As I mentioned on my other question for the day, I had a delightful conversation with a customer service representative the other day while waiting for her computer to retrieve some data. It was a small company, and I assume it had been a slow day.

One thing that fascinated me was that the woman with whom I was speaking told me that customer service was a job she had taken to keep busy after retirement. This struck me because I was under the impression that customer service is a miserable job.

“Don’t you have to deal with people yelling at you all day?” I asked her. After all, everyone who calls is having some sort of problem, and many of them are probably disappointed or angry about something.

“Oh, a lot of people are angry at first,” she said, “but they stop yelling at you really quick if you just listen to them.” This made me wonder if one of the reasons there are so many complaints about customer service is that it often seems like representatives are running on a script rather than really trying to help.

So when do customer service representatives bother you the most? Do you think that a lot of the problem is just a failure of communication?

If possible, please leave issues relating to accents out for the purposes of answering this question.

Topics: customer service, problems, telephone, anger management, petty annoyances