Giving Respect to those Who Serve You

Do you remember when being a customer was somewhat of a responsability you would go to an establishment and treated the employees with respect because they were giving you a serivce and it was a service that you were nessesarily entitled to? Ive worked in the field of customer service for over 17 years and there has been a shift from giving service and getting respect for giving that serivce to the customer demanding perfect entitled services and then being rewarded for complaining for any spec of less then gold star care.

The customer did not always used to be right. Businesses used to have a mindset that they were provding a service the the customers should be happy that they were getting that service. I mean years ago having an American Express card or a Discovered card was something people earned almost like being part of an exclussive club. If someone went to a restaurant they treated their waitress or waiter has a server not a servant.

Now dont get me wrong I dont think customers should be treated poorly and given subpar service but i dont believe that business should have to give out free rewards for complaining customers who know the system and will threaten to take their service elsewhere is they dont get what they want. Customers have stupped reading contracts and asking qualifying questions leading them to not get exactly what they signed up for. For example many credit cards offer bonus airline miles for anoyne who signed up for the card and spends a certain amount with that card in a certain amount of time. But customers stopped reading the fine print (which ACTUALLY isnt fine its in bold letters) that says they dont qualify for the bonus if they have had a card with that company within the last 2 years. And some customers do read that but feel they can bypass the system if they just go ahead and spend the money.

People who go out to eat want their entire meal free if they feel they have to wait too long (and by the way the kitchen does time each ticket so saying you waited an hour when you only waited 20 mins just doesnt fly anymore) and to be honest this used to work until many restaurants found themselves loosing too much money by giving away the house. Now you will find that if you truly did have a problem with your meal it isnt most likely going to be free instead a free dessert will be offered or a free round of drinks.

Yes we should treat customers with respect (just like in all honestly we should treat people in general with respect) but in turn customers need to start treating their service providers with respect that has been lost. So many people spend so much time writing complaints and expecting rewards for this that just arent possible. If you eat your entire meal somewhere and then tell the waitor it was bad why should you get it free you already ate the whole thing, you didnt try to get it replaced after the first few bites.

And when the rules cant be bent for you like with the airline miles on credit cards complaining about the call center worker who probably works for minimum wage and who gets tons of angry phone calls still cant change the rules because you didnt read the contract or thought you could get around it.

Do you know that when you fill out a negative survey for any customer service that survey trumps out all the good surveys that employee gets and it takes 10 good perfect surveys to get their numbers up again and those numbers will still be in maybe the 80s. Your angery experrience about not getting your whole meal free can impact that servers schedule and income.

We need to go back to living in a world of reality and not the world of you get whatever you want because you are paying money for it. And threatening actions do have their consiquences. Like lets say you call and want to have your annual fee waived on your credit card (even though you agreed to pay that by signing up for the card) and they cant waive it and you threaten to close your account. Closing you card account with a 50000 limit may upset the card company a bit but they also know it will ding your credit negativley and that the chances of opening up another card with that large of a limit off the bat it near impossible.