speaks. I am the one who is handling customer service. Today seemed to be one kind of a day!

Wounded, I started to take corrective action. I took time from him & safely hanged up his phone call. Next I called up the service center team & discussed in length what has happened, while on a sudden customer has decided to ring me again and gave me 15 missed calls. After awhile, I took the service center proprietor in con-call with the customer. Customer told that technician are small people & there are tens of such people wandering around him. We heard and after more abuses, we are deciding to send another technician at the customer place. Where was the gap? What led customer to chose this path? How was customer behavior justified towards the service people? Was this extremity anyhow justified to gain him the attention that he might be wanting while we keep a tap of even a sentence of escalation that comes to us?

In the appliances After-Sales, technicians are the trained engineers who are sent to customer place to handle the breakdown of the product. They take appointment before attending the service. The said technician tried to call the customer and it was switched off. He dropped a WhatsApp message stating that he is supposed to visit his place & later after a little initial snag customer was abusing the technician. Technician, a human with ego, did reverted after a while. Although in the service industry, we strictly train people to be ever-polite to abuses and not hurl back the stones that has blinded your eye. This is most tough. This is a nightmare for any self-respected person. This doesn’t mean that somedays customers are not at the receiving end from the untrained and unprofessional service people as well.

To what I went through the entire day was a true mental trauma for me. I can not less conclude that it was a mental harassment & that sometimes customer service is a truly tough job to keep doing. This goes a long way in history. From the times when the females in the call centers are chased by the random bullying phone calls, to modern days customers threatening the brand that they will be subjected to social media curse – we may have lost track of how service personnel have stopped becoming human and are not supposed to be subjected to mental health. There is an imbalance in attending to frustrations here. It is a 24*7 job. We have received calls at 11 PM, also when we are on a vacation, also when we are at a mourning ceremony! 

My restful wish is that customer should borrow, if not equal, a percentage of respectful empathy and if anything of human-sort error did happen, let a drop of water and a slice of kindness be poured over the matter and he should kindly MOVE ON. But that's not it. India has a very competitive market. Brands are after brands & there are as many of them. One day as we train our people to be kind, unexpectedly in this trade, it is equally desirable to be treated with kindness. Is there some lane that goes that way!? We will see.