Complaint about Thomas Cook - worst customer service I've ever received

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

I said that that is what they want. If you can't fulfil what they want of you, it's your job to do what you can for them, even if that's nothing but a proper apology, and primarily to try and ensure that they don't decide never to spend money with your company again. This often involves apologising for things that are not your personal fault; and also often ought to involve accepting that people are angry if your company has let them down. That's the job.

The first step of course is listening to what people are saying to you and properly understanding it.

POPPYOSCAR

I quite agree.

Sometimes people just want to vent their frustrations.

Having someone say I understand how you feel, I would feel the same etc goes a long way to diffuse the situation even if it does not solve the problem.

The-Truth

This is all very nice but it reads very much like a theory book and not a response from someone who has ever worked in such a situation to know what it's really like which I suspect is the case here.

Your reply is basically a text book theory response by someone who has blatantly never worked in such an environment.

ThumbRemote

The-Truth wrote: »

This is all very nice but it reads very much like a theory book and not a response from someone who has veer worked in much a situation to know what it's really like which I suspect is the case here.

Things sound all very nice on paper (which is what you have done) but you quite blatantly otherwise don'r have any experience of such work to know what it's really like.

Given that you work in a supermarket, I can't see how you're any sort of expert on call centres either.

baza52

SevenOfNine wrote: »

Seems like you're currently giving an excellent demonstration of how, sometimes, call centre operatives treat customers as if they are, be default, wrong. Are always right themselves leading to a failure to listen to the customer, & give off an air of impatience because call centre operatives must often meet call volume/time requirements.

Last but not least, they want the last word - which I'm sure you will continue to demonstrate wholeheartedly. :)

In my role as technical support sometimes the customer WAS wrong. Blaming their problem on the ISP when it was clear to me it was a local problem on their machine.
When you tell them its a problem with their machine and they dont accept it what can you do? You either stay on the line going round and round in circles trying to explain or you are treated as though you dont know what your doing and they want to speak to a supervisor.
If you could put every caller that wanted to speak to a supervisor through to one they would need to have 25% of the desk in a supervisory role to cope lol.

What your also not grasping is that a call center worker has to meet SLA's and is often given a target of x number of calls per day to hit which would be impossible if every call went round in circles. Ending the call is as important as answering it.

In an ideal world call center staff would work in the way you believe they do but in reality it does not.
Its all about the number of calls taken each day, yes quality is important but SLA's will always come first and that is what the person working in the call center is judged on.

The-Truth

ThumbRemote wrote: »

Given that you work in a supermarket, I can't see how you're any sort of expert on call centres either.

Given that I don't work in a Supermarket (and never have) that makes your post invalid.

meer53

Why are people trying so hard to shove their opinions down other peoples throats ? There are good and bad call centre staff, same as there are nice and not so nice customers. I get a wide variety of them every single day i'm at work. I don't work in a call centre but my job is telephone based. Some people i speak to are absolutely delightful, some are absolute Tw*ts. It's what makes my job enjoyable, i find it incredible that some people resort to personal insults thinking that this is the way to get their issues sorted. I appreciate that they may be extremely frustrated but if i say i can't do anything for them, they need to understand that i'm not lying. I'm paid to tell the truth, if i didn't i would not have my job, why is it so difficult to grasp this ? Asking to speak to my manager isn't going to change anything, nor is swearing or telling me they're going to report me to my CEO.

The OP just wanted to vent about the conversation they had, fair enough, my view is, there are two sides, we only have one, the rest of the thread is a bit like a playground argument.

grayme-m

meer53 wrote: »

Why are people trying so hard to shove their opinions down other peoples throats ? There are good and bad call centre staff, same as there are nice and not so nice customers. I get a wide variety of them every single day i'm at work. I don't work in a call centre but my job is telephone based. Some people i speak to are absolutely delightful, some are absolute Tw*ts. It's what makes my job enjoyable, i find it incredible that some people resort to personal insults thinking that this is the way to get their issues sorted. I appreciate that they may be extremely frustrated but if i say i can't do anything for them, they need to understand that i'm not lying. I'm paid to tell the truth, if i didn't i would not have my job, why is it so difficult to grasp this ? Asking to speak to my manager isn't going to change anything, nor is swearing or telling me they're going to report me to my CEO.

The OP just wanted to vent about the conversation they had, fair enough, my view is, there are two sides, we only have one, the rest of the thread is a bit like a playground argument.

Given your post count, I assume you already know the answer.

Grassy_Knollington

ThumbRemote wrote: »

....Snip!

Why Martin or any reputable company would want to be associated with the ridiculous amount of trolls and frankly nasty people who post on these boards amazes me.

Keep your finger on the pulse mate. Good old Martin sold this website for £Millions. They aint his anymore.

We all have an opinion. So, suck it up.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

The-Truth wrote: »

This is all very nice but it reads very much like a theory book and not a response from someone who has ever worked in such a situation to know what it's really like which I suspect is the case here.

Your reply is basically a text book theory response by someone who has blatantly never worked in such an environment.

No I haven't; I have never needed to. I don't have the patience to be a good telephone customer services person, so it's fortunate for me that I have the ability and qualifications to get much better paid and easier jobs. However, as Samuel Johnson said of criticism:

"You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables."