“Ooooh you god-damned, badger-faced tool! I would tell you why you’re a fecking incompetent simpleton but I’d be worried I’d have to waste more precious seconds of my rapidly dwindling lifetime explaining what every third word in the sentence means.”
This is an example of an angry response, in this case; my response to the friendly chaps over at Bank X after three months of trying to explain to them that, as my partner was now my wife she would be wanting to have her last name changed to my terrible, ataraxic last name rather than her lovely, sexy French name (I don’t know why. Really, it’s a mystery… but she is French.). They said it would be fine if we could just hand over her original birth certificate and original marriage certificate. I said that would be OK if they can guarantee, unequivocally, that they would be returned unmolested. They said they would try pretty hard to probably do that… if they could be bothered. You can probably imagine how the conversation panned out from then on in order to get to me dressed in my going-to-the-bank suit, waving my arms in the air like an epileptic monkey, on a Tuesday lunchtime in the foyer of the Hove branch of Bank X (they have the CCTV on YouTube I think now).
Anyway I was totally wrong to say that, Bank X gives 0.03% of a crap that I’m leaving their laughable excuse for a banking establishment to join one of the other fatuous bunch of money grubbing nut-sacks (ed: er… you mean ‘banks’ right?) and to top it off all the hassle of the clean up and account move lands squarely in my lap. This is an example of how NOT to go about interfacing with customer service representatives (CSRs). It does make you feel better initially but then you feel like a bit of a dick for being such a shouty moron to some minimum wage desk jockey whilst the actual policy setters lounge about in their ivory tower being unconcerned and probably unaware of the ire they are meriting.
Yesterday, unbeknownst to me, my wife sauntered in to the “wrong” (i.e. not mine) branch of Bank X on her way to the laundrette (yes we live in the 1980′s) wearing clothes that should probably have been in the bag and carrying a baby (I assume he was being carried, but he can hang from a shoulder or belt by his teeth alone if in the mood) and asked mildly at the front desk to speak to the on-duty complaints manager. After a short wait the allotted guy came over and she said quite calmly, but with a dead straight face:
“I am disgusted with the abysmal service Bank X has provided in relation to the change of my maiden name to my familial name. I want this complaint expedited with all necessary haste or else I will lodge a complaint with the Financial Services Authority. This query has been outstanding for the woefully long time of 3 months.”
The guy made some notes. Then she left.
Today I got a call from Melvin in the Fascist Adjudicatory Department of Bank X (or something) who apologised to me for wasting my WIFE’S time yesterday and informed me that they had now corrected the outstanding complaint concerning her surname and were sending us some free* (I could actually hear him pronouncing the asterisk on the ‘phone) vouchers for something or other to soften the blow of the general incompetence we had experienced. I don’t actually remember speaking during the conversation such was the level of gobsmackage I was experiencing. How in the name of tap-dancing pink dinosaurs did she manage to do that?
What I didn’t know was that all large organisations use keywords for customer service. Swearing loudly at peons in offices gets you nowhere as they just write down “abusive nutcase had some issue with something ” and file it under “LOL” in the company response database. If it is looked at again the Customer Service bigwigs just see the word “abusive” and mentally bin-off the complaint before reading any further. They can do this because you have not explained why they are enormous incompetents in language that corporations understand. My wife works in customer service, when she’s not doing other more awesome things, and knows (as all CSRs apparently know) that there is an unwritten priority code for every complaint and that priority is completely linked to the codewords you use. I’ve
Psychiatrists discovered some centuries ago that there are certain emotional states that engage certain uses of language that would be considered uncool in general situations but when you are emotionally unbound these restrictions go walkies and leave you in a very aggressive state where you don’t have the same social restrictions incumbent on your language usage. You can try it on a colleague/partner/friend right now if you like. Just keep a straight face, stay calm and say; “I am disgusted with your abysmal performance.” right to their face whilst maintaining eye contact. Chances are you can’t. Even knowing, as you do, that you can break the mood immediately afterwards by explaining why you said what you did, you will worry that the emotional impact will leave a bitter taste despite the jocular intentions. Brands have spent so long pretending to be singular people that they now only respond to complaints that jar “them” emotionally, so if you know the words to use then you are going to have a much better time when requesting things from them. You should also make sure to put it in writing too if at all possible as they can then pass that around so everyone can be worried about how cross you are.
So there you go, when you get angry just remember to use highly emotive language, but without raising your voice, and you should be able to bypass the whole escalation nonsense that exists everywhere in the UK at the moment.
