The Struggles of a Customer Service Representative

I have been in the BPO industry for quiet a while now and with my years of experience I can now tell that the struggle is indeed real.

Allow me to name a few challenges that a call center agent commonly encounters.

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One of the most common cliche that we have heard in our entire life is that,

"The customer is always right" even though most of the time they are really wrong and sometimes even go to the extent of being so rude. However, your goal as a customer service representative is customer experience so even if you already want to rip out or maybe pick a fight with anyone you'll encounter, you still have to be calm and remain professional.

Imagine how difficult that is. It feels like someone is trying to kill you but you still have to smile at them and be nice.

These challeges applies not just to call center agents but to any jobs that require customer service like waiter, cashier, service crew, sales agents and a lot more.

Here are the challenges that are most common;

A caller complains about you when their concern is just out of your scope

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How is that? If only we can do magic and just give them what they want. It will save us from the hassle of exhausting our resources for QA purposes and will even save both of our time.

When a caller ask to speak to your manager

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Oh, c'mon! After all that conversation with all the explaining and struggle of making them understand what the process is, they will still ask to speak to someone else. If they could have asked for it onset so we do not have to go through checking to see what we can do.

When you are about to take your Lunch but a long call came in 3 minutes before your break

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Isn't it great? What if you come to work with an empty stomach and really looked forward to taking lunch and giving yourself a good meal? Well, sometimes things does not always go as planned.

When you have done everything and even did extra mile but then the caller hung up

https://goo.gl/images/gKdBAs

Really? Is it really that hard? I mean, you are not demanding to get that but maybe with just a simple "Thank you" who knows, that can make someone's day. It might just be that simple but other people appreciate it so much. It can maybe the reason why they strive to always do their best at all times.

When your caller treats you like you are just nothing but someone who gets paid to help them

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Other callers treat you nothing but trash. For them, you are there and is obliged to help them. This does not happen all the time though and not even applies to everyone you are assisting with but when this happens, it sometimes causes someone to question their capabilities and they start to be little themselves.

When you have already said it twice or even thrice and they still ask about it several times

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This time, a lot of patience is required. That feeling when you want to tell your caller to get a pen and paper and have them note down the things you just said.

When your customer go nuts over a very minor thing

https://goo.gl/images/vDJSkL

This sounds funny sometimes but it does happen. Others are just too exaggerated and overly reacts to minor cases. It is understandable though because nowadays, things sometimes just look complicated when they're not.

When you really want to rip out but you have to be nice to keep your job

https://goo.gl/images/xMTYYp

Aside from the fact that you want to get a good QA score, of course you also want to keep your job.

These are just a few situations that commonly happen but there are still a lot of different challenges that people encounter.

This kind of job really requires a lot of patience, self control, understanding and even requires respect. Our customers have to understand that our resources, knowledge, skills and scope of support is also limited thus limits the help we can provide them. Nevertheless, we customer service reps also have to understand that our customers are calling or approaching us because they need help and it will be very frustrating to not get what they ask for.

It may matter as to how people perceive things depending on their thoughts, ideas and culture but human as we are, reacting to things really come in nature. The bottom line is, it is still best to consider the people you speak with. We are humans vulnerable to any negative things we hear which may cause us to get frustrated or feel unhappy.

In our daily dealings with people no matter what our job is, our possession or objectives, it is always nice to have a good relationship with everyone may it be to someone we see in person or someone we just speak over the phone.

This is not a question about your job objective or your metrics but this is something about you being good to people and giving meaning to your own life. At the end of the day,

I am open to any comments or reactions dear steemians and this is it for today. I wish you a great day ahead!