Dealing with rude, unhelpful service people

What is your boiling point? Are you one of those people who are able to stay patiently pleasant even when faced with rudeness and unhelpfulness? Or, when dealing with maddening situations do you find it easy to lose your cool?

By now you may have heard about the Comcast phone call between a customer who was trying to terminate his service and the unrelenting customer service agent who refused to cancel his service for 10 minutes!!! Despite the incredible rudeness of the agent, the caller continued to keep his cool and remained polite yet determined to get his needs met. I have to hand it to him; I probably would have gotten upset with the offensive agent. At the very least I would have asked to speak to the rep’s manager.

But the beautiful thing is the caller didn’t yell or scream and modeled controlled respect, a good lesson for all of us.

It reminds me of a time a colleague of mine left her debit card at a bagel restaurant. When she called the restaurant about it a young man answered the phone and was very uninterested in helping her. But, through being pleasantly persistent, my colleague was able to not only gain the man’s cooperation she made him feel like a hero for helping her. It was a win win for both parties.

I have to admit, I’m easily frustrated when service people are not helpful and it’s hard for me to remain pleasant. But, here are two examples of how we always win when we are respectful, even if it does take 10 minutes to get our needs met.

How about you? How would you have handled the Comcast call as a customer? Are there times you found that through being pleasant and respectful you got your needs met quicker or at least with less trauma?

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