NY ComicCon: I'm not mad, I'm just drawn that way

[spqrblues]

This was a reply to a comment from kyleen66, but I feel the need to bump it up to its own post. If you're just here to see comics, please ignore. But if I don't let off some steam, I am highly likely to turn this incident into a comic itself, and I'm not sure this particular venting will produce art on the level of The Casque of Amontillado. In fact, I'm pretty sure it will just be angry and weird.

Now, on to the anger and weirdness:

So, I noticed a problem with my badge for NY ComicCon, which is this coming weekend. Conflicting information on their website as to what it should have cost. As long as I was asking about one problem, I also decided to extend my membership to the weekend (it's just for Friday) so I can do some very specific networking with a variety of people who will only be there Saturday and/or Sunday. Over the course of trying to do this, the NYCC customer service reps put me off and put me off and said someone would get back to me and said no one who could help was there so I should phone later and said no one who could help was there so I should phone later and asked is [company] really a professional organisation and said you should wait until you're onsite at the registration booth to work this out and said you need to prove [company] is real and said no one was there who could help anyway and then said, "it's too late to do anything about it now, we're sold out."

"What do you mean you're sold out?" says I. "You've been putting off letting me change this since before you were sold out. Is there a supervisor who can address this?"
"We're sold out now."
"But you caused the delay."
"But we're sold out now."
"Is there a supervisor?"
"We're sold out."

Hm. Maybe I could turn that into a comic, complete with Stephen Colbert-style inset picture of what the person on the other end of the phone line is presumed to look like.

Not a single one of the customer service reps I spoke with (and there were several) would 1) let me communicate with a manager or supervisor, or 2) take responsibility for their error with a "we can't help you, but we apologise" type response. It's like everyone these days is trained to take a "nothing is my fault" and "nothing is my problem" approach to the world, and a "if it's easier not to help you, I won't help you" attitude to their work.

I am now officially a crotchety old lady.

Comments

[passiveangel.livejournal.com]

edited to remove typos

Well, not everyone is like that (I've been trained in accountability and "empathy" for my customer service job) but it certainly does sound like you've been given the shaft and have every right to be pissed. >:-(

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Accountability and empathy--that's precisely it. I know that sometimes, no matter how ridiculously unreasonable, sometimes a company simply will not fix a problem (I say "will not" as opposed to "cannot"). In that case, I really don't want to be made to feel even worse, and more frustrated, and ignored, and treated like customers simply don't matter as long as the company gets X amount of money overall. After all, it's not like a disgruntled customer can do anything to hurt the company's bottom line, right? Grrrrf.

I do know several folks in customer service positions (and now I can add one more!). It seems the past month has been a string of speaking with completely awful reps (not only from the comic convention). I'm sure it has a lot to do with each different company's corporate culture, but why do I feel as if society, on the whole, is sliding more and more into a "just don't care" way of looking at things, which then slops over into, say, temporary customer service reps thinking that they're giving good service as long as they don't actually curse the client out?

Oh dear, I still have some steam pent up in there, don't I?

I am always so THIRLLED when I reach a kindly, helpful, or even just nice rep that I probably terrify them with my gushing of praise and gratitude. I take their names and tell supervisors, and am generally irritating. Thank you (and your fellow reps) for being part of the good guys ::gushes::

Empathy is more than just saying you're sorry

[passiveangel.livejournal.com]

Yay! It's a "Kudos Call" without being on a call! :-P

A lot of companies seem to focus on the bottom line while paying lip service to any "values" they may say they have. They don't take care of their reps like they could (or they focus on areas other than actual customer service, like, oh, sales) and so they attract the wrong sorts of people to the job or make the right sort of people terribly unhappy. (Don't get me started on my last job.)

My company figured out years ago that the key to success is to make customers extremely happy so they'll never want to leave. *wicked grin* And they realized that in order to do that, they needed to make the "troops" (me) extremely happy so we love doing our jobs. Really good companies do this (Google does this, and there's a steel mill somewhere that I heard about who does the same thing), and combined with smart growth and other business-savvy practices they steadily grow and succeed and promote good vibes throughout the universe.

We are the Jedi in a world full of Sith, and we may never get to blow up the death star, but we'll never go away. The way you can help is by finding these companies and supporting them with your hard-earned consumer dollars. ;-)

Re: Empathy is more than just saying you're sorry

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Somewhere along the way, some companies stopped recognising that every part of the company contributes to the bottom line, not just the sales people whose successes can be measured in dollar amounts. That philosophy was part of the underlying rot at the advertising & marketing agency I worked for. Billable hours were considered more important than having a proper support staff--even more important than doing a good job. A guy who sealed a deal was valued, but if five or six minions then had to come in and do the work, they weren't recognised as particularly deserving of good treatment, and might be trimmed down to four minions, three minions... and then you just have unhappy minions.

It's weird, but NYCC absolutely won't address the issue of a customer being unhappy. The reps aren't raising their voices, they 're not testy or Speaking-Loudly-And-Slowly-To-Me-Like-I-Am-Stupid they way a guy at Wells Fargo bank did the other day. But they just don't seem interested in dealing with a situation that isn't within narrowly defined parameters. Or, perhaps they are completely untrained in what to do when a situation isn't "tell the customer the dates and the price and take their credit card info."

Okay, amended: The person I spoke with today put me through the usual "we kinda just don't care" hoops. I was insistent but (hopefully) extremely polite, and emphasised that I am representing them back to others in a specific subset of the publishing industry, and that it is a large industry from which they draw significant numbers of exhibitors and other support. I reiterated the concerns (complaints) I've heard over the past month from people at several publishing houses. FINALLY, after I wouldn't take no for an answer (this was a 10-minute phone call, poor rep), I was given the name of a supervisor and confirmation that we were overcharged for our badges and maybe, who-knows-maybe-if-the-right-person-is-around-at-registration, we will be given a refund and/or extended access.

I don't know where I fall on the line between "squeaky wheel" and "bitchy," and I do know I am easily outraged; but, darnit, I wouldn't have been outraged at all if I just felt I was being listened to, rather than fed a standard answer that didn't even fit the situation.

Bahpooey. But I feel slightly better now. Also, I have cookies.

Re: Empathy is more than just saying you're sorry

[passiveangel.livejournal.com]

Cookies! :-D

Well yeah, that's part of what's lacking with a lot of customer service reps these days. Your call wouldn't have lasted for 10 minutes if the rep had actually given you the feeling that you'd been listened to. It sounds to me like the reps for NYCC were very poorly trained and probably didn't know how to do anything other than give info of dates and prices and then take your cc info. And due to this, if they felt like they were being pushed by you for things they didn't know they probably pushed back with the "broken record" tactic to get you off the phone (whether they knew they were doing it or not).

You may have needed to be bitchy, but unfortunately in this situation this was the only way to get anything done. Don't feel guilty, you were within your rights. What gets my goat is that this kind of poor training for representatives then trains customers to think that they have to ask for a supervisor every time in order to get their issues resolved. *harried sigh*

Re: Empathy is more than just saying you're sorry

[hieran.livejournal.com]

Klio -- you might be surprised that I am going to ever-so-slightly disagree with you. NOT that you were mistreated by the NYCC folks. You definitely were, and you absolutely should have been allowed to speak to a supervisor long before the end game. You have every right to be mad -- and you're also 100 percent correct that customer service in general seems to have eroded over the past 10 years or so.

I actually do want to defend customer service reps, though. (For those who don't know me: I work for a Large Health Insurance Company with a name everyone knows.) I don't think this was the case with NYCC, but in some cases you may be talking to a rep who has him- or herself just been mistreated -- by a customer. The general lack of respect for other human beings seems to cut both ways here in the 21st century. At my company, people often call customer service already angry about their situation because it usually involves a good deal of money (if a medical claim has been denied) as well as their most precious possession -- their health.

The level of abuse that our reps take on a daily basis is so high that on any given day, we have as many as 20 percent of our reps out on Family and Medical Leave Act leave due to stress and anxiety. We have training classes of 28 for 10 job openings because that many trainees drop out before they even get to the floor. In our last training class, one trainee quit half an hour after being put on the phone for the first time. Tragically, with this being in South Louisiana, and many of our reps being people of color, the first words they often hear out of a customer's mouth are racial epithets. I know how bad it can get because part of my job occasionally entails helping to answer e-mails that come in with that sort of abuse in writing. It can be hard for me to figure out how to answer politely when I see someone I respect -- a rep whom I know does care about our customers and wants to give good service -- referred to as "that black bitch who took my call." Yes -- that's actually not the worst I've seen, either. And I'm fairly removed from it, with the hateful language being in writing and not directed at me. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to listen to it all day long.

All of this is not to excuse any CSR who is incompetent, uncaring, and/or obviously not doing their job. It's just another facet to the story. And again, unfortunately, at least part of my point is that civility in general seems to be fading rapidly away. :-(

Re: Empathy is more than just saying you're sorry

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

I sympathise with the stress of their jobs, which is why when I make a phone call like this I am polite and am certain to emphasise to any CSR I speak with that I know they didn't cause the problem but I need for them to solve it, and if they can't, then I'll need to speak with someone who can. When I'm mad, I make doubly certain to say something like "as you can tell, I'm already upset and frustrated about this, but..." That's why I vent here, on lj, and not to the person I'm futilely trying to coax to help me. If it takes repeating myself, and the CSR finds that upsetting or oppressive, then that's just not a very good CSR. And every time a CSR treats me with friendliness or a modicum of dignity I compliment her or him at the end of the call for the good service. I'd rather a rep say to me "I can't answer that" or "I don't know how to help you with this" than the rep take a nonsensical stance and refuse to budge.

Think of all the different sorts of professions where workers are CONSTANTLY abused by the public, really abused, but we react in absolute horror (and rightly so) if they then treat everyone else shabbily ::cough::police::cough::. People lose my sympathy when they Pay-It-Forward onto me whatever some previous person did to upset them. And I lose sympathy when a CSR repeats a standard line that does not address the situation (presumably part of inadequate training) rather than listening to the specifics and saying, "wait a moment, this answer doesn't fit the problem, this is a customer who actually does need help." Then, they're simply not listening, and that means they're not actually doing their job--or, it means their job is not to listen: they're just serving as an anti-accountability shield, a barrier between the customer and the company actually having to correct any of its mistakes.

[/vent off... though I don't really think of this as a vent so much as... merely a statement]

[ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had that kind of thing once when I was in the US for a convention. I've never had it in Europe though. The worst part is that I was already there in front of them, late at night.

-Hello, here I am, I reserved an hotel room here for arrival at precisely this time. --Sorry, we don't have a room for you, we're full up. -Do you mean you lost my reservation? --No, we just gave your room to somebody else. -Could you explain this? --We overbooked, sorry, you'll have to go elsewhere. -I don't know Baltimore (or any US city for that matter) could you help me out in some way? Phone another hotel perhaps? -- We 're not authorized to do this. - Can I speak to your manager? --They're not available in the evening.

This was in a big, big modern hotel in downtown Baltimore, and they were very polite and totally absolutely unhelpful and they seemed to think that it was OK that way. This was many years ago, before I had a chance to see the parrot sketch or the cheese shop sketch in Monthy Python, so I had no way to retaliate. I've avoided US hotels since then, except when the convention itself does the booking and I know somebody accountable that I can wake up. In the years after that I saw evidence in other places (like US airlines) of such an attitude and , needless to say, I've avoided US airlines as a result.

It would be great if you could get some levity out of that "beggar-the-custumer" cost-cutting attitude.

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that you say this, and interesting to compare our experiences. When I lived in England, I found that sort of experience was common outside of touristy venues. I was (naive and) shocked that the prevalent attitude toward a customer problem was polite extreme indifference. I remember complaining to my friends back on the other side of overseas about how I longed to return to the U.S., where the service industry still held service as a high calling. (Italy deserves a hug, though, for being so kind to me, except for the toilets in Turin.)

Overbooked hotel? Not the hotel's problem. Sliced my hand open saving a fellow customer from a glass display case falling on her head, which case is now in shards across the floor, onto which I am bleeding? I was stared at blankly, then stared at more while I stumbled through asking if the store had any bandaids-bandages-plasters, then had to wait for the cashier to ring the packet up before I could perform my own First Aid. Maybe it was my accent. Do the English have something against Australians? Not that I'm Australian, but everyone assumed I was, even though I was trying to impersonate a Canadian with my Torontonian Disguise Kit.

This was a billion years ago, though.

And US airlines are a complete customer-service disaster of epic proportions, though Jet Blue's abject apologies recently may show a change in attitude.

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

P.S. - Good grief, how did you manage to find a place to stay? I'd have gone into a blind panic if I'd been in some random European city at night with no room. Actually, nowadays I would more likely annoy the staff until they'd do anything to get the crazy American in the Torontonian-disguise out of their hair.

[ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com]

Since I was going to the US, the land of wheeled mobility I had my boss authorize the rental of a car for the entire convention even though the convention venue was downtown, next door to most hotels. In this particular case, as in many cases after that (I'm thinking of September 10th 2001 when, for the first and last time, I flew in to San Francisco from Montreal to visit a friend for a short but supposedly restful vacation) I discovered that nothing beats having a solid, dependable car in the US when you need to solve just about any problem. A dumb hotel doesn't want you? You drive to the next one. I would have driven, grumbling, all the way out the city to a find an empty motel at the worst, but I drove around downtown and found an empty room in less than an hour.

When in Rome, rent a horse, because it seems that everything is built to accomodate the equestrian class!

(PS: I've experienced the famous English stiff upper lip, in staff as well as customer, in some terribly costly hotels in and around London and found out much later that they don't appreciate whiney Canadian tourists over there in the UK, and that they tolerate bravely all those whiney US tourists who happen to have more money and more generosity towards the service staff than the Canadians. On the other hand they seem to love the Australian version of the stiff upper lip)

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

This happened to me in San Francisco our first time here. It completely sucked.

And conventions? Run by amateurs, even the big ones. Horrible boondoggles. Good luck getting anywhere.

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

Damn that sucks.

I know some of the 'big' Sci-Fi/Fantasy Cons here in the Northeast (Arisia, Boskone), are run by Volunteers, so when they get pommelled, they become understandably WTF-ish.

Sorry I can't be down there to get you in and treated properly "Roman" Style. I would have loved to go down there this weekend....But, working on soldier's pay ya know (and take me too long to march!) :P

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

:) When SPQR Blues is a series of famous graphic novels and a successful miniseries starring... uhm... Clive Owen or Hugh Jackman or some such hot property, and a major motion picture is in the works, there'll be a Roman-style booth at all the big comic cons, with its own honour guard of shiny soldiers. And the throngs of fans will behave, because we will probably be armed, and will definitely be armoured.

NY ComicCon was such a mob scene last year; if I didn't have networking and schmoozing to do, if I were just interested in it for the reader/fan aspect, I'm not sure I'd be going a second year. They've expanded into a larger space, so maybe it won't be as chaotic this time.

I will return tomorrow evening with a full report. Possibly illustrated.

[kaseido.livejournal.com]

Grr. Pigdogs.

And an interesting contrast to San Diego Comicon, with the best volunteer staff in the world.

Last year we got there thinking we'd preregistered, but without our paperwork. They found our preregistration for the previous year, but since they weren't sure we *hadn't* preregistered, comped one of us and sold us a pass. Entire transaction time? Maybe 10 minutes, as they were checking in about 5,000 people.

Of course, this year we lost out on the mad 15-minute hotel free for all, so right now it looks like we won't be going, since San Diego County is sold out of hotel rooms....

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Love the icon!

Dr. Phil

[kaseido.livejournal.com]

*g* Thanks!