Dealing with Customer Service

 I recently (like 5 minutes ago) had an interesting experience with customer service. I have a website membership that I intended not to renew. I assumed I would get a request for payment to renew my membership, which I intended to not grant. Turns out, I had agreed to an auto-renewal arrangement, and rather than getting a request for me to renew my membership, I received a receipt telling me I had already been billed for it.

Okay, my mistake, I thought. They understand the currency of word of mouth, they are a social network after all, I will ask for a refund. I ask for a refund by email.

I get a response, via email, that refunds are not issued on memberships by policy, but here is the link where I can cancel my subscription so that I am not billed next year. Fine. I click on the link and it takes me to a page summarizing the differences between a paid and free account. The only discernible link is asking if I want to buy a pro account for someone else. My worst enemy perhaps? I have spent 20 minutes looking through the site for how to cancel the subscription on my own, and I have concluded this website subscribes to the same tactics as your typical credit card or cable company, who do not have cancellation but "retention" departments, and figure there is a way to strong arm 99% of customers into keeping something they don't want.

But I digress. The point I was going to get to was that I used to work in a call center doing customer service for the US Postal Service, and I've learned a thing or two about modern call center customer service that I thought might be worth passing along.

1. Don't lose your cool.

First rule of dealing with modern customer service is to not get angry. The person on the other end of the line or email is not responsible for your problem or the ridiculous policies they are explaining to you. Some people think if they get really abusive, they will compel you to solve the problem or put you in touch with someone who will. This is not the case. What it will do is prevent them from doing anything they possibly can to help you.

2. Do ask for a supervisor if you aren't being helped.

You don't have to get nasty to get to the next level of help. You just have to ask, "May I speak with a supervisor?" They may need a reason before they can pass you along, but most entry-level call center reps are more than happy to pass an upset customer along rather than deal with you themselves, and furthermore are required to give you over if you ask directly.

3. Don't expect the supervisor to do much.

I think I once asked a call center rep when I was dealing with problems my online merchant account if there was anyone in the call center who had the authority to unfreeze my account (long story, don't ask). They said no, but what they could do was send on an email asking that my account be reviewed. I asked them to do so and went on my merry way. I got a call not long after from the company and my account was unfrozen. I was joking about going on my merry way. It was Christmas season, I was doing more than twice my usual volume of business, and the frozen merchant account had effectively killed my cash flow. I had no way to buy more postage or shipping supplies which were almost out. To my great humiliation, I was about to call my father and ask for a loan because I did not know what else to do. I was under a great deal of stress. But my point is that as much as I wanted to, I knew from experience that calling the person at the call center and letting them have it would not help solve my problem. Companies that hire call centers like the one I worked for do not have any actual employees at the call center location and do not give the call center much if any discretion in resolving problems. So your mission is to find out what the call center can realistically do, and do your best to work within that framework. Rather than ask for a supervisor, you are probably best served by simply asking, "Is there anyone at your location who can do X for me?" The answer will likely be no, but they will tell you how you can get your case before someone higher up for review, who will, of course, contact you at their leisure. All part of the fun of modern customer service interactions.

I return to my present situation, where I am asking my friendly email customer service rep Kaselyn for more specific directions on how to cancel my subscription to unnamed company. I imagine she'll get back to me tomorrow sometime. I sigh, knowing that she is not responsible for my problem, or the idiotic policies preventing it's happy resolution, but hoping that enough similarly unhappy customers like myself will motivate this company to become more responsive in the future, or drive it out of business. But there is no point telling Kaselyn that--it would just ruin two people's day.