Customer service centres

This is a sore subject with a lot of people. I have been here in the UAE long enough to have developed (like so many others) a tolerance of some of the quirks and inadequacies of these "services".

I have decided (menopausal women do that) that the following rules are dinned into the heads of these pimply-faced youth when they are recruited into these jobs by the powers that be in each of these organisations:

Rule #1: The customer will never guess that you have a script in front of you - they know nothing

Rule #2: Use the customer's name every 5 words or at the beginning of each sentence even if you don't know how to pronounce it so that they get annoyed and hang up the phone

Rule #3: Be very patronising - no matter what they say

Rule #4: Be sure to ask them if you can help them even if you know you can't

Rule #5: Make all the promises you know cannot be kept.

Here are my rules (please feel free to add your own) for these companies if they want to improve their images - just swanky branding and press releases will not do it any more.

Rule #1: If you can't pronounce the name, ask the customer or apologise in advance if you think you're mispronouncing their name. Okay perhaps this should not be rule 1 but I do think its offensive.

Rule #2: Listen

Rule #3: If you can't help the customer, ask someone who can and DO NOT just transfer the phone without telling the customer who you are transferring it to - preferably the person's name

Rule #4: Listen

Rule #5: The customer is NOT an idiot and some (like the media types or the boss of a large company) may not take kindly and actually influence your other customers. So don't try and hoodwink him with flummery

Rule #6: Listen.

What do you think?

reBlog from fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com: Fake Plastic Souks: Victorian

I found this fascinating quote today:

We resisted Sharjah’s cunningly worded invitation to enjoy piped gas (“You take gas, pay Dhs1,000 for yellow tube, after install, you our bitch too much!”) and stayed with the bottled stuff. But FastFastGas used to get a call from us every six months. Then it seemed to be more frequent. For a while we’ve wondered whether they’re not quite, well, ‘filling’ the cylinders. Now we know. Last night, our gas gave out after a month’s usage. One month. We have changed no habits at all – what used to take 6 months to consume now takes a single month to burn through. And, worse, what used to cost us Dhs40 now costs Dhs85.fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com, Fake Plastic Souks: Victorian, Aug 2009

You should read the whole article.

Geekfest Dubai

Okay. Twitterville in UAE has been agog with its first #geekfest lately. It was a lovely evening. It was amazing to see how the word "geek", once a dirty slur, now seen as cool thanks to a technology generation, made these online social butterflies so at ease.

They talked, laughed, drank and walked up to complete strangers all because they had "met" on Twitter, Facebook or followed a blog. For me, I met "Grumpy Goat" for the first time - he has an interesting blog. Shame "Halfmanhalfbeer" or "Wildpeeta" - two more favourites - weren't but then one was on leave and the other dealing with his bureaucratic nightmare. I know because they told me on Twitter.

Of course I caught up AlexanderMcnabb - Mr. Brown Owl to all of us geeks - among others I had been tweeting with and met with a few others.

While chatting with a few of these fellow geeks, we decided that there were levels of geekiness. We decided that geeks were tech-savvy very cool people that others went to for help or to share ideas with. Approachable, quite social but definitely tech-savvy and happy to try every (or most) things techie at least once. Opinionated but open to new ideas or other opinions.

One level lower is the nerd. Almost the same level or perhaps more tech-savvy but very snobby about us geeks (the likes of Abbas of T-break, or Magnus of Shuffle - no offence gentlemen), some social skills etc etc. You get the drift. They stayed away because we were "not geeky enough" by their standards. So true.

The lowest level is the dork. Technology is his/her life and the thought of coming out in the open, meeting real people send shivers down their spine. Anyone or anything that does not go "pzzt" or work in 1s and 0s - don't count. They stayed home of course.

I don't know about you but I think its fun to be a geek - today. Can't wait for the next one.