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

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  • The-Truth
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    I've never been a customer service advisor. But for people who are to complain about customers getting angry with them "when it's not their fault" is like a sewer worker complaining about the smell. That's the job. You're supposed to put up with it. The people whose fault the customer's problems actually are are paying you to deal with it so they don't have to. Your job is to try and leave the customer in a place where they will spend money with the company again, and if you don't do that you've not done the job.

    What about when customers bully the staff?

    Is that still the staff's fault?
    I've never been a customer service advisor.
    .

    I can tell, you've never been bullied in your workplace like many retail staff have been.
  • The-Truth
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    Laz123 wrote: »
    You're a little bit worrying mate if you don't mind me saying so. You smack of being some kind of stalker. Posters aren't committed to having to answer to the likes of some jumped-up little prat stamping their tiny feet demanding attention.


    I'm not. It's not exactly hard to noticed when someone didn't address your comment or to noticed they've since commented on something else, all you have to do is read and follow the thread!

    To be honest with your reply it seems your a bit more stalker with me then myself with following who I've spoken to and whether or not they replied!
  • Autumnella
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    I can't believe people getting on at the OP over this. For the advisor to speak to and treat a customer like this is absolutely deplorable.

    For a start if the first advisor couldn't hear the customer properly but knew they were there they should have told them to hang up and that they would call them back to hopefully get a better line (as long as the number came up on the display of course which it often does).

    Even if the customer was rude talking to a customer like this is disgusting, especially after they apologised. Behaviour like this just results in the conversation turning into a slanging match. Dealing with angry/rude/disgruntled customers is all part of working in a call centre, if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen!

    OP, I would call back, early morning when the lines are quieter and insist on speaking to a manager to have the call listening to and any advisor training issues dealt with. Then, I'd put in a subject access request to see exactly what had been written about me following the conversation.
    Make £10 per day-
    June: £100/£300
  • baza52
    baza52 Posts: 3,029 Forumite
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    Autumnella wrote: »
    I can't believe people getting on at the OP over this. For the advisor to speak to and treat a customer like this is absolutely deplorable.

    For a start if the first advisor couldn't hear the customer properly but knew they were there they should have told them to hang up and that they would call them back to hopefully get a better line (as long as the number came up on the display of course which it often does).
    Your assuming that they have the ability to make outbound calls. When i worked in a call center it was incomming calls only

    Even if the customer was rude talking to a customer like this is disgusting, especially after they apologised. Behaviour like this just results in the conversation turning into a slanging match. Dealing with angry/rude/disgruntled customers is all part of working in a call centre, if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen!
    I take it you have worked in a similar role and are speaking from experience

    OP, I would call back, early morning when the lines are quieter and insist on speaking to a manager to have the call listening to and any advisor training issues dealt with. Then, I'd put in a subject access request to see exactly what had been written about me following the conversation.
    Great idea, then if the call transcript shows the customer was rude and argumentative they can add notes to their account to warn other staff
  • foxtrotoscar_2
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    The-Truth wrote: »
    What occupation do you have out of pure interest?



    What previous PPR'd MSE username did you have? Just out of pure interest?
  • kezzygirl
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    Laz123 wrote: »
    They're not even on that. They're typically people who have been bought on the people trafficking black market and are so poor they can't even afford shoes or clothes and have to sit in the freezing cold in their tattered underwear. They also have one meal a day which consists of a bowl of rice. I should know I was once poor m'self, Gov, an' ever so 'umble. This is how I remember those days:

    FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
    Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto
    SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
    Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
    THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
    You're right there, Obadiah
    FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
    Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?
    FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
    In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea
    SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
    A cup o' cold tea
    FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
    Without milk or sugar
    THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
    Or tea
    FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
    In a cracked cup, an' all
    FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
    Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper
    SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
    The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth
    THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
    But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor
    FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
    Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son"
    FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
    Aye, 'e was right
    FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
    Aye, 'e was
    FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
    I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof
    SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
    House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling
    THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
    Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
    FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
    Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh
    FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
    Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us
    SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
    We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake
    THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
    You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road
    FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
    Cardboard box?
    THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
    Aye
    FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
    You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt
    SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
    Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
    THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
    Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife
    FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
    Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah
    FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
    And you try and tell the young people of today that ... they won't believe you
    ALL:
    They won't!
    ..........!!!!!! was that all about :rotfl:
  • Laz123
    Laz123 Posts: 1,742 Forumite
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    kezzygirl wrote: »
    ..........!!!!!! was that all about :rotfl:

    It was just my way of pointing out that customer service staff, although poorly paid, are not unique. There's many other jobs where the staff are on minimum wages and zero contracts. Firms can save even more money to enable them to pay their rich fatcats inflated salaries by farming out to poor countries. That's why Barclays have their customer services in India and Paypal in the Philippines ;)
  • ScorpiondeRooftrouser
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    The-Truth wrote: »
    What about when customers bully the staff?

    Is that still the staff's fault?



    I can tell, you've never been bullied in your workplace like many retail staff have been.

    What do you mean, "still the staff's fault"? Nothing is the staff's fault. However, their job is to deal with things that aren't their fault. To calm people down whether they are rationally or irrationally angry. That's their job. if it proves impossible to do, fair enough, they can politely terminate a call after warnings. But it is their job to try and do the job and sometimes to accept blame for things that aren't their fault. This shouldn't be a difficult concept.

    It's only their fault if they deal badly with the situation by becoming angry themselves.

    A customer cannot "bully" a member of staff over the phone, by the way. Dealing with angry customers is the job they are paid to do. It is expected and inevitable that customers will call and be angry with them. As long as they try and deal with the problem and remain calm, they are doing their job and can't be criticised. The only person that can bully them would be their supervisors, which is an entirely different matter.
  • baza52
    baza52 Posts: 3,029 Forumite
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    Dealing with angry customers in NOT the job they are paid to do, that would be the complaints team.
  • ScorpiondeRooftrouser
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    baza52 wrote: »
    Dealing with angry customers in NOT the job they are paid to do, that would be the complaints team.

    If any company tells its customer facing staff that, they are talking nonsense. Angry people usually want their problems sorted out to enable them to do whatever it is they are trying to do, as in the original example. They want somebody to shut the stable door; they don't want to raise a retrospective complaint after the horse has bolted.
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