The Fuck the Customer Equation

You worked for eight hours tonight, and, really, you helped no one. You took over 30 calls today, and you helped no one.

For some reason, people seem to think that tech support is where one calls to get technical help. Well, that couldn't be further from the truth.

You work for a ridiculously large communications company. Let's call that company Castcom. Castcom is the largest provider of cable television, and the second-largest provider of internet access in the United States, and they didn't become a large fascist douchebag corporation by HELPING people.

Please. Get real.

Castcom cares about one thing, and one thing only: $$$$$$$

Are you surprised?

Well, you shouldn't be. Anyone who believes that any corporation really gives a rat's ass about customer satisfaction is naive and/or stupid. No one cares about a customer's satisfaction except the customer, and there's a constant equation going through all those middle management brains that goes something like this:

profit - (time+wages+overhead) = fuck the customer

The first question out of your lead's mouth before he takes a "supe call" is: "What services do they have?" In other words, if you ain't buyin' shit, you ain't gettin' his ear. If a customer only has "basic cable" and/or "economy" internet service...forget it. Seriously. They'll wait on hold...for...a...while. They may as well not even ask for a supe. They're lucky they got YOU.

(Notice how when a customer asks for a "supervisor" that they don't actually get a supervisor. That's hilarious. There will be more on that in a later blog.)

Despite the fact that you are very good at technical support (that isn't saying much, but still), and CastCom maxed out their salary grade to pull you from the company you worked for previously, they don't really want you doing technical support. What they really want you to do is sell stuff to the people calling in for technical support. In fact, CastCom could care less whether you help anyone or not with their technical issues. But you'd better sell some shit to them regardless.

It's completely ass-backwards. Uhg! And, boy, do the customers resent it.

Actually, here's the real sad fact: many of the morons who call technical support WILL BUY SOMETHING even if the other services they already have aren't working. It's ridiculous and horrifying. You always thought people were stupid, but this proves it.

You had a guy screaming at you the other day because his father had just come home from the hospital and the CastCom phone service wasn't working in his father's house. Let's call that guy Dusty Douchebag.

Dusty Douchebag had already called in twice, and some other unlucky rep had already scheduled a tech visit to fix the phone service within the federally-mandated 24-hour window, but Dusty Douchebag wasn't done screaming yet, and you were the lucky recipient.

Dusty Douchebag screams, "What the fuck is he supposed to do if he needs to call the hospital or 911?"

You said, "I'm sorry, sir, but the best we can do is a service call tomorrow afternoon."

Dusty Douchebag then went into a flurry of nasty expletives directed at you in a personal manner, and then demanded a technician be sent out immediately to fix his father's phone. So, to get Dusty Douchebag off the phone, you used a tactic you like to call "hard sell to the asshole."

"Hard selling to the asshole" is basically aggressively offering to sell them services in response to anything they say until they get annoyed enough to hang up the phone. This kills two birds with one stone: it gets the asshole off the phone, and if the call gets QA'ed, you actually don't get docked for being a prick to the customer...YOU GET A BETTER SCORE for attempting to upsell them.

Yeah, wow. Cool, huh? Feel free to use that at your own tech support and/or customer service job.

So, to Dusty Douchebag you said, "I can't get a technician out there until tomorrow, but you wouldn't believe the deal I can get your father on digital television. Just $39.99 for 6 months!"

What does Dusty Douchebag do? He actually paused...AND CONSIDERED THE OFFER. He suddenly stopped yelling...there was a long silence...and then he said, "Well, I'd like that, but I can't decide right now. I have too much other stuff to think about." Seriously. No exaggeration.