The 25 Worst Customer Service Stories to Train the Best CSRs
Feb 22nd, 2010 by Kate Nasser
The 25 Worst CS Stories. Photo By:mlibrarianus
As The People-Skills Coach and a professional customer service trainer, I use both positive and negative real life stories to train Help Desk analysts, Customer Care teams, Customer Service Reps (CSRs), and Call Center agents. The positive stories define the model of great service behavior. The negative stories address the emotional intelligence team members need to deliver memorable service.
Below are the 25 worst customer service stories of the 40 that I received in response to the question: What is the worst thing a customer service rep ever said to you?
In tough economic times or if your training budget is almost spent, use stories from this list during team meetings to train your CSRs to be the best. As a customer service leader you may be surprised at what you hear from your teams.
If their discussion focuses primarily on the customer’s behavior, your CSRs may need serious attention to their customer care outlook and emotional intelligence. If instead they quickly acknowledge that the service was far below par, ask them specifically how they would handle that same scenario. To punctuate the training, ask each team member to state one step they will take that day to be the best CSR they can be.
The 25 Worst Customer Service Stories
- The foul language is clearly wrong. Will your CSRs quickly identify the other critical error in this exchange? Here’s the story: I had a problem with a new piece of electronic equipment and called for assistance. The first technician I talked with insisted that there was nothing wrong with his company’s equipment, that it must be my fault. When I explained that everything in the network had worked perfectly until I powered the new item up, he laughed at me. When I asked to talk to his supervisor, he responded with the infamous two letter expletive and hung up. I called back and spoke with a different tech who was able to resolve the problem in a matter of minutes and who then asked his supervisor to join us on the line. When I told the supervisor of my earlier experience, she asked me to give her one day so she could resolve the problem. She called back in less than fifteen minutes to tell me that she and the call center manager had reviewed the tape of the call, fired the original technician, and promoted the second one to a customer service training position. It went from being the worst customer service experience ever to one of the best in less than half an hour.
–Submitted by: Ron B. - The story: I was trying to get some information from the local cable company, Comcast, about my bill. I couldn’t understand the different groupings of channels which had no explanation just names like Extended Package. She couldn’t explain it and kept getting the same channels in different groupings. I said, very politely, “I don’t understand your explanation, is there someone else who can explain it to me so I will understand it.” She replied: “You’re stupid.” Then she hung up.
–Submitted by: Elaine B. - “You’re not following our process.” Sadly, this was said to a customer by one of my own CSRs. This was a wake-up call for sure.
–Submitted by: Drew J. - “I’m sorry, but that’s our Policy and I’m not connecting you with my supervisor.”
This reply is anathema to the reason for customer service — to serve the customer (the person with the $$$ they want). I could care less about their policies. My policy is that I don’t do business with companies that don’t treat me with respect and give me value for my money. If something doesn’t work, then just fix it. If you don’t know – then say “I don’t know, but let me find out for you.” Companies are run by humans and humans make mistakes. I don’t judge them badly because they make a mistake. It’s how they resolve the mistake that matters.
–Submitted by: David G. - Can you believe this interaction? Here’s the story: In our large grocery store, I asked about the cinnamon buns that were in the sample dome. The employee I asked said that they were very fattening and I could do with losing some weight!
–Submitted by: Andrew F. - I explained to a DELL rep that I had 12 new laptops that would not power on no matter what I did. His answer to me was “What do you want me to do about it?” I said excuse me? He clarified by saying “if they don’t power on I can’t trouble shoot them and if they aren’t powering on it has to be something you did to them that made them not work.” I still have nightmares.
–Submitted by: Liz M. - “You will have to go online to and fix this.” I replied “Seriously? I am talking to customer service – a real live human being and you can’t do a thing for me? “Yes ma’am, you need to go online to do this.” So I asked her, “What, exactly, do you do?” Silence.
–Submitted by: Shelly S. - It’s not our fault that you have this problem – it’s yours.” (Big Insurance Company in the UK)
–Submitted by: Ian T. - I’m still fuming from my experience with Travelocity/ABC Airline this morning. Woke up sick as a dog, needing to catch a flight at 7:00. I’ve probably booked one hundred flights with Travelocity and I have always paid the $20.00 insurance if changes ever come up, including unexpected illness. I have never actually used this insurance but was happy to have it until I was told from ABC Airline: “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do for you.” And, then again from Travelocity, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do for you.” Lesson learned. Don’t buy Travelocity’s insurance. Or, better yet, avoid Travelocity.
–Submitted by: Anonymous - Is this stupidity or lack of caring? The story: A pharmacy CSR refused to authorize one of my meds. When I told her I had been waiting 2 weeks and explained the effects of not having them, she said ”maybe you should see a doctor about these new symptoms.”
–Submitted by: Denise C. - Are your CSRs so busy following scripts that they don’t listen? Here’s the story: My father passed away. I called a credit card company to cancel his account. I said, “My name is Debra. My father Pat passed away and I am the Executor of the Estate. I am calling to cancel his account.”
The CSR replied, “Well, I need to talk to Pat.” I said, “Listen very carefully. He’s DEAD – now if you want to talk to him, you’ll have to figure out how to. GIVE ME YOUR SUPERVISOR!” The Supervisor got on the phone and I said, “Do you have a connection with God?” She cracked up laughing – she had heard about the conversation.
– Submitted by: Deborah B. - I called HP customer service about a new HP printer that wouldn’t interface with my Mac (even though the company swore it would easily work). After hours of being on hold and being told that I had obviously done something wrong or just couldn’t understand, the rep told me “Yeah, really not my problem, lady.” So I went to Apple. They figured out the problem – and were nice.
–Submitted by: Julie G. - My favorite bad customer service response was “it is working as designed” after the support agent was able to duplicate (and agree with) an obvious bug/error in a popular word processing program.
–Submitted by: Tom M. - “You should buy one of those bust reducing bras from Marks & Spencers.” This was in a clothing store said by one of the stick thin pre-pubescent staff. This is customer service? I don’t think so!
–Submitted by: Emma C. - Is this the new version of customer self-service ? The story: I was checking out at WalMart, with my elderly Mom and small kids in tow. A pair of $8 shoes I was buying rang up for $10. I questioned the clerk on the price at which time she said “No they rang up for $10. “You can go back there and check it yourself”. I wasn’t about to do that, so I just settled up for the $10. grrrr. Got home and pulled the shoes out of the box and guess what. The actual price tag on the shoes said $8! Next day I went back to customer service and happened to be waited on by the same clerk at which time she said, ”That wasn’t my fault; it was the cash register. I can’t help you”. I had to find the store manager to get the issue resolved. He not only gave me all my money back, but he let me keep the shoes.
–Submitted by: Amanda K. - I had spent well over 3 hours on the phone with customer service/tech. support, having been repeatedly put on hold, transferred, and disconnected. I called back after yet another disconnection after being on hold for several minutes. The person who answered started to go into their script, asking me for irrelevant information. I told the person that I just needed to be connected to XYZ because I had been disconnected after being on the phone with them for over three hours. The CSR went to a very long speech about how he’d be happy to transfer me. I didn’t need a speech. I just needed him to transfer me. I told him this. He repeated the speech. His scripted, inhuman “courteousness” just made me angry and hate the company.
–Submitted by: Joe S. - Have your CSRs ever said this? “There is nothing I can do for you.” I asked for a supervisor they told me that the supervisor will tell me the same thing!
–Submitted by: Sahar A. - This one is beyond belief — yet true. Here’s the story: I was hosting a party for 150 people and needed catering prices 7 weeks prior to party to review bids, select caterer, or determine another venue. I had a drop-dead due date and explained that. When I contacted the caterer for prices because they hadn’t contacted me by the morning of the due date, my main contact was on vacation and left no information. I was fuming. Obviously, they did not get my business. When I finally reached the caterer to determine how they could have made such an error, he said “I decided you didn’t need it by your due date.” I was appalled. How could they decide my due date? I did contact the management office and heads did roll. This was not lost business from this one event, but there were 5 hosts involved (their friends) and word of mouth travels fast. While management appreciated my comments, they were foolish in not throwing me some type of bone to offset the situation. In a world where it’s tough to get business, this is not acceptable.
–Submitted by: Lisa R. - “ya wesd rufj dimn uklod doodop” In other words, the worst customer service ever was delivered by someone who spoke no comprehensible English. I’ve heard it hundreds of times to lesser degrees, but in one case it was entirely incomprehensible. When will these companies learn that customer service agents need to actually be comprehensible in the language they are supposedly supporting?
–Submitted by: John B. - How would your CSRs reply to this request? Here’s the story: I lost my cable service for 3 days. Apparently, it was a system wide failure and thousands of customers were affected. During the course of my conversation, I said something like “Please just credit me for 3 days worth of service.” The rep said, “We can’t do that. Do you know how much it would cost us if we credited everyone for the past three days?”
–Submitted by: Phil F. - “I am sorry but that’s our policy”. Even if the CSR says it politely, this is a statement that can tick anybody off. Such a statement exudes rigidity and inflexibility, which is the last thing a customer wants to hear when he/she calls customer service with a genuine problem. This statement, if used too many times by a customer service agent during a call would generally lead to an escalation or loss of a customer, which indicates the poor performance of the agent.
–Submitted by: Om D. - Have you taught your CSRs the difference between professional and personal behavior? Here’s the story: I was speaking with a customer service representative about a problem I was having. I said, “I know it’s not your fault.” She said, “That’s right. It’s not my fault.” She is the representative of a company. She should accept responsibility even if it’s not her personal fault!
–Submitted by: Randi B. - Here’s one of the recent nightmares I lived through. There was a charge on my Citibank Mastercard from a vendor who renewed my $400 membership without asking me. I spoke with the vendor and he agreed to send a credit into the credit card company for the charge. Since the credit card bill was due in 15 days, I called the credit card company to ensure that I wouldn’t have to pay $400 up front only to have it credited back later. The CSR who answered the phone went into his long drawn out scripted answer. I asked to speak with a supervisor and after waiting on hold, the supervisor started another scripted answer. I said “I am a busy person and I just need a simple direct answer.” He replied: “I am sorry you called when you were busy. We are open 24 hours a day.” I stopped using that card. I will not give my money to a company whose representatives communicate sarcastically and blame me for their slow scripted service.
–Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach - I had a credit card and somehow after a year the bank changed my zip code and I didn’t get the bill. When they called I explained I never got a bill. After we found the issue I asked for a refund of the late fee. Though I got it eventually I was initially told, “You are responsible for your bill, we only send the statement as a convenience to you.”
–Submitted by: Shawn D. - What would your CSRs say if they had difficulty communicating with a customer? Would they sound like this CSR who acted as if she was the sergeant in charge. Here’s the story: A CSR at a big box cable company in the Midwest said to me: “You’re not listening to me. “
–Submitted by: Linda L.
The key training topics from this list include emotional intelligence, customer care outlook, listening skills, the perilous effects of procedur-itis, ownership, and clear communication.
I am ready to inspire and train any and all of your employees who work with internal or external customers — your business’ most valuable resource! Just give me a call and we will discuss the training to deliver memorable customer service for the greatest return on your investment.
Please feel free to leave your comments or customer service stories and insights in the field below. If customer service is your passion, take a look at a related post on this blog “Ace Your Next Customer Service Moment.”
Thanks for stopping by and RSS this blog for the latest people-skills posts,
Kate Nasser
Kate,
This was a fantastic idea to talk about. Sometimes utilizing and observing really bad service is what leads to providing GREAT service. When in the hospitatliy industry I often showed my staff the worst service examples and that at times was the best training they could have recieved. When you can truly observe the worst of the worst, you can use thier mistakes to improve upon your own business. Always going that extra mile to provide Service that others do not, will keep your customers coming back!
Fun and sad to read about at the same time! To me it raises more questions than answers about why CRS’s treat customers this way. We also seem to see these problems come from larger companies then smaller ones. Its a shame these people dont understand that they are the face of the company and what happens from one bad call!
Kate – These are great lessons. They are all indicative of instances when “putting yourself in the Customer’s shoes” would have gone a long way. These are terrific teaching moments. I’m glad people shared these stories and that you shared them with us.
I enjoyed this Kate. Keep up the good work.
Kind regards,
Sherry Thomas
President
Palm Beach Etiquette
WOW! And I thought my story was a bad one. These stories make for teachable moments, as they say.
Marilyn
Kate — Really entertaining blog post. Amazing how many organizations don’t get how important good customer service really is.
Rick P.
I had an recent experience with a local cable company. They didn’t offer HDTV service in my area. I called the cable company and told the CSR that I had an HDTV for over two years and this comapany offered no HD service in my area. I asked if they had any plans to make HD available in my area and they said no. I asked, “Can you give me any reason why I should keep my service with your company?” The CSR at the cable company told me to get satallite TV service. I did.
Hi Kate,
Great topic! I find it interesting that poor customer service is kind of an “evergreen” topic – it never goes away, and that means it is always an issue, across industries, demos, markets… I wonder why companies can’t seem to get their arms around this? We’ve all seen stats on the negative effects of poor customer service – and here’s a snippet of one of the most recent: “Genesys, with research firm Greenfield Online and Datamonitor/Ovum analysts, measuring the cost of poor customer service in the U.S., found that enterprises in the U.S. lose an estimated $83 billion each year due to defections and abandoned purchases as a direct result of a poor experience. Nearly two-thirds of consumers said they had ended a relationship due to customer service alone. The survey participants said that when they end a relationship, 61% of the time they take their business to a competitor.
The $83 billion overall cost of poor customer service in the us came from:
Business abandoned and lost to entire industry, $32.4 billion
Customer churn and defections within industry, $50.6 billion”
As a company leader, what more would I need to know in order to make sterling customer service a top priority? And yes, I do have a story of my own (don’t we all?):
I have a daughter and son-in-law in the USMC, stationed in Japan, and, as anyone who has traveled to the East knows, Japan uses a cell phone system that is not compatible with the ones used in the US or Europe, meaning that you really have to search to find a phone with the right “chip”, and a carrier that works in Japan, if you want to talk to your kids in the military. I found such a combo in AT&T, after a ridiculously long and difficult search. The price of the phones and the talk and text rates are very high, but if you want your kid in the military to have what just about every other 21 year old in the US has – a cell phone – you pay. The process of getting the phone and setting up the plan is extraordinarily complicated – you don’t just speak with one sales rep, you have to request and activate various components of the plan with different departments within AT&T. I navigated it all, got them set up, and now my kids can talk to each other, and to us, which makes us all feel much better. Then I got the bill… $1,800 for 2 Blackberries and a month and a half worth of service. The bill was 30 pages long. I called AT&T to walk me through the charges, and the billing CSR found almost $400 worth of charges that were gray areas – she could revoke them on her own authority. I was given to understand that I would do well to review and question every bill going forward to check for gray area charges.
At this point, if I had any other choices, I would leave AT&T for another carrier, not only for the $400 worth of mystery charges, but also for the incredibly high rates of service offered by the sole provider of such services. But I can’t. I have no other choice until my kids are posted elsewhere. In this case, AT&T has my business no matter what they do. But their whole way of interacting with their customers has already decided me to change providers the moment I can. I have told every CSR I have spoken to since service started in November 2009 that I am not happy to be stuck with them, and that I will leave them as soon as I am able. So my question is: why would a large brand like AT&T, with a lock on a specific and lucrative market (military families), treat their captive customers with such disregard? They won’t be alone in that space forever, and customers like me will defect, with a “bad attitude” that could cost them future business. Listen up, corporate America… that $83 billion is just the tip of the iceberg, and as the economy continues to struggle, customers will become more and more discriminating about what level of service they are willing to accept.
Great, great string, Kate, thanks for the opportunity to opine!
Pattie
Lovely article Kate…
I shared it with my colleagues and friends..
Great article Kate — some real war stories out there. And I find it shocking how sometimes the biggest “bestest” companies have the worst service. Thanks for putting this together.
i think this is funny..=)
some CSRs really didnt know what they are talking about and that they sound so robotic over the phone and telling each and every customer the same and so generic spiel all over again…
I’m sorry but the customer experience in 23 is rotflol funny! While his sarcasm was bad, his response was priceless.
I don’t blame all of these on the reps its the managers and supervisors.. I am a customer service manager and the higher ups don’t care.. we hire the worst people and expect the best its not possible. We have to find people with a passion for this job. Not just somebody who has been looking and will tell you anything to get hired.
Hi Tony,
I hear you. Makes you wonder why the higher ups want to hire “the worst” as you say. Others claim it’s all about the salary. Yet I have met, taught, and applauded thousands of great reps who — as you say — have passion for customer service and they are not making loads of money.
There is no doubt that someone who has passion for any job will most likely do it better than someone who doesn’t. Yet — I have sparked passion in many people who didn’t first see customer service work as a profession. It’s possible to tap people’s inner strength and passion when you don’t see it at first.
I do hope that we can chat at some point — no charge to you. Just want to see if I can share some insights. I can definitely turn overworked reps in to zealous agents.
Zappos did it and so can I.
Yours in service,
Kate
hi kate, good day i really like what you did. because im a csr but to be honest im not really excellent in english.but when i recieved a call, i greet my caller’s very warm and with smile. when they’re angry to me, i just thought that his/her not mad at me. just to my company i worked..i always say i apologized what happened to the service and make a report from it.and promise it will not happen again…. ms. kate please advice me how to being a good csr and to build my own rebuttals or to be good in english.thank you
Many thanks Saban for your comment on the post The 25 Worst Customer Service Stories. I applaud your great attitude. That’s what CSRs must have!
Here are a several more posts on delivering great service that can help you grow:
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The Best CSRs Act This Way in Customer Service
The Best CSRs Get Intercultural Training for Best Customer Service
The Best Approach for Dealing With Irate Customers
Are Rude Customers a Thorn in Your Side – 5 Answers
Ace your Next Customer Service Moment!
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As for improving your English, ESL classes (English as a Second Language) can be very helpful. If you are here in the USA, you can take ESL through local community orgs. in the evening. Where are you located?