If You're Easily Offended, Don't Offend Your Customers First

The community of customer service professionals is not a naðve one. It knows that, from a factual perspective, the customer is not always right. It knows that, from a social perspective, the customer is very often rude.

While they might not be able to say so publicly, many within the community would jump at the chance to support—and defend—agents who draw a personal line when the customer’s concoction of falsehoods and disrespect becomes too acerbic to stomach.

What they should not do, however, is forget that customers are entitled to honest, efficient, effective, consistent, accurate and valuable experiences. A customer might be wrong about the facts or the tone of a conversation, but he is never wrong about his feelings, his desires and his right to the best possible treatment from customer service.

Before writing off a customer as belligerent, a business must therefore consider both the source of the outrage and its ability to quell that hostility. If the business did wrong by a paying customer, it played a role in bringing that customer’s frustration to a boil. It, therefore, cannot simply write the customer off as a helplessly disrespectful and offensive one. If it caused the outrage, it is responsible for dealing with it.

And that is particularly true if the business is in position for doing right by the customer.

At a certain point, a customer who angrily demands a million dollars because his action figure showed up a day late due to a blizzard warrants a dismissive reaction from the customer service department. If waiving the cost of shipping or providing an appropriate credit for a future purchase is not sufficient for the customer, the business will likely face hurdles in finding a fair solution to the situation.

Normally, however, a business that directly enraged a customer by overcharging him or making a false promise about an offer or discount, can—and must—absolutely rectify the situation. In such cases, the business is both responsible for causing customer anger and capable of reducing it. It can choose not to accept accountability, but it is irrefutably—and unequivocally—in the wrong when it makes that choice. The customer might be throwing a tantrum on the phone, but it is the business that is being disrespectful.

Once a business offends the customer, a business trades away its right to be offended by a customer’s emotional reaction (it, obviously, can still allow its agents to hang up on those being racist, sexist or otherwise personally hateful).

Earlier this spring, I shared a story in which Amazon’s effort to cancel a product delivery resulted in my mail being cancelled for a month. I was irrefutably stressed and angry, but as a customer who had been so egregiously wronged by the brand, I had every right to be. Unfortunately, one of the agents disagreed, and he disconnected my "disrespectful call" before resolving my issue.

Unwilling or unable to empathize with the customer, which should have been easy given the resonant absurdity of having one’s mail cancelled for a month, the agent blinded himself to the fact that any disrespect in my tone was the product of being disrespected by Amazon. By hanging up the phone prior to a resolution, it made a bad situation even worse.

Recently, I stayed at a popular hotel to assist with a work function. As is always the case on such corporate trips, I needed to put my personal card down if I wanted to bill food and drinks to my room, but the room rate, tax and resort fee were to be charged directly to the corporate account.

When looking at my credit card statement, I noticed the hotel charged me for more than $1000. Clearly, the hotel incorrectly—and rather appallingly—charged me for the entire stay without warning or permission. In addition to being the source of a massive scare, the action actually represented an unauthorized use of my credit card.

After waiting on a seven minute hold (despite calling at 7AM local time on a billing matter), I reached a representative who instantly added to the disrespect already generated by her brand. Before even listening to how ridiculous it was that I, an employee of the event team, would have been charged privately for the room, she declared it effectively impossible that a mistake was made. After putting me on hold again, she then discovered an email that allegedly said my room was to be billed to me personally.

She refused to provide a copy of the email or any evidence whatsoever that it existed. I referenced an email in my own inbox, which was the only actual correspondence between my operations team and the hotel regarding my stay, that said I was to be charged for any nights I added to my stayafter the event concluded, but she vehemently said there was no way that was the same email. She did not, however, provide any documentation about this "other" email that somehow denied me access to the corporate account.

Knowing my operations director for four years, knowing our company’s policy towards staff travel expenses and knowing that I asked how my card would be used at the front desk, I was 100% confident that she would never send such an email and that my company never intended to divorce itself from my bill. I expressed my strong suspicion that the front desk clerk was either misinterpreting the email about the extended stay or outright lying about the situation, and she immediately ended the call.

"I’m not going to fix this. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and disconnect the call since you’ve accused me of lying," she declared before indeed existing the call.

Let’s think about the context of that statement:

n The customer service representative was presented with a simple problem that, if not outright caused by her team, was certainly within her team’s ability to address. But she’s not going to fix it. Disrespectful customer service.

n When asked to justify a surprise, unauthorized charge on my credit card statement, she refused to provide any documentation of the supposed request to bill me personally. And if regulations prevented her from providing that regulation, she also had the option of letting me, the customer, know that she, on behalf of the business, would clear the issue up with my operations team. Instead, she said there was nothing her resort would do and I would have to exercise more of my own customer effort if I wanted anything resembling a resolution. Disrespectful customer service.

n If my anger is obvious—and I’m at the point of questioning the honesty of the representative—I’m obviously not satisfied. The issue is obviously not resolved. To disconnect the call is to say that the concepts of customer satisfaction and first call resolution are meaningless. Disrespectful customer service.

n Because she was unmistakably wrong to suggest my company wanted me to be billed personally for the stay, she was either acting on misinformation or lying. Since she assured me her information was valid and that she was not misinterpreting the email about my extended stay, lying was the only way to explain her inaccurate insistence about the billing protocol. She not only denied that reasonable assertion but actually used it as a departure point for the call. Disrespectful customer service.

n And even if my anger and commentary did reach a problematic altitude, the agent demonstrated no appreciation for her company’s role in causing that anger. She did not empathize with the fact that I had an unexpected charge of more than $1000 on my credit card. She did not understand that she was dismissing a customer who had an entirely valid gripe about his experience. In accusing me of being disrespectful, she gave no credit to the notion that she and her team might have caused me to become that way. Disrespectful customer service.

By allowing the problem to emerge in the first place, the business disrespected its customer. By refusing to honestly discuss the issue, the business disrespected its customer. By opting to disconnect before a resolution was reached, the business disrespected its customer. Because any anger that resulted was entirely the fault of the brand and its representatives, the representatives and brand are accountable for not only empathizing with the anger but resolving its source.

To disconnect the call before doing so is to demonstrate one’s incompetency. It reveals that the agent does not empathize with the customer. It reveals that the agent is unwilling to consider its own role in the customer experience and resulting sentiment. It reveals that the agent does not see resolution as a top priority. It reveals that the agent is not customer-centric.

The customer service profession can be an unforgiving one, and no agent should be subject to undue abuse and disrespect. But in arming agents with the power to disconnect when they feel disrespected, businesses need to clearly articulate that anger caused by the brand and/or easily resolved by the brand is not a ticket to exit the call. It is a reminder that gaps in the business’ process are causing customer anger, and that if the business wants to be considered customer-centric moving forward, it must eliminate the existing anger and sources of future anger.

There is a difference between a disrespectful customer and a disrespected customer. If agents are given leeway to hang up the phone on certain customers, they need to be certain the customer falls exclusively into the former category.