Even if you choose to fight, fight the right way. Being overly emotional and ego driven ("I'm right, how dare they?!") can be very damaging to a relationship, even if you end up "winning".
The key, as I'm trying to teach myself every day, seems to be to get yourself and your ego out of the picture. The advice I really loved was to picture yourself as some absurd, godlike dictator, demanding the world bend to your whim... With that in mind in mind you realize how silly you're being.
It's something I struggle with every day, but learning this kind of self control is very important to long term success.
I'm sure it's different when contracting, but it's really hard when working in a large organisations. There are a few different kinds of reactions to the inefficiencies and inequalities in $BIGCORP:
* Try to fix everything - this will lead to burnout
* Ignore it, and just work on your stuff - this will work, but you probably won't get promoted
* Play politics and try to fix a few things through the "right channels" - this probably works, but it's really really difficult and can be soul-destroying.
* Do what you can, and update your resume - cynical, but probably the best option if you like eating food.
I mean, you're not always in a position where you can educate your clients. Sometimes doing that would be a career limiting move.
Yeah, that's a good point. I remember including "pick your battles" somewhere in the post, but your suggestion for the title would have been better than my own!
Is that necessarily true? It seems like it would depend on the dynamic. I know I've had many and extensive (and quite good) conversations with my fiancee as to how she was brought up in a family that valued emotional reasoning over logical reasoning. Knowing the inputs and broad transactions to someone's mental processes (especially if they're very close to you) can help facilitate communication/understanding, regardless of the value judgement one applies to them.
To tie this back to the article, sometimes being right can work, but it's a risky line to push without the above, a clear understanding of the person opposite you's mental process. That being said, also as the above, I find that in situations where a business relationship can build that trust and understanding even in the face of contrary views on certain things (logic vs emotion, to draw that parallel) a far better working relationship can be established, although I have a feeling to an entrepreneurial community this is stating the obvious :)
I think the author touches on this but not specifically, "be easy to work with" is a nice umbrella that I'd add an addendum to, a hope that both parties try to give each other the benefit of the doubt and some tolerance through disagreement in the hope that the opposite party is doing the same, and eventually, you may not have to worry as much about the friction of being right. (within reason)
>I know I've had many and extensive (and quite good) conversations with my fiancee as to how she was brought up in a family that valued emotional reasoning over logical reasoning.
Yeah, I tried marrying someone like that. It didn't turn out well. I recommend breaking off the engagement while you still can, or else you're in for years of misery.
True, and yet... it might be worth existencebox's while to be sure that he and his fiancee communicate. Make sure it's not going to become a landmine that blows up your marriage.
It doesn't mean don't marry her. It means make sure it's something you can both live with before you marry her.
How so? Logical and irrational people just aren't that likely to get along that well, especially when it comes to things like finances. They might get along well just hanging around together perhaps, but marriage involves a lot of hard, real-world things besides just liking each other and liking to eat at the same restaurants together or whatever. My advice: have some really serious discussions about finances, spending, budgeting, how much you like to run the heat and A/C in your house, how much you like to save/invest, etc. with your prospective spouse long before getting engaged.
To answer this, the parents, and many sibling posts all in one; we've already have almost a good decade of misery together, so we figured "might as well do it for masochism's sake" :)
I'd re-echo the clarification of my main point though, and be less glib: by being able to meet these differences head on, we each managed over the years to shift the other, and produce a dynamic I've become "pretty OK" with. Fortunately the mindsets of the parents don't have to carry down to children in exact parity. (To re-glib for the conclusion; Especially in my case or else I'd be elbow deep in some cancer patient, and I don't have a strong stomach for that sort of thing)
That is really key. I am convinced that the reason many relationships, from business to marriages, get in trouble is by avoiding the inevitable conflict or managing it poorly.
People will disagree: to respond to an earlier point, my spouse often reminds me that she's not as logically oriented as I am. That's a reminder that all problems can't be addressed through logic. As long as each of us remembers how the other is wired, we find a way to muddle through all the problems we've come across. And there have been some Duesies! But the important thing is to address them and not let issues fester until they explode.
More on topic for HN: conflict resolution is an important skill for anyone who will be managing others or engaging with customers. Learning to get better at it can have a positive impact on your bottom line.
>I am convinced that the reason many relationships, from business to marriages, get in trouble is by avoiding the inevitable conflict or managing it poorly.
However, it's easier to avoid a lot of "inevitable conflict" by not getting into a relationship with someone whose worldview is too different from your own. Any marriage is going to have some conflict, but picking your partner wisely can minimize that. People I think tend not to think about this when they're young because they haven't been through a failed marriage, and society feeds them a lot of fairy-tale bullshit about how "love conquers all".
Because you have no idea who existencebox is, what his relationship with his fiancee is, and how well or not well they communicate. In fact, you've got evidence that they communicate well:
> I've had many and extensive (and quite good) conversations with my fiancee as to how she was brought up in a family that valued emotional reasoning over logical reasoning. Knowing the inputs and broad transactions to someone's mental processes (especially if they're very close to you) can help facilitate communication/understanding
And yet, your advice:
> I recommend breaking off the engagement while you still can, or else you're in for years of misery.
Your advice was certainly not to "have some really serious discussions." It was break off an engagement based on skimming a single comment.
Most people are capable of communicating just fine. Just because that wasn't the case with you and your ex doesn't mean your situation is the least bit relevant to existencebox's. That's why it was uncalled for.
>I know I've had many and extensive (and quite good) conversations with my fiancee as to how she was brought up in a family that valued emotional reasoning over logical reasoning.
I understand that most people value emotional reasoning more than I do. I don't get people valuing it more than logical reasoning.
There is just so much potential danger with implicit and explicit bias. Sexism and racism tends to be more the result of emotional reasoning than logical reasoning. (Think of a jury/judge sentencing a black guy to a harsher sentence than a white guy who did the same crime. Imagine if the difference between if the justification was the black guy felt more dangerous vs a justification such as in this instant the black guy having similar prior offenses. Which justification is racism?)
To clarify my point, my intent wasn't to assign value to thinking emotionally, but to suggest that being candid and open about differences such that they exist is an important step to working productively despite, or even because of them.
That being said though, you bring up an addendum I would counter that although you're right to say there is potential danger to emotional thinking, there's potential danger to purely logical thinking as well; to bring this back to my original statement in which avoiding confronting these differences in an "easy to work with" fashion reduces the chances of moving even a little towards a middle ground to 0.
>You may have heard the old saw about marriage: “You can be right, or you can be happy.”
Yeah, I tried that in my marriage. Don't insist on being right, let the wife be happy and it'll make you happy. Instead, it made me broke and miserable and so I asked for a divorce.
Well, if someone picks fights over logically best answers for stuff that doesn't matter that much then I wouldn't consider them as logical as they think.
Yeah. I get it, different people are wired differently, and every couple negotiates their own protocol. But for me, it doesn't work, and I can't imagine it ever working. I'm not comfortable with the required level of cognitive dissonance.
With my SO, we're always aiming for "eventually right". When there is an argument, we focus on reaching common emotional ground first. Then, sometimes not immediately, we both talk the issue through calmly to determine who, if anyone, was right, and exchange appropriate apologies. The point being, it's often more important to defuse the situation first, but both of us value knowing the truth about situations, and want to be always on the same page. Otherwise someone will end up having those kinds of hurt feelings that tend to slowly rot you from inside.
It doesn't work with anyone; it takes a honest and cooperative partner to pull it off. And it takes trust. If my SO was as patient as I am, we'd end every argument in 30 seconds with full agreement about the situation, Aumann-style. She isn't, and so I sometimes have to trust that after the storm there will be the phase of reconciliation. And there always is.
Great article and the last mantra stood out:
>Value, not prices.
>Experiences, not products.
>Outcomes, not processes.
Would love to see the title changed to "Being right(eous) won't pay your bills" - being right is important, letting everybody know it is a totally different thing :)
This is absolutely true, and applies to people other than "creatives".
There's a slightly patronising tone to this, whether it's right or wrong: " we must Siberia educate our clients". While true, it's not the key issue. They can educate us too, and perhaps that's the take-away here. I hope to put myself in my clients' shoes every time I talk to them. That way, everything they say makes perfect sense, and we can agree a way through any issues together, as a partnership.
I don't always manage to do this effectively, of course, but reflecting on this helps me slowly, slowly improve.
Related to the last 2%, I'm always shocked whenever a waiter balks at splitting up a check when multiple people are paying. I always think "Really, you are going to annoy me right before I decide how much tip I will give you?"
That's not usually the waiter's fault. POS systems are, generally, a POS. Sure, they should have some way to split bills, but "should" does not always mean "does". Or maybe splitting the bill requires spending a few minutes manually building 2 new checks, which may not be something the waiter has time to do in a busy restaurant. Or maybe the waiter would be happy to do it but the restaurant itself has a policy against splitting checks (or at least, splitting checks for parties under a given size; I've definitely been to places that allow you to use 2 credit cards if you have 6 or more people, and never more than 2 cards).
Two things to come to mind. First, if you're actually holding a waiter's tip hostage over the ability to split checks, you're a shitty person. And the kind of person that threatens to leave a bad tip if the waiter doesn't do something is the kind of person that probably tips badly to begin with.
Second, time is a zero sum game. If the waiter has to spend several minutes wrestling with the POS to split a check, that's several minutes they can't be serving other tables, which if the restaurant is busy can mean a degraded experience for other diners (and of course if this leads to someone being unhappy with the service that will likely mean a reduced tip). Of course if the restaurant isn't busy and the waiter can afford to spend several minutes on this, then nobody else has to suffer, but if that's the case I wouldn't expect the waiter to balk at splitting the check (assuming they're capable of doing so at all, which as I said before may not be true depending on the POS or on restaurant policy).
>First, if you're actually holding a waiter's tip hostage over the ability to split checks, you're a shitty person.
A tip is fully extra incentive. The waiter is not my employee, and the social expectation of a tip is a horrible practice (imagine if we replaced the expectation with someone that wasn't financial in nature).
>And the kind of person that threatens to leave a bad tip if the waiter doesn't do something is the kind of person that probably tips badly to begin with.
This sounds kinda close to a personal attack. Not to mention there is a vast difference between threatening to not leave a tip ("if you don't split this check then I won't tip you") and what the parent post did (bringing up how refusing customer service right before a tip is given is likely to hurt the tip, never mentioning if this was a conscious or subconscious behavior change made by the tipper).
No, it's not. I agree completely that it would be great if we could get rid of tipping and actually pay waiters (and all other tipped professions) an appropriate salary. But they don't get paid an appropriate salary. Tipping is not extra incentive, tipping is their salary. If you don't tip, you're literally expecting someone to serve you for somewhere around $2-$3 an hour.
> This sounds kinda close to a personal attack.
Why, are you the kind of person who threatens to withhold tips from waiters? Well actually, given your previous paragraph, it sounds like you are that kind of person.
There is a canyon of difference between what is "supposed to" happen, and what does. And before you bring up suing or reporting or anything like that, know that those activities usually require time and money that the employee probably does not have, and will likely cause them to not continue at their job, and through rumors spread through the industry, might cause them to not be able to find another one.
The problem is that the anger over the employer's illegal actions is now being directed to the customer. This makes it easier for the employer to get away with this because they can shield themselves better by focusing on the customers who don't tip.
Waiters are supposed to make more than minimum wage anyway. Any waiter that has to worry about whether their employer will screw them over if they earn less is already being significantly screwed over by customers.
Waiters are expected to make over minimum wage once tips are included. Yes, if they don't reach minimum wages, then legally they're supposed to be paid the difference (though there's a vast gulf between "should" and "does", especially in a job like this where speaking up likely means getting fired). But assuming that the waiter is already reaching minimum wage this month, then refusing to tip means that the waiter is only earning $2-$3 per hour for the time spent serving you.
Also, being a waiter is absolutely a job that should pay over minimum wage, so if your argument is "but at least they're making minimum wage", you're still significantly under-valuing your waiter's work. Being a waiter is hard work.
> But assuming that the waiter is already reaching minimum wage this month, then refusing to tip means that the waiter is only earning $2-$3 per hour for the time spent serving you.
They cannot very well be earning less than minimum wage per hour if they already have gotten more or equal to minimum wage for the month in tips. Do you mean they are earning only $x per hour over minimum wage for serving you?
Yet, the time needed to split the check is already lost from his point of view, along with the extra tip he might have received form the next table. At that point, annoying the customer is simply irrational behavior: she loses even more money only to make a point, knowing that the customer will retort to what you call shitty behavior to make the point back.
While typically irrational for the individual, anger can be rational for the selfish gene, thus be preserved in the species: angry bees are avoided by other animals even if individual bees are suicidal, thus making the suicide of an individual work for the group.
So whenever you feel the need to go on a rampage destroying yourself along with your archenemy, you should really ask yourself if you are still in control, or you are executing out a program developed 1 million years ago and designed to protect the occupants of your cave from attacks of rival hominids, even at the price of your life.
You must live in a weird place, I've never once had a waiter even react to splitting a check. In fact the majority ask us first (especially when it's multiple couples at a table).
A friend of mine says typically when she splits a bill, both payees will assume the other is a crappy tipper/don't want to tip less, so they'll both tip a higher percentile and she'll occasionally get 1.5-2 times the tip money, so when people ask her to split a bill she just hears more money coming.
Purely anecdotal, YMMV, etc. etc.
EDIT: I'm curious if downvotes are due to people not wanting wait staff to get bigger tips or if it's because wait staff in my area don't gripe about splitting bills? I never expected this comment to cost me karma, but such it is.
As to why you're getting downvoted, I would assume a lot of people (such as myself) don't agree with your anecdotal evidence that waiters never react badly to splitting a check, unless you "live in a weird place".
As a former waiter who spent over a decade in the industry, working everything from casual to high dining, this comment irks me at a personal level. These examples are not directed at you but an explanation of how a waiter sees the situation.
1. Some Point of Sale systems have a limit on how to split a check. I physically cannot split a check more then 6 ways and the customer is asking or 7 ways, then what am I suppose to do? Be "nice" and promise the impossible? So now I pissed off a customer who's about to tip me because I cannot reprogram the POS.
2. The more likely scenario is when a table of 7, who just had pre-fix brunch is asking me to split a $70 check 7 ways which takes my time away from my couple who just dropped $70 by themselves.
What customers in restaurants don't understand is that tipping might be optional but my time is money. As a customer is tipping on service, I'm also providing service comparable to the tip I receive.
Waiters are really good at "guessing" how much a customer will tip and will act on that belief.
Disclaimer:
I worked with a ton of awful waiters who were straight up rude to good guests. No guest should ever be treated poorly.
Ive also served some awful customers:
Some of them tipped very, very well because they wanted to be awful. I loved those assholes and always welcomed them with open arms - money's green regardless.
Some were just awful and I tried to steer clear of them.
Now as an olive branch; all guests should be treated with outmost respect and all people in the service industry should be as well
Argument #1 (the seven ways thing) seems like a red herring, since I would guess it's vanishingly rare compared to splitting 6 or fewer ways.
#2 isn't very convincing on it's own. Your inconvenience is not the customer's fault and does not justify being rude to them. Splitting checks is part of the job just like refilling water is part of the job, even if it takes your time away from more profitable tables.
This is a difficult subject to discuss objectively since both (customer and server) experiences are very personal.
Argument #1 happens frequently at locations that host larger parties (steak houses, for example) while almost never occurs at local pub/restaurant.
I understand your point of view on #2, however, the job is to server food for the section, not a particular table. I understand its taboo to speak honestly about this - people don't want to hear it; A manager doesn't care that you had to split a check when a table walked out; A guest doesn't care if you have a 7 top when they're ordering a $300 bottle of wine.
Everyone has particular feelings about this situation and as a server you're juggling all of your tables, expectations, emotions, and different cost/reward scenarios.
Another caveat: when a table walks in and says, prior to ordering, "Can we please split the check 7 ways?" - freaking awesome! Now I know that my notes have to be extra neat and I'm going through steps of service being extra careful to place items.
Most people ask to split the check at the end when I rushed through the entire order and my pad is a total mess and I'm trying to decipher what happened so everyone is charged correctly.
my pad is a total mess and I'm trying to decipher what happened so everyone is charged correctly.
Do you have to do the splitting? Just give the table the total check, give people a few minutes work things out, and then just go around the table and ask each person what they had/how much they want to pay. That seems to be the standard procedure at most places I've been to.
Most people ask to split the check at the end when I rushed through the entire order and my pad is a total mess and I'm trying to decipher what happened so everyone is charged correctly.
Maybe after it happens a couple of times... you might learn to predict when a party will ask to split the check, and ask when you take the orders? That seems reasonable if you can predict how much someone will tip.
Now, I know this is something that waiters might not have the power to change, but how about not putting whole tables on the same tab to begin with? How is this practice even OK? It should be obvious that each person pays for him or herself. When you go shopping with some friends it's not like you have to split a tab just because you are hanging out together. I pay for what I consume, putting us all on the same tab is just being lazy.
I'm not sure where you're coming from with this comment. Most tables are couples and families...So should you separate a check for husband and wife/brother and sister? How do I know if two guys are together or "together"? Should I ask?
I can "guess" if you'll tip 18% or not and if I'm wrong...I'm wrong. If I assume your relationship to another person you're dining with - I might get fired...
You mentioned that your POS allows to split the check 6 ways.
So, if you see more than 6 people at the table, then you may ask them how they are going to pay: separately or by one check.
Makes sense - what would happen if they have 6 and then a 7th joins them afterwards? Should we refuse service?
Hypotheticals are everywhere. Usually its easier when tables ask to split a check in the beginning, then the logistics can be figured out and you don't have a situation that OP mentioned.
Bit off topic: I had a table, I don't remember how many people but it was large (7-10). One guest joins late and quickly orders her food. Since the rest of the table is already on appetizers, I rush to place the order and get her salad as soon as possible.
Once the salad arrives, I check back and, after the guest is satisfied, go to take care of a different table.
Maybe two minutes later, the table franticly calls me over and asks if there are mushrooms in the salad, to which I reply "Yes". Calmly, the gentleman to the right of the lady with the salad reaches into his bag, grabs an EpiPen and stabs her.
My manager and I look at each other and are mortified - how did this happen? I quickly start to apologize but I had no idea that she was allergic to Mushrooms. While we're freaking out, the table is as cool as the other side of the pillow - everyone just continues eating and the lady is all smiles.
Turns out that the entire table are doctors and the lady routinely forgets to mention her allergies. The gentleman, her husband, explains the situation while the lady apologizes for creating a fuss (at this point my manager is as white as a sheet).
Even though everything turned out "ok" it was certainly a scary moment. It also relates to your comment - shouldn't I ask each person that comes in about their allergies or is it their responsibility to inform me of their dietary restrictions?
After a while, there are certain tendencies that are exhibited by guests which can be profiled. Just like a good electrician can tell if the lines in your house are "home runs" or daisy chained based on the gauge of wire and material, a server can "guesstimate" their tip based on the customer.
I'm not saying you KNOW this is going to happen but you know if you're getting 15% or 18%+.
I think you're making the OPs point about the parallels. You've come up with these technical arguments about POS system limitations and management expectations for why the waiter is "right" to be annoyed at being asked to split the customer's check. The end result is that the customer is only going to remember that the waiter was rude when he was asked to split the check.
This is a good article that many would call "Customer Service 101." The author seemed to have been weak in that area. Good the author realized how important it is to overall earnings.
On blogs or whatever, I can be pretty blunt and harsh. With my customers, I walk a tight rope between being aggressive and being gentle almost always moderate. I'm quick to concede something to customer if the overall value proposition is still good for long-term or it's a little thing that can't hurt my image. Past that, I might try to shift blame from them or I to the circumstances of the situation while portraying us as a team handling it. Pissing them off is the last thing you want to do, though, given long-term is more important.
Author either skimmed over or didn't mention two things, though. One is that customers often talk to other potential customers. Even those you "fire" you should separate from on good terms or not too harshly if possible. They can spread word fast through other clients who are then more likely to turn down contracts.
The other issue is the clients asking too much: many do it on purpose. There's so many hustlers out there who play proper capitalist by always getting as much as possible while giving as little as possible. So, you need to determine ahead of time what's your willing to commit to, possible extras, possible compromises, and absolute upper-bounds for any given job/client. Then, stick to it and politely if people are pushing it too much. Give those types an inch, they'll take a mile: you go from profitable, independent consultant to many to practically under-paid employee of one.
> But in retrospect I can see that my touchiness in that moment probably cost me tens of thousands of dollars.
I don't know if it's a side effect of living in a western society, but I see people make this kind of mistake all the time in the corporate world -- i.e. assuming that behind it all there's some neutral arbiter who will square any conflicts that arise in the workplace. In reality, if you make your self look like an ass in front of the wrong person, at the wrong point in the fiscal year, it affects your bonus / promotion / etc., and you never get that back, plus it's used to factor into every reward you get until you leave that company. Definitely better to be diplomatic.
> I don't know if it's a side effect of living in a western society ... In reality, if you make your self look like an ass in front of the wrong person, at the wrong point in the fiscal year, it affects your bonus / promotion / etc., and you never get that back
Is this western as in Europe, North America, Aus/NZ or just US?
In a corporate world, it probably doesn't matter most of the time. Corporations are big entities - individual failings get lost in the noise. If you're a top executive then sure, your every word will push the stock price around. But an average employee can absolutely be an ass, as long as they don't anger the management, and it won't likely affect the bottom-line that much.
It also applies to smaller companies; in fact, I'm beginning to believe that people are being too obsessive about pleasing the customers. For instance, the best way to get a company to respond to your complaint today is through social media. They will ignore your e-mails. They will bullshit you on the phone. But they will not ignore a complaint on a Facebook page. But why is that? An average consumer has exactly zero capability to inflict any damage to the company. They won't even lose a single sale over it, unless the company is very new or caters to a niche market.
Some companies, those in extremely competitive environments, know it all too well. In convenience stores, besides meeting tons of cool people, you can also meet tons of assholes. They don't care. They know you have to buy food anyway.
>But an average employee can absolutely be an ass, as long as they don't anger the management, and it won't likely affect the bottom-line that much.
Parent was referring to being an ass in general. If you act like a dick in the workplace, it will affect your promotions, etc. People will just not think of you first when looking to shower praise.
If you're an agency that can scale up arbitrarily, by all means work for bad clients, especially as you've got people relying on you making payroll. If you're just a freelancer, why bother? There are only so many billable hours in the year, and there's more work than you could ever turn down, most of it for agencies that are unable to say no.
Absolutely. I took a mindfulness class and the biggest takeaway for me was to take time between the event and the response whenever you feel an immediate emotional reaction.
There's an "undo send" feature in gmail (settings->general) that has saved me a few times. I wish it would allow for a send delay higher than 30 seconds though.
That's pretty much customer service 101 / consulting ABCs. Sometimes you have to learn it through experience if it doesn't come natural to you, but I think it can be learned, taught, and coached.
The more nuanced, hard part is to be able to effectively read (over a phone even) whether your customer is the type that has been burned by charlatans in the past and wants technical excellence first... or whether they would prefer "bedside manner" moreso (this is an area that a lot of doctors also fail routinely). Some people are extremely hard to read, and it gets more difficult the higher up a corporate hierarchy you go and for more lucrative verticals in my experience - they're all used to very strong poker faces. But few high level business decisions are made purely upon raw information, so understanding emotion becomes very important if your business focuses upon fewer customers with greater $ / customer.
All too often people fail to read the emotions behind what someone wants and tries to execute to the details of the request instead of looking for context first before touching a keyboard. I worked with a good engineer that diligently worked on problems reliably, and my customer had an issue that they really just didn't care about that much but only wanted to just send out the door for the sake of finishing it and marking it done (it's turning into shelfware, but there's... obligations / due dilligence). I had a hard time communicating that over the phone with the customer present and the customer was getting frustrated (visible but not audible) but another senior engineer figured out between the lines what I was implying between my words, drastically reduced effort on the problem being worked, and the customer was happier for it.
Agreed. I'm going to remember this guy as the one who shoved a pop-up in my face asking for my email shortly after I reached the end of the article. Not to mention the first 2%, where he asked for my email so he could send me his business tips before I even got to read the article.
Didn't get to the end of the article, it instantly popped up on me, was surprised it managed to gain any traction here. (Rotated monitor is probably why)
This actually shows the principle opposite to this article being at work - it demonstrates that you can be annoying to people, and they will somehow deal with you anyway :).
i almost didn't read the article because the first 2% took up an entire screen. when i switched to the tab it looked like a spam page i'd opened by mistake.
This basically has to do with how our brains work. We weigh negatives things in our mind much more than positive. Thats why even a good friendship built over many years with many positives can be ruined by a small mistake. Its core to survival to look out for negatives over positives, because it can avoid major trouble. Sympathy and compassion are things we need to work on to overcome our brains natural push.
If I feel that strongly about something, I just stop. I don't like confrontations at work TBQH. I'll leave if I think I can't be of any further service or someone doesn't need my expertise. No use getting worked up or arguing about it.
Totally agree with the premise of being diplomatic and calm, even when a customer is wrong.
However, it almost reads like he's saying he should have just issued the (undeserved) credit the customer asked for. Personally, I think that could be just as costly over the long term...it sets a precedent that the customer will likely leverage over and over again.
Yeah I think the best lesson to take from the parable is to keep the ego and corresponding negative emotions out of it.
There's nothing really wrong with what he told the guy (at least, what he says he told the guy), it's just that by his own words, the way he said it came across like him being a .
When instead if he'd been able to get past his anger/offense at being questioned, he could have done the same thing but positively, like "dude check out all this awesome shit i am literally already doing for you, for free! Doesn't that actually look like you are getting a pretty sweet deal?" And so then instead of this client being like "oh well fuck me for asking I guess" he could have been like "whoa shit this guy is giving me the sick hookup, I better hire him all the time from now on forever!"
A seasonal company calls me in to do customer support during their busy season when the mail has lost customers packages and they havent been delivered and everybody is crabby. In helping 1000+ customers on a live chat alone none have ever given me a negative review. (which I never let the company forget:) and a major reason they call me in.
One tip when dealing with a upset customer, they will often call in angry and instantly start on a tirade of why they are upset. If they do I instantly interrupt them and ask them for account information and assure them we will take care of any issue they have because we are here to help.
It does 2 things, you dont want them to rant and build up negative energy so you nip that in the bud and they dont have to relive negative feelings. The assurance that we will take care of them instantly sets tone that no matter what their problem will be solved so you take all the stress away from the start. Telling them you are there to help in a friendly tone makes it very hard for them to express anger since you dont get angry at those helping you.
Take away the anger and leave them with happy thoughts. Once the anger is gone the rest is easy.
Edit- Also when you interrupt and ask for account information it shows that before you even have to hear the problem you are already working to solve it in a fast and effective manner for them.
Digging into details, I wonder just how much benefit comes from not just telling them "we will take care of any issue you have", but from immediately asking for account details. Instead of sounding cliché, this sends an immediate signal that they're being helped right now. And when someone is actually helping, there's nothing beneficial in being angry at them.
Unless, of course, they've just typed in their 16-digit account number before being connected with you ;-)
(Doesn't sound like your case, but people will miss that little qualifier. I mean, of course, the cases where they ask for your account number - not verify details)
Of course if you don't have the juice to actually fix the problem then this can backfire.
The most angry I've ever gotten is with Comcast's offshore chat/call center. The reason is because they are trained to tell you that they will solve your problem, and that afterwards that it has been solved in such an emphatic fashion that only a sociopath would dare to question. Yet they do this without any actual indication that what they are doing is having any effect at all. And the worse thing is, even when you call back they act like they are listening to what you did previously, but in fact they are just waiting to interject the script where they make you jump through the same 20 hoops over and over again. In my case it turned out to be a faulty modem, so none of what they were doing had any effect at all, but in no way did they ever let on any actual information or engage in any reasoning.
I suspect the only reason hasn't replaced that call center with a voicemail tree is presumably because they need a Turing-test capable human to get the customer to calm down long enough for them to re-read step 25 from the level 1 tech support handbook.
I apologize for hijacking your thread, but I had to get this off my chest.
It's easier to dumb human down to the level of machine than to make machine as smart as human. I literally performed an impromptu Turing test on a telemarketer once, because he sounded totally like a TTS system. It took me two minutes to interrupt his monologues and yes-or-no questions and to force him to answer my, open-ended, question. Sadly, it turned out he was a human after all. I do not wish that level of zombification on anyone.
I think you bring up a great point and I couldn't agree with you more! If you are not in that situation or can't honestly say that, I strongly suggest not doing it. It would make you look like a liar and leave a bad overall taste in customers mouth.
The company I work for thankfully takes customer service very serious. I don't mind helping them because they want their customers to be happy not be blown off or jump through hoops and that personally makes me want to help the company because its something I respect.
I usually cant stand support from a company because of many of the concepts you touched on, specially the "hoops" and support not knowing what they are talking about so I empathize with the customers.
Appreciate the post! I do love HN because the high level of discussion.
Be easy to work with, but at the same time there is absolutely no reason to give the client in the beginning a credit. Doing so will probably hurt you more, as the client will lose all respect for you and your rates.
The author's observation that the last 2% of a transaction has a bigger impact on the customer's perception is consistent with the peak-end rule, which is a pyschological heuristic predicting a person's overall impression of an experience based on its most intense and last moments. Daniel Kahneman (the guy who wrote Thinking, Fast and Slow) and some others have done good research on it.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadThe theme is more like, "Learn to pick your battles with clients."
Even if you choose to fight, fight the right way. Being overly emotional and ego driven ("I'm right, how dare they?!") can be very damaging to a relationship, even if you end up "winning".
The key, as I'm trying to teach myself every day, seems to be to get yourself and your ego out of the picture. The advice I really loved was to picture yourself as some absurd, godlike dictator, demanding the world bend to your whim... With that in mind in mind you realize how silly you're being.
It's something I struggle with every day, but learning this kind of self control is very important to long term success.
* Try to fix everything - this will lead to burnout
* Ignore it, and just work on your stuff - this will work, but you probably won't get promoted
* Play politics and try to fix a few things through the "right channels" - this probably works, but it's really really difficult and can be soul-destroying.
* Do what you can, and update your resume - cynical, but probably the best option if you like eating food.
I mean, you're not always in a position where you can educate your clients. Sometimes doing that would be a career limiting move.
Happy to see that saying in there. In its sometimes hard to remember that not everyone is as logic oriented as myself.
To tie this back to the article, sometimes being right can work, but it's a risky line to push without the above, a clear understanding of the person opposite you's mental process. That being said, also as the above, I find that in situations where a business relationship can build that trust and understanding even in the face of contrary views on certain things (logic vs emotion, to draw that parallel) a far better working relationship can be established, although I have a feeling to an entrepreneurial community this is stating the obvious :)
I think the author touches on this but not specifically, "be easy to work with" is a nice umbrella that I'd add an addendum to, a hope that both parties try to give each other the benefit of the doubt and some tolerance through disagreement in the hope that the opposite party is doing the same, and eventually, you may not have to worry as much about the friction of being right. (within reason)
Yeah, I tried marrying someone like that. It didn't turn out well. I recommend breaking off the engagement while you still can, or else you're in for years of misery.
It doesn't mean don't marry her. It means make sure it's something you can both live with before you marry her.
I'd re-echo the clarification of my main point though, and be less glib: by being able to meet these differences head on, we each managed over the years to shift the other, and produce a dynamic I've become "pretty OK" with. Fortunately the mindsets of the parents don't have to carry down to children in exact parity. (To re-glib for the conclusion; Especially in my case or else I'd be elbow deep in some cancer patient, and I don't have a strong stomach for that sort of thing)
That is really key. I am convinced that the reason many relationships, from business to marriages, get in trouble is by avoiding the inevitable conflict or managing it poorly.
People will disagree: to respond to an earlier point, my spouse often reminds me that she's not as logically oriented as I am. That's a reminder that all problems can't be addressed through logic. As long as each of us remembers how the other is wired, we find a way to muddle through all the problems we've come across. And there have been some Duesies! But the important thing is to address them and not let issues fester until they explode.
More on topic for HN: conflict resolution is an important skill for anyone who will be managing others or engaging with customers. Learning to get better at it can have a positive impact on your bottom line.
However, it's easier to avoid a lot of "inevitable conflict" by not getting into a relationship with someone whose worldview is too different from your own. Any marriage is going to have some conflict, but picking your partner wisely can minimize that. People I think tend not to think about this when they're young because they haven't been through a failed marriage, and society feeds them a lot of fairy-tale bullshit about how "love conquers all".
> I've had many and extensive (and quite good) conversations with my fiancee as to how she was brought up in a family that valued emotional reasoning over logical reasoning. Knowing the inputs and broad transactions to someone's mental processes (especially if they're very close to you) can help facilitate communication/understanding
And yet, your advice:
> I recommend breaking off the engagement while you still can, or else you're in for years of misery.
Your advice was certainly not to "have some really serious discussions." It was break off an engagement based on skimming a single comment.
Most people are capable of communicating just fine. Just because that wasn't the case with you and your ex doesn't mean your situation is the least bit relevant to existencebox's. That's why it was uncalled for.
I understand that most people value emotional reasoning more than I do. I don't get people valuing it more than logical reasoning.
There is just so much potential danger with implicit and explicit bias. Sexism and racism tends to be more the result of emotional reasoning than logical reasoning. (Think of a jury/judge sentencing a black guy to a harsher sentence than a white guy who did the same crime. Imagine if the difference between if the justification was the black guy felt more dangerous vs a justification such as in this instant the black guy having similar prior offenses. Which justification is racism?)
That being said though, you bring up an addendum I would counter that although you're right to say there is potential danger to emotional thinking, there's potential danger to purely logical thinking as well; to bring this back to my original statement in which avoiding confronting these differences in an "easy to work with" fashion reduces the chances of moving even a little towards a middle ground to 0.
I wonder, if both extremes are dangerous, is the middle ground safe?
Yeah, I tried that in my marriage. Don't insist on being right, let the wife be happy and it'll make you happy. Instead, it made me broke and miserable and so I asked for a divorce.
With my SO, we're always aiming for "eventually right". When there is an argument, we focus on reaching common emotional ground first. Then, sometimes not immediately, we both talk the issue through calmly to determine who, if anyone, was right, and exchange appropriate apologies. The point being, it's often more important to defuse the situation first, but both of us value knowing the truth about situations, and want to be always on the same page. Otherwise someone will end up having those kinds of hurt feelings that tend to slowly rot you from inside.
It doesn't work with anyone; it takes a honest and cooperative partner to pull it off. And it takes trust. If my SO was as patient as I am, we'd end every argument in 30 seconds with full agreement about the situation, Aumann-style. She isn't, and so I sometimes have to trust that after the storm there will be the phase of reconciliation. And there always is.
Would love to see the title changed to "Being right(eous) won't pay your bills" - being right is important, letting everybody know it is a totally different thing :)
There's a slightly patronising tone to this, whether it's right or wrong: " we must Siberia educate our clients". While true, it's not the key issue. They can educate us too, and perhaps that's the take-away here. I hope to put myself in my clients' shoes every time I talk to them. That way, everything they say makes perfect sense, and we can agree a way through any issues together, as a partnership.
I don't always manage to do this effectively, of course, but reflecting on this helps me slowly, slowly improve.
Second, time is a zero sum game. If the waiter has to spend several minutes wrestling with the POS to split a check, that's several minutes they can't be serving other tables, which if the restaurant is busy can mean a degraded experience for other diners (and of course if this leads to someone being unhappy with the service that will likely mean a reduced tip). Of course if the restaurant isn't busy and the waiter can afford to spend several minutes on this, then nobody else has to suffer, but if that's the case I wouldn't expect the waiter to balk at splitting the check (assuming they're capable of doing so at all, which as I said before may not be true depending on the POS or on restaurant policy).
A tip is fully extra incentive. The waiter is not my employee, and the social expectation of a tip is a horrible practice (imagine if we replaced the expectation with someone that wasn't financial in nature).
>And the kind of person that threatens to leave a bad tip if the waiter doesn't do something is the kind of person that probably tips badly to begin with.
This sounds kinda close to a personal attack. Not to mention there is a vast difference between threatening to not leave a tip ("if you don't split this check then I won't tip you") and what the parent post did (bringing up how refusing customer service right before a tip is given is likely to hurt the tip, never mentioning if this was a conscious or subconscious behavior change made by the tipper).
No, it's not. I agree completely that it would be great if we could get rid of tipping and actually pay waiters (and all other tipped professions) an appropriate salary. But they don't get paid an appropriate salary. Tipping is not extra incentive, tipping is their salary. If you don't tip, you're literally expecting someone to serve you for somewhere around $2-$3 an hour.
> This sounds kinda close to a personal attack.
Why, are you the kind of person who threatens to withhold tips from waiters? Well actually, given your previous paragraph, it sounds like you are that kind of person.
That is not the issue of the customer, and in no way is the customer even responsible for that.
Complain to the business owner raking in profits, not to the customer.
There are countries where employees don’t have to rely on donations to be able to pay their bills, showing that it doesn’t have to be this way.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't restaurants supposed to pay waiters the difference if they make less than minimum wage in tips?
Also, being a waiter is absolutely a job that should pay over minimum wage, so if your argument is "but at least they're making minimum wage", you're still significantly under-valuing your waiter's work. Being a waiter is hard work.
They cannot very well be earning less than minimum wage per hour if they already have gotten more or equal to minimum wage for the month in tips. Do you mean they are earning only $x per hour over minimum wage for serving you?
While typically irrational for the individual, anger can be rational for the selfish gene, thus be preserved in the species: angry bees are avoided by other animals even if individual bees are suicidal, thus making the suicide of an individual work for the group.
So whenever you feel the need to go on a rampage destroying yourself along with your archenemy, you should really ask yourself if you are still in control, or you are executing out a program developed 1 million years ago and designed to protect the occupants of your cave from attacks of rival hominids, even at the price of your life.
2. If a waiter spends 10 min at the POS splitting a check, other tables are being ignored and management might not like that.
Interestingly enough, a server works for three parties: guest, restaurant, and themselves.
Sucks but true. Gotta choose lesser of three evil sometimes.
http://www.zonal.co.uk/aztec-epos-solutions/
Not only does it split the bill N ways easily, it can cope with all manner of per-seat bills and shared items.
A friend of mine says typically when she splits a bill, both payees will assume the other is a crappy tipper/don't want to tip less, so they'll both tip a higher percentile and she'll occasionally get 1.5-2 times the tip money, so when people ask her to split a bill she just hears more money coming.
Purely anecdotal, YMMV, etc. etc.
EDIT: I'm curious if downvotes are due to people not wanting wait staff to get bigger tips or if it's because wait staff in my area don't gripe about splitting bills? I never expected this comment to cost me karma, but such it is.
1. Some Point of Sale systems have a limit on how to split a check. I physically cannot split a check more then 6 ways and the customer is asking or 7 ways, then what am I suppose to do? Be "nice" and promise the impossible? So now I pissed off a customer who's about to tip me because I cannot reprogram the POS.
2. The more likely scenario is when a table of 7, who just had pre-fix brunch is asking me to split a $70 check 7 ways which takes my time away from my couple who just dropped $70 by themselves.
What customers in restaurants don't understand is that tipping might be optional but my time is money. As a customer is tipping on service, I'm also providing service comparable to the tip I receive.
Waiters are really good at "guessing" how much a customer will tip and will act on that belief.
Disclaimer: I worked with a ton of awful waiters who were straight up rude to good guests. No guest should ever be treated poorly.
Ive also served some awful customers:
Some of them tipped very, very well because they wanted to be awful. I loved those assholes and always welcomed them with open arms - money's green regardless.
Some were just awful and I tried to steer clear of them.
Now as an olive branch; all guests should be treated with outmost respect and all people in the service industry should be as well
#2 isn't very convincing on it's own. Your inconvenience is not the customer's fault and does not justify being rude to them. Splitting checks is part of the job just like refilling water is part of the job, even if it takes your time away from more profitable tables.
Argument #1 happens frequently at locations that host larger parties (steak houses, for example) while almost never occurs at local pub/restaurant.
I understand your point of view on #2, however, the job is to server food for the section, not a particular table. I understand its taboo to speak honestly about this - people don't want to hear it; A manager doesn't care that you had to split a check when a table walked out; A guest doesn't care if you have a 7 top when they're ordering a $300 bottle of wine.
Everyone has particular feelings about this situation and as a server you're juggling all of your tables, expectations, emotions, and different cost/reward scenarios.
Another caveat: when a table walks in and says, prior to ordering, "Can we please split the check 7 ways?" - freaking awesome! Now I know that my notes have to be extra neat and I'm going through steps of service being extra careful to place items.
Most people ask to split the check at the end when I rushed through the entire order and my pad is a total mess and I'm trying to decipher what happened so everyone is charged correctly.
Do you have to do the splitting? Just give the table the total check, give people a few minutes work things out, and then just go around the table and ask each person what they had/how much they want to pay. That seems to be the standard procedure at most places I've been to.
If that's the case, I doubt most waiters would have issues with check splitting.
Maybe after it happens a couple of times... you might learn to predict when a party will ask to split the check, and ask when you take the orders? That seems reasonable if you can predict how much someone will tip.
If you have a 7 top, you do your best to keep yourself as organized as possible to save as much time in the end.
After a while, most waiter who've worked a bit are trying to cover all their bases all the time.
Interestingly enough, the analogy of a good waiter is a good error checking strategy: expect everything to work but check every exception anyway.
I can "guess" if you'll tip 18% or not and if I'm wrong...I'm wrong. If I assume your relationship to another person you're dining with - I might get fired...
Hypotheticals are everywhere. Usually its easier when tables ask to split a check in the beginning, then the logistics can be figured out and you don't have a situation that OP mentioned.
Bit off topic: I had a table, I don't remember how many people but it was large (7-10). One guest joins late and quickly orders her food. Since the rest of the table is already on appetizers, I rush to place the order and get her salad as soon as possible.
Once the salad arrives, I check back and, after the guest is satisfied, go to take care of a different table.
Maybe two minutes later, the table franticly calls me over and asks if there are mushrooms in the salad, to which I reply "Yes". Calmly, the gentleman to the right of the lady with the salad reaches into his bag, grabs an EpiPen and stabs her.
My manager and I look at each other and are mortified - how did this happen? I quickly start to apologize but I had no idea that she was allergic to Mushrooms. While we're freaking out, the table is as cool as the other side of the pillow - everyone just continues eating and the lady is all smiles.
Turns out that the entire table are doctors and the lady routinely forgets to mention her allergies. The gentleman, her husband, explains the situation while the lady apologizes for creating a fuss (at this point my manager is as white as a sheet).
Even though everything turned out "ok" it was certainly a scary moment. It also relates to your comment - shouldn't I ask each person that comes in about their allergies or is it their responsibility to inform me of their dietary restrictions?
Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy :)
After a while, there are certain tendencies that are exhibited by guests which can be profiled. Just like a good electrician can tell if the lines in your house are "home runs" or daisy chained based on the gauge of wire and material, a server can "guesstimate" their tip based on the customer.
I'm not saying you KNOW this is going to happen but you know if you're getting 15% or 18%+.
Now there's a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.
What about looking at the menu and approximating how much something "should cost"?
What about seeing an product on the store shelves (like a sweater) and thinking being surprised by its cost?
The practice is flawed...so are humans - Sorry, I guess.
I was trying to provide the opposite point of view. The whole, there are two sides to every story and somewhere in the middle is the truth, bit.
OP/Guest has every right to be annoyed at the service, its their prerogative.
On blogs or whatever, I can be pretty blunt and harsh. With my customers, I walk a tight rope between being aggressive and being gentle almost always moderate. I'm quick to concede something to customer if the overall value proposition is still good for long-term or it's a little thing that can't hurt my image. Past that, I might try to shift blame from them or I to the circumstances of the situation while portraying us as a team handling it. Pissing them off is the last thing you want to do, though, given long-term is more important.
Author either skimmed over or didn't mention two things, though. One is that customers often talk to other potential customers. Even those you "fire" you should separate from on good terms or not too harshly if possible. They can spread word fast through other clients who are then more likely to turn down contracts.
The other issue is the clients asking too much: many do it on purpose. There's so many hustlers out there who play proper capitalist by always getting as much as possible while giving as little as possible. So, you need to determine ahead of time what's your willing to commit to, possible extras, possible compromises, and absolute upper-bounds for any given job/client. Then, stick to it and politely if people are pushing it too much. Give those types an inch, they'll take a mile: you go from profitable, independent consultant to many to practically under-paid employee of one.
Things to remember.
I don't know if it's a side effect of living in a western society, but I see people make this kind of mistake all the time in the corporate world -- i.e. assuming that behind it all there's some neutral arbiter who will square any conflicts that arise in the workplace. In reality, if you make your self look like an ass in front of the wrong person, at the wrong point in the fiscal year, it affects your bonus / promotion / etc., and you never get that back, plus it's used to factor into every reward you get until you leave that company. Definitely better to be diplomatic.
Is this western as in Europe, North America, Aus/NZ or just US?
It also applies to smaller companies; in fact, I'm beginning to believe that people are being too obsessive about pleasing the customers. For instance, the best way to get a company to respond to your complaint today is through social media. They will ignore your e-mails. They will bullshit you on the phone. But they will not ignore a complaint on a Facebook page. But why is that? An average consumer has exactly zero capability to inflict any damage to the company. They won't even lose a single sale over it, unless the company is very new or caters to a niche market.
Some companies, those in extremely competitive environments, know it all too well. In convenience stores, besides meeting tons of cool people, you can also meet tons of assholes. They don't care. They know you have to buy food anyway.
Parent was referring to being an ass in general. If you act like a dick in the workplace, it will affect your promotions, etc. People will just not think of you first when looking to shower praise.
Recognizing those feelings and knowing that it is time for a walk and NOT time to respond to emails is a useful skill.
The more nuanced, hard part is to be able to effectively read (over a phone even) whether your customer is the type that has been burned by charlatans in the past and wants technical excellence first... or whether they would prefer "bedside manner" moreso (this is an area that a lot of doctors also fail routinely). Some people are extremely hard to read, and it gets more difficult the higher up a corporate hierarchy you go and for more lucrative verticals in my experience - they're all used to very strong poker faces. But few high level business decisions are made purely upon raw information, so understanding emotion becomes very important if your business focuses upon fewer customers with greater $ / customer.
All too often people fail to read the emotions behind what someone wants and tries to execute to the details of the request instead of looking for context first before touching a keyboard. I worked with a good engineer that diligently worked on problems reliably, and my customer had an issue that they really just didn't care about that much but only wanted to just send out the door for the sake of finishing it and marking it done (it's turning into shelfware, but there's... obligations / due dilligence). I had a hard time communicating that over the phone with the customer present and the customer was getting frustrated (visible but not audible) but another senior engineer figured out between the lines what I was implying between my words, drastically reduced effort on the problem being worked, and the customer was happier for it.
Agreed. I'm going to remember this guy as the one who shoved a pop-up in my face asking for my email shortly after I reached the end of the article. Not to mention the first 2%, where he asked for my email so he could send me his business tips before I even got to read the article.
Being right won't keep you out of a hospital bed
However, it almost reads like he's saying he should have just issued the (undeserved) credit the customer asked for. Personally, I think that could be just as costly over the long term...it sets a precedent that the customer will likely leverage over and over again.
There's nothing really wrong with what he told the guy (at least, what he says he told the guy), it's just that by his own words, the way he said it came across like him being a .
When instead if he'd been able to get past his anger/offense at being questioned, he could have done the same thing but positively, like "dude check out all this awesome shit i am literally already doing for you, for free! Doesn't that actually look like you are getting a pretty sweet deal?" And so then instead of this client being like "oh well fuck me for asking I guess" he could have been like "whoa shit this guy is giving me the sick hookup, I better hire him all the time from now on forever!"
One tip when dealing with a upset customer, they will often call in angry and instantly start on a tirade of why they are upset. If they do I instantly interrupt them and ask them for account information and assure them we will take care of any issue they have because we are here to help.
It does 2 things, you dont want them to rant and build up negative energy so you nip that in the bud and they dont have to relive negative feelings. The assurance that we will take care of them instantly sets tone that no matter what their problem will be solved so you take all the stress away from the start. Telling them you are there to help in a friendly tone makes it very hard for them to express anger since you dont get angry at those helping you.
Take away the anger and leave them with happy thoughts. Once the anger is gone the rest is easy.
Edit- Also when you interrupt and ask for account information it shows that before you even have to hear the problem you are already working to solve it in a fast and effective manner for them.
Digging into details, I wonder just how much benefit comes from not just telling them "we will take care of any issue you have", but from immediately asking for account details. Instead of sounding cliché, this sends an immediate signal that they're being helped right now. And when someone is actually helping, there's nothing beneficial in being angry at them.
(Doesn't sound like your case, but people will miss that little qualifier. I mean, of course, the cases where they ask for your account number - not verify details)
The most angry I've ever gotten is with Comcast's offshore chat/call center. The reason is because they are trained to tell you that they will solve your problem, and that afterwards that it has been solved in such an emphatic fashion that only a sociopath would dare to question. Yet they do this without any actual indication that what they are doing is having any effect at all. And the worse thing is, even when you call back they act like they are listening to what you did previously, but in fact they are just waiting to interject the script where they make you jump through the same 20 hoops over and over again. In my case it turned out to be a faulty modem, so none of what they were doing had any effect at all, but in no way did they ever let on any actual information or engage in any reasoning.
I suspect the only reason hasn't replaced that call center with a voicemail tree is presumably because they need a Turing-test capable human to get the customer to calm down long enough for them to re-read step 25 from the level 1 tech support handbook.
I apologize for hijacking your thread, but I had to get this off my chest.
The company I work for thankfully takes customer service very serious. I don't mind helping them because they want their customers to be happy not be blown off or jump through hoops and that personally makes me want to help the company because its something I respect.
I usually cant stand support from a company because of many of the concepts you touched on, specially the "hoops" and support not knowing what they are talking about so I empathize with the customers.
Appreciate the post! I do love HN because the high level of discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak%E2%80%93end_rule