Hi-I work for a credit card company, Ive worked for 2 different ones actually, for many years, and I just wanted to give a little info for what its worth to you. I am in customer service, and have worked in many other departments. credit, collections, etc. 1. Customer service reps have a lot more empowerment than you really think. Most of the time, they can do what a supervisor can, as far as adjustments, etc. You dont always have to demand a higher up, give the rep a chance first. The key is to be nice. BE NICE from the beginning or you arent getting squat. Even if you have been late 17 times, If you are nice, honest, explain that YOU just messed up, 95% of the chance you'll get it adjusted. If you come on the phone saying YOU WILL ADJUST, or I will close my acct, your acct will probably end up getting closed. If you start placing blame that "you posted my pymt late just so you can charge me a late fee" You wont get anywhere. I hear this daily, this is not a joke. 2. Dont come on the phone all mad that you have to give the rep the acct # again. We know you just put it in the automated system, if we had it, we wouldnt ask for it. I know its annoying. Its annoying for us too. I take about 140 calls a day, and hear this about 70 times. It gets very old very quick. (The customer sets the tone of the call 99% of the time.) Like I said before, you want something, grin and bear it, and be nice. 3. Your acct will not qualify for hardship unless you are currently past due. We have people calling to ask for hardship because they just lost their jobs, which is a hard situation, but the acct must be past due before we can do anything. 4. An account must be open for 6 months before being granted a credit line increase. We cant tell you that, we cannot discourage you from requesting an increase, but I can tell you that 99.9% of them get declined, and you just wasted yourself an inquiry. 5. Dont come on the phone demanding the rep to look at your perfect history (like if you want a fee adjustment) chances are, your history is a lot worse than you think it is. Unless you are a pay-in-full EVERY month for at least 2-3 yrs, your internal score is probably a lot worse than you think, and demading a rep to take notice, makes a person chuckle a bit, and talk about it after hanging up. Im just being honest, it happens. 6. Most of us are on your side believe it or not. I came to this board because I am reestablishing my credit after a BK-7 and I want to buy a house. We can relate. the person on the other end of the phone probably has worse credit than you, or is trying to reestablish, like you. We are all human. Just tonight, I had a man call in. He was trying to buy a house, he had a 31-60 day late on his credit bureau. He was absolutely sincere, saying he has tried everything to have this removed, he is getting declined on the loan because of it, it was a difficult time in his life at the time he was late, it was the holidays, etc... I removed it. Niceness and sincerity can get you things. 7. With both credit card companies I have worked for, we have talk-limitations, believe it or not. We have numbers to meet. Quit rambling! LOL! On and off the phone is how we like em. haha- we have statistics to meet. Believe it or not, it affects our raises to have long conversations. So the weather in our part of the world really isnt important, and having us sit and wait for you to go get something really sours the call. Just hang up and call back when you are ready, you'll almost always get what you want if you are ready and polite. Take this info for what its worth, I see it daily, your account history means everything for increases in credit line, but when you want adjustments and apr reductions, its almost always up to the rep. Sometimes APR reductions really arent available at that time, and if you arent nice, then they will probably never be avail. 75% of the time, the APR reductions are up to the rep from my experience. Which is about 10 yrs. (I do not work for providian, however, because their rates dont go below 16.9, ever right?) Just a little info, you may already know all this, but trust me, most people go about it the wrong way. Daisies
Re: Speaking the truth Daisies-- I would say you definitely speak the truth. I have never worked in collections nor for a credit card company, but I do work right now in a technical support role. I keep my own frustrations in mind when I call up customer service reps or other companies. I agree most reps at most companies even if they are in the first line have a lot more power and usually equal power as a supervisor. However so many have been taught that the first person to answer the phone can not help you and you need to demand to speak to a supervisor. It happens even in my job when people want to ask for credit because their business dedicated connection or their work from home internet connection has been offline. Usually if people are sincere and polite when they ask me for credit, I will actually give them as much as they can justifiably ask for or as much as I can give in the circumstances. People that are rude or condenscending make me very reluctant to be helpful. Contrary to popular belief the customer is not always right. People will always demand to speak to a supervisor because they want us to support them on something that we do not offer support on or even provide a service for-- ie I support routers, networks, and broadband services... my job is not to help you clean out virii downloaded from the net nor help you repair your computer or help you upgrade your printers, operating systems, etc etc. However for people that I know are frustrated and really seeking help and sincere in their approach a lot of times I will go beyond the call of duty. What so many people do not understand is that my manager and supervisors are there to manage the employees not to troubleshoot nor give out credits. My job is to troubleshoot, diagnos, and fix problems. I empathize with you in regards to the giving out account information to a rep. It amazes me how people will go directly into their problem thinking that by some miracle I know exactly who they are and what their account encompasses. I had one lady just tonight become extremely sarcastic and told me "if I had a dollar for every time you people asked me for my account number or telephone number I would be as wealthy as Bill Gates." I replied politely that ma'am we are not trying to irritate you, but rather to establish your identity so we can hurry and fix your problem. Thank you for your insight!
Re: Speaking the truth daisies, Tbanks for the tips. (A thumbs up from me.) Some are very basic, but are definitely worth repeating. Welcome to the board. Dani
Re: Speaking the truth Lucky2, Its interesting to hear people on the other end of the phone sometimes, some of this seems to be basic info, but niceness truly gets you farther. I cant tell you how ,any times a day when the phone rings in my ear, I answer, and ask can I have your acct # please?" Then I hear a deep sigh, "you mean the one I just entered 5 times?, or AGAIN?, or even, "No, you can look it up another way, Im not giving it again. You should have it. I'll give you my name. My name is John Smith. Well Low and behold there is 104 John Smiths, and Im not about to search thru all that just because I have Attitude #1 on the phone. Every customer contact job I have had, we vent after they get off the phone. If the person was extremely terrible, it will be noted on the account, the next rep will know and they wont adjust something either. So hanging up and calling right back, defeats its purpose. Chances are you'll get the rep sitting next to the other one you were just rude to, and rep #2 will already be aware . Be nice in the beginning. I had a man call in last night who wanted an adjustment, he had previous adjusments and since he was beligerant from the beginning, I didnt go that extra step, I stuck to policy. He hung up, called back. Got me yet again, (he didnt know that) he started talking bad about the person he just spoke with, (which was me) he was asking the same questions he JUST asked, I told him the SAME answers I JUST gave. I told him that my answers werent going to change from 5 minutes ago, and then he realized what a jerk he was being. People just dont realize. Reps will stand behind each other, and if you are NICE, the rep may go above and beyond, give credit for something even when the acct doesnt warrant the adjustment. Its all about you. Daisies
Re: Speaking the truth ****** DISCLAIMER****** This reply mostly applies to CRA reps and has worked well for me. I can't speak for in-house collectors or collection agency reps because there is NO WAY I will speak to them! You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. That being said, what does it cost you to be nice? Maybe the CSR on the other end of the line is a jerk. So what? You need to show them that you can be a bigger jerk? Give me a break! I run into unreasonable people all the time. When I was doing smog checks, I had lots of people getting upset because their cars failed the smog inspection. Gee, BIG SUPRISE! If you don't perform the preventive maintenance, chances are it might fail! If you don't pay your bills, chances are your credit report will suck! Well, it may or may not be your fault, but it doesn't mean you have to go off on the person. I've always treated the CSRs kindly, civilly, professionally and respectfully. They have a nasty job and if I can been the one person that "makes their day" - GREAT! They don't make the rules. They just enforce them. They didn't make our credit bad. We did. Just a suggestion. It works for me, but your mileage may vary. smogtek
Re: Speaking the truth HMMM, if only there were a nice Sallie Mae CSR lurking in our midst. I've tried to talk to them SO many times, nice as pie, but you can't get anywhere w/ those people! LOL I just need the 90+ day late removed, and they'll never hear from me again!!!
Re: Speaking the truth Thanx Daisies, Welcome to the board. I have a question. Suppose I call one day and don't get along all that well with the CSR. Maybe it just wasn't my day. Suppose now I call a week later and get a different CSR. Does the 2nd CSR know the contents of my "unfriendly" conversation from last week? and hold it against me? ????
Re: Speaking the truth on the flip side: Terrible CSRs! I got a CSR at VoiceStream once and I could not understand a word he said (marbles in his mouth or something), I was nice as could be and asked to please speak with another rep (not even a supervisor) because I was having a hard time understanding him. He became beligerent and started yelling and everything. I ended up asking for the supervisor, never got one and finally hung up on the guy. called right back and got a different rep, nice as pie and we got along great. not all CSRs are like you.....
It's your job to assuage angry customers. Now you say if they aren't nice from the beginning they aren't getting squat. Gee, they have a problem or they wouldn't be calling. You should be more understanding to WHY they are upset rather than figuring out how to screw them FOR being upset. Gib
Why is it that this CRS thinks she is doing us a favor?.If you want to act rude, or give people terrible service, they will close their accounts, and you'll be out of a job. Your company is not the only game in town. I would think that someone who choses CS as their job, would understand that you put up with a certain element of customers that aren't very friendly, I'm not saying that's right, but that's part of the job. Has anyone else noticed the influx of "collection representitives" and "CSR" people coming on the board offering us friendly advice?. Maybe i'm just being over judgemental, and if so I apologize. But things like this have happened before.
I'm neither a customer service representative or employee for a creditor, but I find the last three posts onto this bulletin boar laughable. It is the job of BOTH parties to polite. While the onus is on the company/business to be polite all of the time, they still control your fate in their hands AND it is human nature to not jump through hoops for someone who is rude to them, regardless of the reason. What is so hard about that to understand? Go ahead and criticize bill collectors and credit agencies all you want, but the fact remains that you got yourself in a terrible bind and you are the one to blame for your own hardships more often than not...and not the company you are talking to on the phone. One of the first steps in a 12 step program is admitting you have a problem. I see a lot people on these message boards either passing the buck, failing to recognize they have a problem and/or trying to get credit so they can dig themselves a hole all over again. I don't get it. Johnny Blood
I think you are overgeneralizing. People call customer service for all kinds of reasons. Fact is, taking calls from disgruntled customers is their job. If they don't like it, they should find something they do like. I take calls from the public on my job. I am paid to be professional and polite and to give the customers what they need, regardless of their manners, as long as they don't use profanity or personal insults. Perhaps these companies need more quality control in the call center. If a company allows that kind of "I control your fate, you measly little peon" attitude in their call center, they will lose good customers. If they have professional, polite, helpful CSR's their business grows. As for collectors, I don't owe anyone any money, so if one calls me, they really do have a wrong number. There are many many people on this board who are not in trouble, and call CS lines for whatever reason. My personal technique for dealing with rude CSR's is to keep a smile in my voice and thank them with fake sincerity for their "help," wait until the shift has probably changed, and call back. As far as my fate being in their hands - that's a laugh. They are hourly workers who often only know whatever script appears before them on the terminal screen.
PAE, If a company is seriously trying to screw you beyond what is legal then you have legal options. If they are trying to recover money, they have that right, especially if you are rude to them. Wouldn't a better approach be to be nice to them and give them the facts? Can you blame a company that has to pay its own bills and/or report to bosses, executives and/or shareholders who is trying to collect on a bill, especially when you made a committment to pay it? I feel for you if you got into a situation that was unpreventable. I feel for you if you are being jerked around by an a-hole with a personality disorder working for one of these companies. But I don't feel for you if you're upset with legal procedures set forth by a company that is collecting on a debt (a.k.a. a responsibility and committment you made to that lendor) and your own demise is because you mismanaged your money. Johnny Blood
Breeze, If you are refering strictly to customer service representatives for a company that has a job to answer a consumer's question, then I would agree with you. I thought the jist of the original discussion concerned how customer service reps from creditors and/or bill collectors acted. In those cases, and if one owes money, they are not a "customer" per se any more. They are much more of a receivable to them and a person who owes them money...money they need to collect for their own financial security. In those cases, I suspect it is much better if someone doesn't expect them to be nice and instead try to be as nice as possible in return. Those are the cases I mean specifically. Johnny Blood
Read the original post in this thread again. It says nothing about them being a collector for anyone. They are a Customer Service Representative. Practice what you preach and treat people with some respect before you start throwing out insults. My financial obligations are all met, not that it's any of your business. If I call a company because they received my payment then posted it 3 days later so they can tack on a late fee, you bet your ass I will call and have attitude. For someone to come on the board and say "Be nice from the start or you won't get squat", well I have a problem with that. If you have a problem with that, I really don't care. I stated an opinion on how I think someone should view their job, I did not post asking for a lecture on financial responsibility from you. Gib
