"I guess you don’t want my business!"

I’m a CSR for a small company that is an independently owned branch of much larger one. Being such, there are what we refer to as “retail items” that have our larger company name but are not sold at most independent locations. Oftentimes we get people calling us to buy the items and 99% of the time they understand when I explain the situation to them. That only works when I actually know what they are asking for.

I get a call from someone who wants to buy an item. For the sake of anonymity, we will say they are “lightbulbs”. We carry two speciality “lamps” that require specific “lightbulbs”. Because of only having TWO specialty “lamps”, we only have TWO kinds of “lightbulbs” to purchase at our store.

I ask what “lightbulb” they are looking for. They say they “don’t know”, it’s just a lightbulb with our name on it. I ask what it looks like and they can’t give me any information that helps me to determine if this is something we have. I asked if it said a couple different things that I may be able to determine if we have it and of course, they “aren’t at home” so they can’t actually check. So I ask them to hold while I go find someone in the “lightbulb” department to see if they can figure it out. Well being a small company, I had no one in at that moment but knew they would be back within a couple hours. So I offered to have someone in the “lightbulb” department call them back as soon as they get in and determine if we had what they are looking for, and if not, they would be able to figure out where they could find it.

So they say “forget it, I just thought I’d give you the business but I guess you don’t wan’t my business!”

I explained we would love to help but with such limited information I needed to have someone in that department contact them so we could figure out what kind of “lightbulb” they actually had.

So they say “nevermind, I’ll get it somewhere else, good bye”.

Good luck to whoever they called next since they couldn’t even tell me what they actually had. And to answer their question…NO we really don’t want your business as we already have enough dramatic, impatient, customers who think the world revolves around them.

Bottom line, if you want to buy an item and you call a place to see if they have it, please know what you’re looking for and if not, don’t get mad when someone who can help is actually doing a job and not sitting around waiting for you to call, has to get back to you…that same day…within a couple hours.

I know a lot of you have heard at least some variation of the “I guess you don’t want my business” line. I don’t know about you but it’s certainly up there on my eye-roll list…along with such gems as “I’m a longtime customer” or “I want to speak to the owner”.

The only good thing that comes from working in CS is that you become a better customer because you can understand what the rep is going through. And as such, you make their job a little easier. At least that’s something right?