Patterns
So today I noticed that, so far, many of my days at Blizzard have been marked by specific things. For instance, yesterday was the Day of AOL Email Addresses. Before Monday, I had never dealt with a customer who had an AOL email address. That day, I dealt with 12 customers with AOL email addresses. Today was the day of Nonverifiable Names. I got about 6 or 7 different calls today in which the caller gave me a name at the beginning of the call that did not match the name on the account they were calling about, and it wasn't something small like "Oh it's my brother's account, let me get him," or even things with obviously fake names like "my name is Mike Laplace, but the name on the account is Bill Clinton." It was stuff like "My name is John Davis, but the account name is Fred Nichols". I think I'll start keeping note of these trends when I notice them.
You know, it's been said that customer service would be an amazing industry to work in if it weren't for the customers. Honestly though, so far, I've not yet run into someone that angered me. I've had callers who simply won't accept it when I tell them we can't help them, but those are more frustrating than angering. I've had other callers who don't speak good english, or for whatever reason are incapable of accurately describing their issue. At times, those calls are a delightful challenge, but more often, it's simply time consuming while I figure out that they don't understand that the name you use to log in to WoW with is the same as the one you use to log in to account management on our website with, because they're the same account. But I can definitely see the truth in the adage.
Most often, there are two things that can bring my day at work down. The first is when I screw up. I'm pretty simple when it comes to praise and criticism. A few simple words of praise, like "you handled that well," or something, lifts my mood like nothing else, and a simple criticism like "hey, just FYI, we're not supposed to tell them the phones are down," brings my mood down. I haven't made any big errors so far, fortunately, so I've only had to deal with criticism about small things. I'm kind of concerned about how I'll react to my QC review, but honestly, I think I'm far better at my job than either of the two other people who were hired with me. One of them knows pretty well what to do, but isn't as good at handling customers on the phone, while the other one is better at the speaking part, but is more unsure about what to do. I think I have a nice balance; I've got a really solid grasp on the tools we have, and a pretty good idea about what we can do for customers, but I still have to ask more questions than the more experienced staff. I think my conversation control is really strong though; I'm very good at keeping customers on topic, and directing the conversation to where it needs to go. I think that's probably a side effect of having a bunch of strong personalities as friends, not to mention how living with my dad was. The second thing that can bring me down is not being able to help a customer. I don't have a problem telling someone that we can't help them when it's their fault, but too often someone will have a problem, and I'll have to give them the answer that they didn't want to hear. What I like about my job is that all day I get to solve problems; I don't like it when the problems I'm given don't have solutions.
You know, it's been said that customer service would be an amazing industry to work in if it weren't for the customers. Honestly though, so far, I've not yet run into someone that angered me. I've had callers who simply won't accept it when I tell them we can't help them, but those are more frustrating than angering. I've had other callers who don't speak good english, or for whatever reason are incapable of accurately describing their issue. At times, those calls are a delightful challenge, but more often, it's simply time consuming while I figure out that they don't understand that the name you use to log in to WoW with is the same as the one you use to log in to account management on our website with, because they're the same account. But I can definitely see the truth in the adage.
Most often, there are two things that can bring my day at work down. The first is when I screw up. I'm pretty simple when it comes to praise and criticism. A few simple words of praise, like "you handled that well," or something, lifts my mood like nothing else, and a simple criticism like "hey, just FYI, we're not supposed to tell them the phones are down," brings my mood down. I haven't made any big errors so far, fortunately, so I've only had to deal with criticism about small things. I'm kind of concerned about how I'll react to my QC review, but honestly, I think I'm far better at my job than either of the two other people who were hired with me. One of them knows pretty well what to do, but isn't as good at handling customers on the phone, while the other one is better at the speaking part, but is more unsure about what to do. I think I have a nice balance; I've got a really solid grasp on the tools we have, and a pretty good idea about what we can do for customers, but I still have to ask more questions than the more experienced staff. I think my conversation control is really strong though; I'm very good at keeping customers on topic, and directing the conversation to where it needs to go. I think that's probably a side effect of having a bunch of strong personalities as friends, not to mention how living with my dad was. The second thing that can bring me down is not being able to help a customer. I don't have a problem telling someone that we can't help them when it's their fault, but too often someone will have a problem, and I'll have to give them the answer that they didn't want to hear. What I like about my job is that all day I get to solve problems; I don't like it when the problems I'm given don't have solutions.