r/CustomerService

I'm just wondering about people's opinions. Basically I had to email an organization about a question and they answered and now I'm not sure if I should send back a thank you or if that would just be annoying. I know it would vary by person, but I'm curious what people would think about that. (My autism is showing because I'm used to always saying thank you when I'm grateful but I'm not sure whether it makes social sense to send a formal organization an email just to say thank you, lol.)

I work at a wing restaurant, wings only! Please tell me if I’m wrong or rude. I’ve been working here for two and half years now we make the wings fresh per order, a customer came in 5 mins before close, I tell him we close in 5 minutes and your order will take MINIMUM 20 mins, he looked at me and said oh that’s perfect I’ll take a seat, which I understand technically we are still open but what part of we close in 5 mins and your order will take at least 20 mins did you not understand??? it got me frustrated because now I’ll miss my bus home and I’ll have to wait another hour for the next bus and it was already 11pm, I took his order still, set the order up clocked out and left. The next day my manager pulls me into the office and tells me I had gotten a bad review that I had taken an order and left the restaurant and turned the lights off, i genuinely don’t think I did anything wrong?? I’m not staying another 20 mins after my shift because some guy wants wings a couple mins before close and I’m not waiting another hour and half for the next bus home because you want me to stay in the restaurant for someone who is extremely inconsiderate. I also want to go home and you had 13 hours to order food while we are open.

This is an old story.

It was beginning of covid. We were new to the whole WFH situation and everything was put together kind of sloppy. For the first few months, calls to the office would get forwarded to employees cell phones and we would take the calls from our houses.

It's my day off. I'm doing my morning business, scrolling reddit while I take a dump. I see a work call come in. I ignore it because I'm not scheduled that day. I text my boss and notify her to fix it, which she does right away.

I see the caller left a voicemail. So, I listen. It's been a long time, and I cant remember it verbatim. But I recall a southern american accent, and a lot of anger.

"I called your piece of shit company at 8:58 thinking you'd be open but you lazy pieces of shit can't even answer the phone!"

He complained about his actual issue eventually. It was not a product we sell. It was a similar product to something we sell, but they meant to call one of our competitors.

I could have and should have left it alone. But I called the guy back. From my personal cell, just to explain to him that he called the wrong number. I needed him to know he was wrong. I had to be the one to tell him.

I also did him the favor of looking up the number he really needed. He apologized and said thanks.

It's been like 5 years and I still think about that poop session.

So I’m a grocery store cashier, been at this job for 5 months. I feel like they have 0 respect for me.

First off they send us a weekly schedule and if they write me down for, say, 8am-6pm and they end up short staffed, they will straight up make me stay even until 8pm. They’ve done this before even when I was sick and they knew. Just 0 respect for my time, doesn’t matter if I have plans after work they won’t even ask me to stay those extra hours they’ll just not let me leave.
Second off they just casually schedule 12 hour shifts and call it standard and that’s fine and all but for a 12 hour shift we only get one 30 minute break and they don’t want you eating at the register so your break is your only time to eat- I’ve had days where I was set up to work 7am to 7pm and they sent me on break at literally 11am and just let me be hungry the rest of the day.
Again just total disregard for my human needs and agency. One of my shift managers also acts pretty mean to me, like if I come up to her at all she’ll get all mad and like “what do you want?”, will criticize me and give me a hard time for absolutely nothing etc.

Thing is I’m starting my volunteer year in a month and nobody else will hire me for just a month, so idk what to do here.

Some context, I am a shift lead. I am often alone when I close. This awful customer comes in only when I work (she learned my schedule) after one incident. She notoriously had no money when coming the register. We close at 8. We have a policy where no transactions can be completed past 8:15. One night she came up at 8:30 after me letting her know at 8:15 it was her last chance to checkout. When she got to the register I politely refused to check her out since she ignored policy. She yelled some profanity at me and left without her items. Nearly every shift she waits until 7:40 to come in. I’ve seen her wait upwards of an hour to get out of her car. She will come in and fill two baskets full of items and walk up to the register at 8:14 since she knows the policy and pushes it to the limit to frustrate me. She always says backhanded remarks when I come to the register to check her out. Today she overstepped and kept calling people to send her money until 6:20, we closed at 6 today but the 15 min policy is the same. She called me ugly and yelled when I tried to shut down her transaction. I may have fucked up because I genuinely shut down and told her she was being disrespectful and she does this every night just to fuck with me because of a personal vendetta. This has been going on for months and I’m at my breaking point. She gets out early with other management and is sickeningly nice to them. My boss is working on getting her banned but I have to wait and put up with her until she threatens my safety or physically hurts me so we can file a police report and ban her. I live in a small town and she’s been banned from many small businesses for her behaviour. This genuinely feels like harassment. Purposely staying late every shift I work and yelling at me is getting exhausting. One night she called me on the store phone to yell at me after close just to get the last word in.

Edit: the previously mentioned two baskets she always fills always get left and she only every buys one or two items, leaving the rest of the items for me to put away.

Has anyone seen AI agents handle multi step support issues without losing context halfway through, I’m talking about checking account details taking action across a few systems and then handing the customer to a human with the full conversation intact. That seems like the part that separates a useful AI agent from a basic tool

Had a boomer come in today. I work at a hotel. It was my first night alone. We put a card on a room for incidentals.. it will show up as pending on your bank app sometimes but it won’t actually get charged unless it’s used. I told the guest this…I said ,” You shouldn’t get charged for it.” She said “Okay” and went to her room. She comes back livid… “MY CARD GOT CHARGED $100!!!!!!! YOU SAID IT WOULDN’T GET CHARGED!!!!!!” I genuinely was baffled because I just repeated what I had heard one of my coworkers say, so I genuinely had no idea what to say. I just said ,” Okay I understand, would you like to speak to my manager?” She just repeated the same thing again about being charged. I said the same thing back. And then it continued a couple more times until finally she said she would be okay with talking to my manager. The manager then explained it was my first solo day and that I’m still learning some things and explained that it may show up as pending on your banks end but it won’t actually go through unless I authorize it or something like that. The call ended and all of a sudden she was like a different person…She all of a sudden was nice to me…I just said okay have a nice night! (I’m not the type to argue, I find it extremely annoying and unfruitful. I just like to find solutions.) like I get why she would be frustrated if she genuinely thought her card was charged, but there is absolutely no need to yell or have a tone..it just escalates things and makes things worse/more stressful for the person trying to handle the situation. So yeah, in all my years of customer service, I genuinely have had such a difficult time with that generation. Not every single one of them, But that generation always somehow wants some sort of discount, or comes in with entitlement, or just wants to argue about something because they find it entertaining.

I work at a five guys and our store closes at 10 pm every night. One of our only regulars specifically comes in 5 minutes before we close every night, she orders the same thing. 2 fries Cajun seasoned and one salted and gets a double hamburger. Which seems normal but then she sits and waits until everyone leaves the store and places an online order for the same exact order.

She doesn’t come to the counter, she stands right in front of us and orders another burger. Keep in mind we’re putting stuff away so we can get the hell out. So we have to whip out all the seasonings and cook her crap. Tonight I asked if she would like 2 burgers when she first came because I didn’t want to wait for her again. And she said no, as I saw the receipt pop up for her fuckin burger we made eye contact for a solid 5 seconds. And this lady looks down at her phone and hops on TikTok at like max volume.

So I made her burger packed it up and gave it to her. I kid you not, she comes up to the front and orders another burger. I don’t know if this lady has like some weird fetish for making people stay late at work? Or if she’s like a genuine asshole.

Hi, I just got off a customer service call that really creeped me out. I called my insurance carrier (WellCare) to make some changes to my coverage. An ai bot picked up, (obviously computer generated responses.) when I asked it several times if it was ai, 1.) it denied it several times and 2.) gave an explanation as to why it might sound like a bot (noise cancelling technology). When it became apparent that it was a bot, as it started glitching, I said once more you are a bot, it stated, “yes, I am ai”.

Idk why this is freaking me out so bad, but it really is. I feel like we are all
So far into the matrix that by the time we actually wake up, it will really be too late. Tell me I’m not crazy.

I walked into a restaurant to pick up my order. Two counters, one seemed like the hostess counter, the other seemed like a normal pizzeria counter. First time here, so I walk up to the hostess counter as they were the only 2 people I saw in the front of the restaurant. One girl was at the end of the counter on her phone, didn't even look up at me. The other had her back to the door, face in phone. I said "hello, I'm here to pick up an order I called in?" Without even picking up her head or turning away from the phone, with an attitude "you can go right over there and get it" 😳😳😳

had a call today that just broke me. customer calls in she's nice enough at first. asks about her bill. I explain it to her she says okay. I explain it again in a different way she says okay. I ask if she has any questions she says no. thank you hangs up.

ten minutes later she calls back. different agent gets her she's furious nobody explained her bill. she's been overcharged. she wants to speak to a manager.

I get pulled into the call because I'm the senior person. she's screaming at me now. I pull up the notes from the first call. I can see exactly what I told her. I can see the transcript because our phone system logs everything. it records everything. I literally have her saying okay I understand on the first call.

I try to explain this to her. she says nobody told me anything I'm like. ma'am I have a recording of the conversation. she says well I don't remember that. okay but it happened.

I don't even know what to do at this point. I can't argue with someone who just denies reality. I ended up just apologizing and giving her a small credit because it was easier than fighting.

I feel like I'm losing my mind. or maybe I've already lost it and just haven't noticed.

anyone else dealing with people who just. forget everything you say the second the call ends

I guess this is one of those situations where I'm wondering if aita. I work in retail and one of the things we sell is lottery tickets. Lately we have had a new customer elderly lady, very glamourous, if I had to guess she is in her 80s or 90s. She has a habit of being very mean, or gets upset easy bc she fills out lottery slips. if she doesn't fill them correctly and the machine doesn't recognize what she's trying to play, she gets very condescending and rude. At first I thought she just hated me bc I have that face people tend to pick on me or cap an attitude bc they're having a bad day. Like okay I get it but it gets old quick. Today she was absolutely disrespectful to my female coworker and was saying things like " you don't know what you're talking about , you don't know how to do your job, you guys are trying to get more money out of me" and as she says these things she has a smirk on her face and laughs. I was fighting back the urge to ask her what her issue is. There's no reason for that behavior regardless of how old you are I'm sorry 😐 I was thinking the next time she comes in we do have the legal right not to serve someone unless of course its discrimination, but this is about her blatant disrespect and rude behavior. I feel like a consequence is in order. I feel bad bc I want to be patient and understand she is frustrated, but accusing someone in customer service of trying to get money out of you for no good reason is absurd. Should I refuse service or am I wrong for thanking about this.

It’s Friday night. I work at a gas station and this weekend, they're doing a big festival. Around 9:50, I was almost done with cleaning our store bathroom but customers were coming in so I kept bouncing back and forth between register and the bathroom. I put a post in the door in order to keep the bathroom door open. As I’m ringing out a customer, a girl walks in and heads towards the bathroom, she stops, sees the post, and asks if she can use it. By this time, the bathroom is usually already clean and locked for the night but I figured it was only one person so I let her use it. Shortly after, one by one, that same girl’s friend group starts coming in the store, there were about nine of them, and they’re taking their sweet time looking at beer. It’s 9:52 at this point, the store closes at 10. I have to be punched out by 10:10, but now I also have to clean the bathroom again because I just let someone use it. 9:54 rolls around and now another girl in her friend group has to use the bathroom, but the other girl is still in there. The rest of the group is looking at beer and no one has brought anything to the counter. 9:55 and I’m finally ringing people out. The other girl comes out of the bathroom finally and the other girl goes in. At this point, people in this friend group are just coming in and out of the store. It’s 9:56. Tired of waiting for them to leave, I get frustrated and I tell the one’s who are still in the store that I’m closing and I walk over and turn off the lights. One of the girls says, “Oh, are you closing?” And the guy, presumably her boyfriend, looks at his watch and says, “Yeah, in four minutes.” I look into the parking lot and see multiple cars swarming in now. Then I say, “Well as you can see, everyone‘s about to start trying to come in at the last minute. And I still have to reclean the bathroom,” I ring out about three other people before the second girl finally comes out the bathroom and sees that the lights are off. The guy goes “Yeah, he’s closing.” 9:58 and now the store’s empty, only because I basically had to kick everyone out. Outside, the friend group that was in the store has now expanded to about fifteen people total. They’re outside talking and laughing. I lock the door and start breaking the register down. By the time I was done recleaning the bathroom and with everything else I have to do, it was 10:38. I‘m usually out by 10:05. Even minutes after I closed, I still had people coming to the door and banging on the glass trying to get my attention. After everything, I left the store reflecting about what I could have done better and how I could make tomorrow night better. As someone with crippling anxiety, I hate how jittery and unhinged it makes me feel sometimes.

I went into the store five minutes before closing to quickly grab two items, and I left at exactly 9:00 pm, which was the posted closing time. During those five minutes, I was repeatedly followed and reminded back to back to back, literally every 30 seconds or so, that the store was closing, in a rude, condescending, and intimidating tone that made me feel like I was being deliberately pressured to leave. Two employees seemed to gang up on me, repeatedly making comments about the store closing and treating me as though I was doing something wrong just by shopping before closing time. When I told them their attitude was completely unnecessary, one of them told me the store was closed, even though it was only 8:58 PM at the time. I brought my items to the register and again told the cashier that their attitude was unacceptable, and the older female cashier stared me down with a hostile expression and said, “The store is closed. I don't have to serve you if I don't want to.” They also laughed at me as if I were a joke, and I left feeling humiliated, embarrassed, and disrespected.

I understand that the store was closing but I don't think I deserve being treated this way. I tried the email portal: client@dollarama.com but I got ignored and it's been weeks. I tried calling a few Dollarama numbers I could find but nobody picks up. Does anyone have any suggestions or insights on this?

Edit:

I understand why some people think I was wrong for going into the store five minutes before closing. However, the store's posted closing time was 9:00 PM, and I only needed to grab two items. I wasn't expecting to browse around or take my time and I fully intended to leave before or at the official closing time. If customers aren't actually welcome inside during the last 5–15 minutes, then I feel the store should clearly state that the doors close at 8:45 or 8:55 rather than 9:00. Honestly, I would have much preferred if they had simply told me at the entrance that they were no longer letting customers in. I would have completely understood and left. What upset me was being allowed inside and then repeatedly badgered about the closing time, followed around, laughed at, and spoken to disrespectfully. My issue isn't that they wanted to close on time, it's how I was treated while I was still a customer and the store was technically still open.

Just need to vent. I work customer service and take calls for a very large and well known cookie company. The amount of grown adults and elderly people who literally call or email us to complain about something as petty as some of their cookies being put together backwards so they can’t see the logo is astounding, like you are an adult, not a child. Just eat the cookie. We also don’t care that you think the cookies don’t taste the same as they did years ago, or that you think they look smaller. Then there are also constant requests to sponsor someone’s graduation party, bachelorette weekend or wedding (to which the answer is always no), and people trying to lie and scam for coupons. Before anyone says “that’s your job”, I don’t mind handling legitimate quality issues. It’s just all the other nonsense that I can’t stand. Maybe it’s just me but if I buy cookies and I don’t like them, I just don’t buy them anymore. I don’t call the company and whine.

I will die on this hill, but I think our generations problems with retail being a laughing stock for anybody that’s high on the totem pole all stemmed from the late silent generation up to the early baby boomers generation. My reasoning being is full service pumps were at an all time high, at this point in time the job market was insanely good to the point you can get a full time job right outside of high school. inflation was barely high to the point that part time jobs were supplying enough to live comfortably, full time jobs you could invest in a car, a house and have those paid off in 2 to 3 years. THEY DIDN’T HAVE IT EASY BY ANY SORTS OF THE IMAGINATION, I thought I would make that very clear. But I think it stemmed from these generations because retail was seen as a luxury as today it’s seen as it’s an everyday need.

And the biggest thing is The Disconnect**:** back then it was walk into an office, ask for the manager, and look them in the eye nowadays they genuinely do not understand that doing this today will get you turned away at security or blacklisted by corporate HR. Retail has shifted from customers always right but be polite about it to customers are always right no matter how rude or unruly they act.

Retail is the pinnacle of a laughing stock because people found out that no matter how rude they’re if they voice it loud enough they can get away with it and when an employee steps in the employee get blamed from the company and the customer.

EDIT: I have took out 99% of everything that people were telling me I was wrong for saying. Retail was my target audience not everyone telling me I was wrong for the information I had. So this right here was the core of my argument…

I work as the only CSR in an insurance agency. Customers will often text one of my coworkers and our boss after hours. With something they perceive as “urgent.” And 99.9% of the time it is not. It’s either billing confusion, something I’m already working on and they just want an update, etc.

So what happens? They send it off to me the second they get a chance when we’re back in the office to do “right now.” Doesn’t matter I’m in the middle of 50 other tasks. Doesn’t matter I’m managing my own workflow. Because the customer happened to text them after hours, they think I need to handle it first thing when arriving.

Even if they text them during our normal office hours, they still expect me to deal with it right away. It’s not enough to set a task to make sure I follow up in a timely manner. Timely manner to them is “right now.”

One example is a customer who’s home is non-renewing in a month because it is still under construction. I already followed up with underwriting requesting an extension, explaining construction is nearly complete, and I’m waiting on their response. It can take a few days. I had a follow up set to contact them next week if no reply. But since the agent was getting text messages from the customer while she’s on vacation she told one of my coworkers to have me “find out what is going on right now.”

Sometimes things take time. I’m not just going to ignore anything or anyone. But I feel as though I’m not allowed to keep my own pace. When everything gets treated like an urgency, this is how mistakes get made.

I love how no one will know what I’m doing behind the scenes, but as soon as a customer decides they’re panicking, I’m supposed to suddenly pick up an unreasonable pace on what I’m already working on and treat their panic like my own.

Here’s a novel idea. If the customer is texting you via your personal cell, then you handle it. Or tell them to call the office number, during regular business hours, and someone will update them.