By Chris Bucholtz

We have all had experiences with customer service people that were bad. A lot of times, it’s because management has given them poor processes, denied them the power to fix things when they went wrong, or hired people who were incapable of actually working with customers.

However, sometimes the customer service representative – in a call center, in a retail store, wherever – may just be a victim of his customers. I think back to my college jobs working with the public, and the customers who stand out are the one-tenth of one percent of the people who were complete troglodytes, wack-jobs and borderline criminals. What does long-term exposure to these people do to the customer service folks who have to deal with them? I think a large, federally-funded study is in order.

I was reminded of this today by a story about absurd customer requests over on CRM Daily. Perhaps it’s a weird by-product of today’s litigious society, where some folks figure anything’s worth trying no matter how egregious if once in a while you end up getting something out of it, but the emphasis business is putting on service is drawing a crowd of yokels determined to exploit the desire to provide service for their own undeserved benefit.

In other customer’s cases, they’re stupid or criminal. Which is why I enjoy Not Always Right, where people who deal with the public talk about run-ins with what I like to call the People that CRM Forgot – and should forget, as quickly as possible. Any CRM strategy that would keep these folks coming back has a major problem and should be revised immediately.