Who Complains MOST?

It is important not to stereotype.

Anyone can be a complainer, regardless of age, gender, nationality, intelligence, social status or hair colour. One of the most interesting things about working in the customer services sector is the range of people that one meets!

It is also important not to confuse complainants with complainers.

Complainants are people who make a complaint; complainers are people who habitually complain. We often refer to the latter as "penpals" in our office.

But who complains the MOST?

This obviously depends on the industry to a large extent. However, I have observed a number of more unusal trends that mark out people who regularly complain:

1. People with unfortunate names - people who have unfortunate names seem to complain more often and more viciously than anyone else. This may be a psychological thing. Many of the most familiar names in our files belong to people who MUST have suffered major bullying at school. Maybe they are taking this out on us...
2. Students - amazing, but true. Yes, older people do complain lots as well, but generally the most unnecessarily aggressive complaints come from students. They tend to go a little over the top in making their points, and often forget that people outside the university may be intelligent individuals as well. As a graduate and part-time post grad student, it always makes me laugh when students take this line with me. Do they realise that they too could graduate and end up in customer services...?
3. Menopausal Women - these can be spotted a mile a way. "I am NOT menopausal... I have a responsible job and I DON'T deserve to be treated like this!". The tears almost drip off the page sometimes. It is an unfortunate effect of hormones in some women, and I do not mean to cause any offence by suggesting that sometimes women of this age can get a little obsessional about complaining. Pregnant women often do the same. Despite my best diplomatic efforts, I have often resigned a telephone call by asking a weeping lady to write to us with her concerns so we can investigate formally. This gives them the time to think about things and hopefully write calmly - and us time to construct a water-tight, sympathetic response.

I would never advise anyone within these groups to refrain from making a valid complaint for fear of being branded. However, I would always advise taking a deep breath first. Remember: we customer service workers can often be menopausal students with unfortunate names too!

Has anyone else observed odd trends in complainant demographics? It would be an interesting thing to survey, wouldn't it? What creates a complainer's psyche? Comments very welcome!

Group Mentality

Have you ever noticed how groups of people can whip themselves into a frenzy about an issue? They come storming up to your customer services desk and create absolute stink complaining about it... then when you investigate you find that the whole thing was just NOT TRUE!

I have come across this several times.

Group complaining mentality can be a dangerous and frustrating thing. It is relatively easy to cope with an individual person who has made a mistake and is complaining about it indignantly... you can explain their error to them politely and they go off all sheepish-like. But when a whole group of people come in claiming the same thing, it is really hard to trust yourself when you find that they just can't be right.

I like to refer to this as "bus stop" complaining - as this is exactly what happens when groups of people complain to each other at a bus stop. It works like this:

1. One person suffers from a misconception about an incident
i.e. they misunderstand something or trigger a dispute with their own attitude, but can't see that they were wrong

2. Several other people hear about the incident and discuss it
- the first person's misconception is treated as truth by others who were not present, but are predisposed to think the worst of the company involved

3. Continued discussion creates increased anger within the group
- the version of events presented becomes fixed as truth in the minds of all the individuals within the group

4. The original instigator takes on the role of a hero and group whips itself into a defensive frenzy around this hero.
- Group participants cannot then accept the falsehood of the story, unless proven and presented in writing.

It is almost as if people within this sort of complaining gaggle want to be within a story or soap opera. They want a hero to worship and a bad guy (normally your company) to hate.

There is simply no use arguing with these people in person, especially if they all bombard you together. The only way you can deal with them is to take down all of the details, leave it for a week or so, then write to them, explaining the truth and apologising for any confusion.

In our company, we have discussed whether we should refuse to accept secondhand complaints, to avoid this very issue. "Were you involved, madam?" "No, I was just standing nearby... but I thought it was disgusting" "Well we can only take a complaint from the person who was actually involved, but thank you for calling!".

Needless to say, we didn't thing we could get away with this - not and maintain the true, caring spirit of customer services. But it is an odd phenomenon indeed.

People are definitely strange creatures when they are in groups!

Training

This is a perennial problem in my work place, and, no doubt, in many other customer service departments within all kinds of organisations: training. Lack of, quality of, quantity of... you name it!

In my work place, it is a lack of proper training causes a problem. Generally, we work together as a small team to discuss the best approaches to common problems, and to apply hindsight to specific incidents. This helps to an extent, but it does mean that on some of the more challenging issues that arise, we really have to make do with our own judgement, rather than relying on solid training.

A topical example:

You receive a telephone call from a blatantly racist customer. How do you handle their comments?

I am really not comfortable with racism, so on one occasion I decided the best option was to put the call across to my manager. This proved to be a mistake, because the manager in question turned out to be incredible prejudice AGAINST racist people. The conversation very quickly dissolved into an abusive tirade, with my boss slamming down the phone on the lady in question. I later had to deal with her husband, who also wanted to speak to the manager and could not see how his wife had been racist, as there was nothing wrong with what she said. Another abusive call with much shouting ensued.

This incident raised several issues for me:

1) how important it is to keep ALL prejudices, even apparently positive ones, out of the way when dealing with customers
2) how you cannot always rely on your manager to keep their temper, so it is better to deal with discomfort during a call as far as possible, rather than chickening out
3) specific to this particular call - how many people don't think that making derogatory comments about Eastern European (particularly Polish) people is racism, which of course it is.

I pondered this incident for some time, not least because I felt partially responsible for making the situation worse by handing the call over to my manager in the first place. It made me braver today when someone made the following comment:

"I used to work for you so I know what the company is like... you need to tell X to train your f***ing Poles better..."

I felt my blood turn in one beautifully cold, crisp wave. Apparently my voice did the same thing. My response was as follows:

"With all due respect, sir, I currently work for the company, so I know what they are like now. X does not train our staff and the issue would be the same regardless of the nationality of the staff member."

The call went on for some time, with me keeping a very forceful tone of voice and repeating my advice, which actually solved the chap's problem, but he didn't want to admit defeat. I did win out in the end, but not without a fairly large dose of adrenaline, and a bar of chocolate to restore my nerves afterwards.

My question is whether there is a good, customer-friendly way of dealing with a racist customer? Should the comment just be ignored, or is a firm line needed to make sure the customer realises they have stepped over the mark? Or would such people understand a subtle indicator like: "the nationality of the member of staff makes no difference"?

In a politically correct and sensitive world, it is a very difficult thing to judge. Do we have to respect everyone else's views, even when those views are disrespectful to others? Is there any advice out there for people on the front line of customer services to help them deal with this problem?

I don't really want to be political with this blog, but this has to be the most pressing issue I face as a customer service worker and I think it is time it was aired and discussed sensibly. With a friendly, understanding smile of course... :P

The Problem With....

People.

People love to complain. They don't always think about the health, blood pressure or general psychological well-being of the person they are complaining to, but those things should never get in the way of a good moan anyway!

When you work in customer services you often find yourself wondering: "how can people be so.... GRRRR!" - or I do, at any rate. You can try to understand, empathise, sympathise and so on, but at the end of the day there are some people who just enjoy moaning and cannot really be helped.

But that doesn't mean that the long suffering customer services assistant who has to listen to their random tirades cannot be helped.

This blog is designed to provide a little light relief from whinging-happy-people, the opportunity to rant about the complaints/complainants - and possible thrash out some of the interesting issues behind the human instinct to moan.

It could be a laugh.... :s