You would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t experience customer service nightmares at least on occasion. As the years go by, and smaller companies consolidate into giant behemoths, it seems like the first real loss is that focus on treating customers like human beings.

In some ways, this is perfectly understandable. There is simply no way for one company with that many customers to give each of those customers the amount of personal attention he or she deserves. On the other hand, most companies seem to be taking the automation and outsourcing of customer support to the extreme, so much so that customers are often left with a very sour taste in their mouths and no sense of loyalty to the company at all.

This series will examine the etiquette involved in dealing with customer service, both from the company’s and the client’s perspective.

Articles in this series:

Make it look like you’re busy

I’ve worked in retail before, so I know that sometimes even though it looks like you aren’t doing anything to help customers, you may in fact be.

But speaking as a customer, I have to tell you that you should be aware of what your activity (or lack of activity) does to the customer’s level of frustration. If I’m standing in line for twenty minutes, that already feels like an hour. And within those long twenty minutes, I have nothing better to do than to survey the entire staff and try to figure out what each is doing to help move the line faster.

Your task at that time may be something completely invisible to me, but as long as you are within my line of sight, I can’t help but count you as one more person who is getting paid and isn’t helping me.

So what’s the solution? Try to look busy. Or try to make what you’re doing more obvious. Or better yet, if it’s at all possible to do what you need to do out of sight, then do it out of sight. I’d rather wait in line for twenty minutes with only two customer service reps who look like they’re really trying to move the line along, than wait for ten minutes with five staff members in view, only two of which appear to be helping me.

I know it’s not fair, but it’s human nature. It’s a psychological thing. And think of it this way: you’ll deflect the blame for my wait onto management and corporate headquarters, where it should be.