Can We Discuss Our Listening Skills, please?

 

I'm not sure what is going on when we call customer service, but our brains seem to totally shut down. Not only do all those manners we were previously in possession of just fly completely out our collective asses, but we are suddenly incapable of either comprehending and/or hearing even the simplest of questions.

Let us take today as an example. When you call me and I politely say, "May I have your first and last name, please" and appropriate response would be "John Smith" if (seriously – only if) you are, in fact, John Smith. If you are Bob or Donna Smith, then "John Smith" is not an appropriate answer. Another completely inappropriate response to the name question is "yes". I say "may"," not "can". I am not asking for your permission, but rather for you to provide some basic information! Now, "yes" can be turned into an appropriate answer if it is immediately followed by your name as opposed to the ever-so-eloquent "huh" that I got today.

Perhaps those of you not in customer service yourselves will believe this the exception rather than the rule, but you would be wrong. It is amazing how often this actually happens. I mean, even our store reps are guilty of this! You can be 15 minutes into a conversation before some of them will bother mentioning they aren't the customer or an account user, but rather an agent. I mean, seriously?

Now, this is not meant as a rant. Quite the contrary – I am just laying some ground work. Am I overly curious? Perhaps just nosy? Maybe I am a little dumb? I know that we are all really busy these days, what with trying to accomplish 48 hours of work in just three or four. I can even understand why we get distracted when we are interrupted by an incoming call, but today we are discussing the phenomenon that occurs when people call customer service.

So here we are: The attitude we give when we call customer service. Why do we do this? Is it a superiority issue? We call customer service because we need help and how many of us are really comfortable asking for help? I don't like to ask for help and I don't know too many people who do. In fact, I only know my dad as being comfortable asking for help and that could be because he is in his 70's and so rarely needs help with anything. Do we lose basic social skills when calling customer service because it makes us feel stupid?

And if so, is this really a valid reason? I don't believe that it is. I am not attempting to write an essay here, I am just curious. What do you think?