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Customer-service points of interest.
Jul. 17th, 2013 05:14 amA little off-topic for the discussion I posted it in, but possibly of interest for anyone who might want to complain about employee rudeness at a store:
Something that managers-- good ones-- will take into account when deciding how seriously to take a rudeness complaint is the no/yes politeness divide. An employee can use equally blunt wording to tell one customer yes and another customer no, and the “yes” customer won’t think anything more about it, but the “no” customer will complain. In most cases the complaints can be prevented by training the employee to be more polite when telling people no, but some customers will complain no matter how nice, polite, apologetic the employee is because they feel like “there ought to have been something they could do.”
So, many managers will keep track of “told me no and was rude!!” reports, educate, and only act if they see a pattern, but a “did what I wanted BUT was rude” report demands immediate action.
On the flip side, employees who are a little bit less than perfectly polite may get better results, because some customers/clients like to be scolded a little bit. It can reinforce the effect that they truly care about the service they're giving you-- a hairdresser who grumps at you for cutting your own bangs, for instance, can make you feel that they’re really invested in making your hair look good.
Aren't our brains weird?
Something that managers-- good ones-- will take into account when deciding how seriously to take a rudeness complaint is the no/yes politeness divide. An employee can use equally blunt wording to tell one customer yes and another customer no, and the “yes” customer won’t think anything more about it, but the “no” customer will complain. In most cases the complaints can be prevented by training the employee to be more polite when telling people no, but some customers will complain no matter how nice, polite, apologetic the employee is because they feel like “there ought to have been something they could do.”
So, many managers will keep track of “told me no and was rude!!” reports, educate, and only act if they see a pattern, but a “did what I wanted BUT was rude” report demands immediate action.
On the flip side, employees who are a little bit less than perfectly polite may get better results, because some customers/clients like to be scolded a little bit. It can reinforce the effect that they truly care about the service they're giving you-- a hairdresser who grumps at you for cutting your own bangs, for instance, can make you feel that they’re really invested in making your hair look good.
Aren't our brains weird?
