Nicky

By Darling Nicky

“The customer is always right.” – BIG FAT LIE according to your lacklustre attempt to assist me.

“Hello, and thank you for calling, how may I help you?” – You don’t really want to help me.  You’re hoping all I want to do is a simple address change.

“Thank you for calling.  Have I resolved the reason for your call today?” – NO you have not, which is why I am forever asking to speak to your supervisor.

No disrespect to all the people who work as Customer Service Representatives, but I’m about to go off on this so-called customer service.

You see, I have spent the better part of six hours over the last two days on-hold, in line or placed in sequence to receive some form of customer service from companies that have no qualms taking unreasonable amounts of my hard earned money, for product and service that I don’t get to benefit from as I should.

For example, let’s talk about certain wireless service providers.  Just because you claim to have the largest and fastest 3G service area does NOT mean that I should under any circumstance be on hold over the phone for forty-five minutes or longer.  Forty-five minutes is the equivalent of an episode of Jersey Shore (minus the commercials).  That’s a very long time to have to listen to elevator music.

Once you actually answer my call, nine times out of 10, you tell me that your department is not equipped to solve my problem, and so begins the ping-pong game of bouncing me around from department to department, from automated response system to real live human being, from soft holding music to the annoying “please wait, your call is being held in sequence” looped voice recordings.

Do you know how many times I have probably hung up seconds before an attendant actually answered my call because I could only handle so much Micheal Bolton?

Anyhow, after having missed meals, been late for work, and turned blue from not wanting to hang up the phone when I’ve had to use the washroom, all because I didn’t want to lose my place in “priority” sequence, someone from the Customer Service team answers my call, and then subjects me to a series of security questions to verify that I am who I say I am.

While I do totally agree with that, especially in this day of identity fraud, I find it redundant that if I am transferred to five different departments through your labyrinth of service protocol, why should I have to give my mother’s maiden name FIVE different times?  It’s not as if I ever hung up the phone?  It’s still me, still with the same issue, and still not resolved!

To be quite honest, I spend more time listening to the scripted response, “Please be advised that your call may be recorded for quality assurance”, that I have begun to talk directly to the recording feature more than the human at the end of the phone for the mere fact that in my experience, first-contact resolution is just a figment of my imagination.

So while the world outside continues to press on, such as being that much closer to solving the Caramilk™ secret, I have now lost hours of my life (did I mention it was SIX hours), that the person that originally answered my call is now comfortably at home watching Grey’s Anatomy, while I am stuck on the phone with a dying cordless battery, only to be asked one more time, “May I have your wireless number starting with the area code?”  Grrrrrrr!!!!

At my service?  Yeah, right.

Guest blogger Darling Nicky is an entertainment writer, blogger and publicist.  Check out her blog at www.darlingnicky999.com.