r/CustomerService

I’m the only cashier so I’ve served every person in the dining room. Breakfast ended at 11 and these ladies started ordering at 11:05. The one lady huffs and puffs I won’t make an acceptation for her breakfast sandwich even though eggs are gone and egg oven is already disassembled. She ends up ordering lunch but is clearly upset. 11:30 rolls around and I finally have a chance to sit and eat my 3 hour old breakfast sandwich. So I take a seat in dining room and dig in. This same lady is sitting 2 tables across from me now and said “I thought said you don’t have any breakfast sandwiches?” And my mouth is full so I just smiling, still in polite customer service mode, then I just think she just must be joking so I don’t bother to reply. But then she adds “I’ll remember you the next time I want to order something. Clearly you must have an issue with me”.
I’m baffled that she doesn’t just realize I have not had a chance to eat my own breakfast and that this sandwich is old. If she’s that vigilant then she should know I’ve been tied to the register with customers since she got in at around 10:45 (yes in time to order her breakfast!) I roughly explain I just haven’t had time to eat it for the past 3 hours and I made it around 8:30am to WHICH SHE REPLIES “so you couldn’t just sell me that one?”
No ma’am, I’m sure that’s against so many health codes, plus I’ve made this without gloves and it’s customized because it’s MINE.
I wish I said that but a part of me still thought she was joking so I said “you wanted my cold, old sandwich?” And laughed and she just grabbed her purse and left! I’m still baffled with my interaction with an entitled Karen in the wild and just had to share that somewhere!

Don't fucking argue with me about stupid stuff like this. I've been here for years. I work with people who have been here for decades longer. We have NEVER had 24/7 operating hours.

This person was lingering while we were closing and I walked over to say "hey just a heads up, we're about to lock the doors"

She left, but as she was walking to the door she said she wished we were still 24/7.

I said we've never been 24/7.

She says "Yes you did."

I say "no ma'am, we have never had 24/7 hours"

She stops in her tracks and whips around. "Yes you DID! I used to come here!"

I don't remember what I said after that but it was probably some platitudes just to get her out.

She was either mistaken or lying; I lean towards mistaken. Which like, it's fine to make a mistake. It's the *arguing* with me that pisses me off. Even if you think I'm wrong, go figure it out someplace else. Google it or something, I don't know. Don't be an ass.

Im a receptionist at a hotel, shitty minimum wage student job, she comes to me completely outraged claiming she found a bed bug in her room. I apply protocol, go take a picture of the bug, and inform my boss. Then I tell her I can give her a different room. She says I should refund her and the hotel should pay for her stay somewhere else. I tell her I can’t do that and make it clear that I CAN NOT, as in I don’t have the card for those. « Well you should book a room for me and then your bosses will refund you for it. Or I will post this on social media. » girl POST IT. This isn’t my dad’s hotel I couldn’t care less.

Ps: the hotel is clean. We get monthly inspections and teams to come spray and check everything. Ive worked here for 4 months and this is the first and only complaint.

Update: my colleague who works the next shift arrived and we called the big boss, she said it's very likely staged (One bug only. On top of all the covers. Already dead.) and we can't refund rn or get her another room. I tell the woman to send an email explaining and asking for the refund, and she proceeds to stand outside for two hours telling clients we have bed bugs. She gets two people to cancel without even speaking a word to me, and the craziest part is : she convinced a couple, and got herself invited to stay the night at the girl’s place.
So yay ! Love my job !

I work in a client facing role and I genuinely like most of the people I deal with. most of them.

this one came in with a problem that had a clear answer he did not want to hear. I explained it patiently, offered every option available to me, and stayed professional when he started getting sharp about it.

at some point he decided the issue was me personally rather than the policy. went to my supervisor while I was still on shift and gave a version of events that I would describe as creative fiction. I had to walk into that conversation and stand there while someone described a version of me I did not recognize.

my supervisor heard both sides and it was fairly clear whose account held up.

on his way out the client stopped, extended his hand toward me, and said something like no hard feelings yeah.

I looked at his hand and said I do not usually shake hands with people who just lied about me to my boss.

he did not have a response for that. left without another word.

my supervisor thought it was funny. I took the rest of the afternoon slow because some interactions cost more than they look like they should.

I'm genuinely curious. This happens to me a lot. I notice when we give a response that's not what a customer wants to hear, they decide to be annoying and keep asking the same questions again and again and again.

For example: I clarified to the customer that they have 3 active orders and all three orders are under the same address, XYZ address. (It's related to some delivery).

The customer then proceeds to repeat the questions. "how many active orders do i have?" "Are they under the same addresss?" "Are all three orders actively being processed?"

She started to do this when I told her all three packages cannot be sent out together as they were all ordered on different dates and from different stores.

I notice a lot of people doing this lately. I'm just genuinely curious. Is this customer's being annoying and trying to ragebait us?

You can ask politely. You can request a call back at a certain time.

You will not, however, proceed to tell me what to do. Or what you “expect” as if I am your child or your employee. I am here to help you but I am not your personal on-call servant.

Nor will you tell my coworkers what time you “require” a call back from me.

I understand you have a schedule. But so do I. I don’t work here just for you. I am more than willing to work with you on a convenient time. IF, you are considerate of my time as well. What if I had an appointment with another client at that time? What if I have other urgent matters? You don’t know. So therefore, a polite request instead of a demand is recommended.

Ask nicely and you shall receive. Tell me what to do with my time? I’ll proceed to put you lower on my list of priorities. If I decide what you need isn’t actually urgent in the slightest, you may even get put to the next business day.

Common courtesy can get you much further in life.

Numbers looked great this morning. Checked our close rate and was actually proud for once. Then my inbox fills up with customers saying their issues aren't fixed. Went back and looked at the tickets. Agents are closing them right after sending the first response without actually confirming anything got resolved. They're technically hitting their metrics so nobody's saying anything but customers are mad. I don't even know how to bring this up without sounding like I'm blaming people

I work at a university library--things are free but my job is still customer service--and we circulate laptops. The laptops are all several years old and have some cosmetic damage, but work just fine. They're gonna be a little banged up when they get circulated among hundreds of people. But the point is that it's FREE. You get a FREE LAPTOP for a week, and you can keep coming back and checking them out! It's awesome! Support your local libraries!

Most patrons don't comment on cosmetic damage or places where we've applied electrical tape. But there's always *that person* who has to have an attitude about it.

In this case, I'm checking out a laptop to a patron. I do what I always do: take the laptop out of the bag and open it, set it on the counter, and ask her to log in to make sure everything works before leaving with it. On this laptop, the rubber lining around the screen is bowing up in a few places.

She makes a face and says, "I need another one."

I told her it doesn't impact performance and the laptop works fine.

She snaps, "NO, I want another one."

I smiled and said okay, went to the cabinet, and took my sweet time taking out each laptop bag, opening the bag, taking out the laptop, opening the laptop, inspecting the laptop to make sure it's perfect enough for Her Highness, before putting it back and pulling the next one. Next time I'm just gonna lie and say it's the only one.

Yeah, it's not that deep and I'm being petty. But fuck you, it's a free laptop that works just fine. I'm not going to waste mine and waiting patrons' time to hunt for the best laptop for you every time just because you want it.

I've worked in customer service centers of one kind or another for over a decade. I love it and I am very good at my job. I typically do customer support for members of certain services like cable, Internet, mobile service etc. Those recordings at the start of your call that state "This call may be monitored or recorded for quality and training purposes" Those aren't just a heads up in case we randomly decide to record your call. We have multiple means of recording customer interactions via every channel and every representative you speak with can see your conversation with other agents. Lying and threatening a lawsuit not only means nothing to an hourly employee,.it also makes us laugh. Trust me if you have grounds for a lawsuit you won't be calling us, someone higher up who gets paid a hell of a lot more than I do will contact you first to try and head off the lawsuit. Otherwise if you need to threaten it you likely have no grounds and are putting yourself at risk for being placed on written correspondence only, try threatening to get someone fired with a pen and paper! intimidating? I think not!

Is it me or are companies slowly outsourcing human interaction with AI. I just tried to call CVS about a prescription and could only get their AI agent. First outsource to a foreign country and now to AI. CUSTOMER SERVICE in America is the worst. Meanwhile, prices of goods and services remain at an all time high.

I’ve noticed that even simple issues now seem to require way more effort than they used to. Something that should take five minutes, like cancelling a subscription, fixing a billing mistake, or requesting a refund, can turn into long hold times, endless chatbot loops, or being transferred between departments multiple times.

What’s frustrating is that companies have added more automation over the years, but a lot of the experience still feels inefficient from the customer side. Sometimes it feels like the systems are designed more to slow people down than to actually resolve problems quickly.

Today I learned a hard lesson in customer service: sometimes trying to go the extra mile to help people just creates more problems down the line.

This one’s been a real lesson in “no good deed goes unpunished.”

I thought I was doing someone a favor by pointing them to a valid alternative when we couldn’t serve them directly. Fast forward a few weeks, and suddenly that “helpful tip” has turned into me being held responsible for every issue they have with their purchase, even though the entire transaction happened through a completely separate channel.

It’s wild how quickly a small, well-intentioned suggestion gets twisted into “you owe me a resolution for everything.” I’m all for supporting customers, but there’s a line between guiding someone and being on the hook for issues that aren’t even in my control.

Guess I’ll be sticking to “sorry, we can’t help with that” from now on. 😅

I hate customer service

I love working from home, I hate customer service. I been in this line of work since I was 16. Never progressed anywhere. I didn’t finish college and I still don’t see a point to. I plan on picking up a trade, but sometimes the pessimism gets to me and I don’t see the point. I am tired of working technical support for technological inept people.

It will be the small minute shit that people call about, but would rather just call, and then over explain that they used ChatGPT and start antagonizing me and being rude to me whenever we have to do even more troubleshooting.

“I don’t want to stay on the line long” when I have to isolate the issue
“I already done these steps I want my phone fully replaced” when the phone doesn’t qualify for a replacement

The worst ones are people, that put subscriptions on, forget about it, then act like fucking victims when they were charged and have the audacity to fight when I’m explaining information, constantly interrupting me, flinging slurs or insults. At least the decent part about this job I can just hang up when they do this, but this shit is exhausting. I’m sorry, but I genuinely can not stand working tech support with elderly customers especially. Please give them flip phones for the love of GOD.

I’m an artist, I would LOVE to just draw all day and night, but it is NOT sustainable, unfortunately. I am trying to ride this job out until I can get a new one and start stacking my funds and then just fucking leave. Idk what else to apply to bc I’m just tired. I have been doing leadership positions in most of my jobs and I just want the economy to just crumble or wages be fucking raised, but I doubt that will happen in our lifetime.

I’m sorry this ramble was all over the place, but I’m fucking tired of customer service. This shit is infuriating and getting to me mentally. I should be being paid over $25 an hour for all the bullshit I gotta deal with

I'm working on a call centre. Any advice and tips on how to gain someone's trust. What are the strategies to manage their anger or frustration? How to build rapport? Help me I'm struggling in getting positive surveys and first contact resolution. Any inputs will be appreciated.

*on the phone with a new insurance agent*

Me: So sorry it's loud, my dog is barking

Customer Service Agent: Thank you. That's no problem. I'll be happy to answer your dog's questions as well.

Hi there. I know for the most part people who don’t work in customer service will automatically say yes they would let people get away with stealing period pads and so on so forth.

I just started my first ever job last week and i’ve noticed this one girl, who looks about my age steal toothpaste, sunscreen, miceller water and i think a toothbrush.

I know i physically cannot stop people that steal, and i have tried to stop her before she does it so I can just buy it for her— even though i haven’t been payed yet and i don’t have money myself.

I don’t know what to do please help. I really don’t want to report it but i know it’s my job

Running internal support for a growing team and it’s starting to feel impossible to keep track of employee and internal requests. Everything is split up email threads that go nowhere, separate portals where half the updates get missed, and chat pings that nobody follows up on properly. Agents waste so much time jumping between them just to see the full picture of a request.

Tried piecing things together with searches and manual timelines but it never works at scale. Stuff falls through constantly and employees get frustrated when they have to repeat the same info across teams. Been thinking about some kind of unified layer that pulls it all into one timeline where the agent owns the whole lifecycle from start to finish. One source of truth instead of this mess.

What tools or setups have you seen that actually consolidate everything without adding more complexity?

It finally happened after 5 years in customer service.

I had a customer push back on each of my responses (to THEIR questions)

And then suddenly as if he shoots sparkles out his a$$ suddenly my male co-worker says the EXACT same thing and its all "oh wow thank you so much, thats so helpful"

Literally, had to hold my tongue before I tried to confront her for her sudden shift in attitude.

Its been a lot day of people making petty complaints over situations I can't alter with the credit cards so I thought I would throw down some consumer tips.

1. Never let your grandkids/nieces/nephews/teens purchase anything in an app "just once" with your credit card. NEVER DO THIS. It's almost never one charge and their game or music account is in their name so you can't legally access it, and while it is your credit card being used, you gave permission when you allowed the youngster to use your card. If the purchase is online, the card is stored. It's not fraud. Or rather, yeah, your grandkids etc ARE stealing from you and maybe you should talk with them about repayment. Because its not fraud.

2. Similarly, if you and your spouse are divorcing, and they were using your card, or were on your card as a cardholder, and they had Netflix or whatever billing and you no longer want to pay for it, you need to contact them and talk about it. Because you gave them permission to use your account to pay for these things but you can't cancel services in their name.

3. Its sad that some vendors and merchants are pains in the asses about cancelling but as adults, if you sign up for something, you have to cancel it if you want billing to stop. Your credit card can not call up Netflix and cancel your service. You have to do that. All canceling your credit card does is well.... cancel your credit card. Netflix won't chase after you directly but some places will indeed start sending you direct statements and send you to collections. (Directtv used to be very fond of this tactic) If that happens, your now cancelled credit card company can't help you at all.

4. If you opened the credit card account, you have to be the one to handle things. Not your mom or your spouse. Shrieking "YOU CAN TALK TO HIM!!!" is not the answer. Depending on what you need done, I am legally required to speak to you.

5. If you are calling for someone who has died, please call monday thru friday during normal business hours. Most places have special units for this situation, but since its not a common call, the departments rarely work late or on weekends. Also, there is absolutely no need to call three hours after your mom died on a sunday morning. Its understood that if Mom died on May 1 and you call on May 16, that she wasn't making charges on May 7.

6. Likewise if you have a relative with dementia who can no longer come to the phone, I am not being an asshole when I insist you submit proof of power of attorney. If they are in hospice dying, can I be honest? Its probably easier for them if you wait until they die to deal with the credit card.

7. Try reading your statement before calling. It amazes me how many calls I take that are literally "why do I have a balance" and I have to direct you to the ONE charge on the account that makes up the balance in the statement you are looking at.

8. If you are younger than I, and I am mid fifties, you have lived in a world of computers, emails, texting, and passwords. It should not be PAINFUL for you or I to direct you to the credit card company's website or app.