I backslid today.
I’d been doing so well that I hadn’t even felt the need to check in with my faithful followers.
Then, I encountered some critical misinformation on my account page with the website of an insurance company which shall go unnamed. I spent a solid hour dealing with the lowest level of customer service, ten minutes on hold (listening to how much they valued me as a customer) waiting for a supervisor, and finally had to twist off to deal with one of MY clients. I resumed the calls; and an hour and a half later, no loser to resolution and still not having encountered anyone even remotefully helpful, I lost my temper.
Parenthetically, I’ll share that I did, finally, get someone with both the ability and willingness to help me. How, you ask? By calling the Media department and advising them that I was about to issue a press release on their company’s failure to help me, and did they wish to make a statement? I had a supervisor (first AND last name, AND direct-dial number) in five minutes and a solution in 15. Four hours after starting the process!!!!
For my purposes, here, though: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Why did I fall from grace? Maybe the magnitude of their uncooperativeness. Maybe the news, unrelated, that I need a root canal. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone back to drinking coffee after a two-week hiatus. Or maybe I just cracked.
So, my friends: Eyes on me. Keep me honest. I’m adding a day to My Year Without Complaining, and taking it through to 01 January 2015, because I’m here to tell you, this day cannot by any stretch of the imagination count.
But there’s always tomorrow.
CC,
I have been an avid follower of your MYWOC Blog.
I appreciate what you are trying to do, but wonder if you are asking too much of yourself. After pocketing your actions for future use, reading that you were being crushed to the ground by the “low level customer service” for future use, I think your response was genius and merited.
I also lost my cool trying to simply get the name of the place I needed to get medical records from. I called the CEO of Corporate Responsibility and likewise got to a person of knowledge and respect. I hung up with the names and phone numbers of the three heads of the departments I often work with.
Had you remained cordial, in the face of what is most often laughingly called “customer service”, where would you have been?
Sorry Charlie, but sometimes a really smart fight back makes the very best tuna and there are no leftovers.
Yea, Joyce! My thoughts exactly. Corinne, I don’t think that you were complaining, just being smart in order to GET WHAT YOU NEEDED. Being polite does not mean you have to be a doormat.
I can definitely understand why you would crack. I, too, have experienced the frustration of trying to deal with first of all, the robotic menus that you must wade through even before you get to an uncooperative person. Often you get transferred to the wrong department, have to tell your story to that person who then determines that you are in the wrong department. When you are transferred, you have to repeat your story. It is enough to make even the most even-tempered, calm person lose it. Don’t beat yourself up too much.
I believe it’s the internal barometer you are going by to measure your compliance. I get that and honor that. To thine own self be true. And stop to recognize and celebrate all the successful days! Wow!
Everybody’s thoughts are well-taken. My beef with myself is that i didn’t just “take names” and move on to the next link in the chain. I felt my temper rise and felt my voice getting curt. I want to accomplish the same thing only remaining calm the entire time.
One note: I can only imagine how someone without access to the internet (where I found the media numbers), a secretary (who fielded calls) and a college degree drills through these annoying people. As I told the supervisor who ultimately helped me, “It is not ME whom you need to fear losing as a customer; it’s the unfortunate soul who lives with the dysfunction and misinformation, and cancels her policy because what’s the point?”
My internal barometer skyrocketed yesterday — not because of WHAT I did or WHAT I accomplished, but my tone of voice as the conversations progressed. I need to return to my level-headed manner of dealing with people and move forward, lesson learned!