Pkchukiss - Reality Wine

You see, where I work, sometimes I stand at the blasting wall end of the torrential flooding that always comes in without fail. At times like these, when you start to answer these emails, the senders reply swiftly, and help to inundate me under the pile of electronic questions.

So you see, I have to set up a Top Ten Tips that would get your request attended to swiftly, and efficiently. As they like to put it, “Help me, help you.”

#10: So you have a situation, but who the hell are you anyway?

As statistics go, 75% of the mail I read contains absolutely no name, no contact number, nor any identification number that would enable me to swiftly deal with the issue. It really begs the question when a similarly 75% asks to have their request expedited.

#9: The devil is in the details. How do I know what you were doing when that nasty error occurred?

Along the same vein comes the customer whom seems to believe that I possess extraordinary powers of telepathy. I waste plenty of time figuring out at least 7 scenarios out of a possible 200 that might happen to be your situation when you simply put, “I received a letter from you guys.”

It doesn’t matter whether you are good at describing the problem, or have trouble expressing yourself on email: something is always better than nothing. If all else fails, pick up the phone and talk. There is always a better solution to get what you need solved quickly, and it doesn’t entail sending one-liners.

#8: Your website sucks!

I don’t need you to tell me that it sucks. As an employee, I know better. What I don’t know is where it tortures your senses specifically. Along the same lines as the customer whom love one-liners, this not only gives me no head or tail on the issue at hand, but irks me till no end.

Fill in more details, and maybe we can get the person responsible for making it suck to make it tend to suck less.

#7: I couldn’t get through to your phone lines, what were you all doing

While I have had nice customers whom are extremely concerned that I have no time for lunch during these peak hours, there are others whom believe that the rest of the world has been sleeping away while the poor thing was trying to get through to Help Desk.

I believe that no doubt the majority of reasonable humans are able to understand the “All our operators are currently busy” message to mean just that, there are some whom believe that throughout it all, they should still be served first.

Well, the end of the world may be coming for you whilst you were hanging onto the phone, that doesn’t mean that the world isn’t crashing down on the other people. Since you have already emailed in, stop harping on it already!

#6: h0W d0 I cH3cK mY eM4iL? (The ultimate encryptionist)

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I receive these. I don’t mind grammatical errors, or spelling mistakes, as long as I can understand the gist of your message, but that really takes the cake.

Hard to read messages not only reduce the number of people I can help at a time, it also brings across the message that you are not serious about needing help. Furthermore, with so many viagR4 advertisement emails hanging around, I might even mark your message as spam if I can’t read your message.

#5: Sentences that read both ways (or more)

“I have a receive from your payment eService.” (sic) – So did you receive a message, or did you receive a receipt?
While you could afford to be a little careless about the spelling or grammar in your message, it doesn’t help matters when I could read your message in many ways. If I need to spend the time to clarify the situation with you, we both lose valuable round-trip time in the conversation.

#4: Can you give me a call back?

Yes, and No.
I have a personally strong conviction: if you initiate a conversation with me, I’ll follow it up to you in kind. However, it makes absolutely no sense for me to call you simply because you requested that I call you back.

Let me know about your request so that I can help you, or call you back if it is really that necessary.

#3: I know your website states that you can’t do _________. But I feel that I have a special case.

Leaving the realm of email and entering the domain of commonly asked questions, this is one of the most highly rated ones.

Again, I can’t answer for you, and you’ll have to detail your case so that we can get a decision maker to get on it. It makes absolutely no sense pestering us for an answer: if I could make a decision, I would have done so long ago. Not only would that save us both our time, it’ll let us keep our sanity.

#2: I want to speak to your supervisor

I know there are situations where a supervisor might be better positioned to help you, but I need to impress upon you this: their time is much more valuable than mine; if I could help you, I’d try my best to do so.

It hurts both my feelings, and wastes my supervisor’s time if you speak to them for something that either I can already give you an answer, or inform you that this is not within our scope. Imagine, if everybody did that, all the supervisors would be answering calls instead.

#1: I am going to complain to ____________

Go right ahead. While I can’t encourage nor discourage this, in a personal capacity, if you feel that we can’t reasonably assist you on your issue, your best bet would be to bring the issue to a higher level.

However do note that when you do that, most likely the issue would be snatched out of our hands, and we will have no way to assist you further. That is a true golden rule in most contact centres. We can’t do anything if you decide to bring things above us, and then come back to us a few days later demanding for an answer. It just isn’t logical.

Having looked at the top ten tips of email writing, which is a thinly veiled attempt at venting, I would like to add that I have all the nicer ones whom take the time to write nicely, and provide all the required information.

I can concentrate better if I don’t have to hunt for information everywhere, so even though you know that I might have the information available, consider writing it in so that I can shave minutes spent checking things up writing up a nice reply instead?

Filed under: General