Having always worked in the food industry and customer service jobs, I’d like to believe that I have a pretty good understanding of what customers expect out of their experience with customer service employees. Sometimes customers have extremely high and unrealistic expectations of the minimum wage workers they encounter every day. Other times, customers may be more understanding of situations and of the employees trying their best to please them.
As a customer service employee, I understand that I can’t always please everyone. There are going to be both understanding and difficult customers, and the way I am treated is not always about me or them, but about that person’s life or day at the time that may be causing them to act in a certain way.
And as a customer, I understand what it is like to be that underpaid, stressed, and anxious customer service employee, and always try my best to be as easy-going as possible.
My understanding of the typical customer service employee keeps me from ever becoming one of the difficult customers.
In my experience, there are always certain expectations that I have of other customer service workers when I am the customer. Similar to the golden rule, I just expect at the very least to be treated as an employee would also like to be treated in the same situation.
First of all, as a customer, I expect kindness from a customer service worker. That person signed up for that job knowing that it entailed being kind and polite to customers, I expect them to be that way.
Second, I expect some respect. If can see a worker rolling their eyes at me or I can hear them talking about me, I'd feel extremely disrespected. Especially because I purposely am a very easy going customer no matter where I go, so nothing I do should solicit an eye roll.
Third, I expect honesty. If I were to call a store inquiring about a particular product or service, only to get to that store and find out that I was blatantly lied to, that establishment has lost my respect and my business. This usually isn’t common outside of car dealerships and such, but even then it's not okay to lie in an attempt to make a sale.
Lastly, I just expect the person to do their job. I’m not making outrageous demands or any requests outside of your job description, so at the very least, just do your job.
Yes, being a customer service worker myself, I do hold expectations on how other customer service should treat customers, just the same as I anticipate others have expectations of me.