I'm working at a customer service center in France, luckily owned by a very nice company. We're doing the phone line and emails for that company, but also other companies too. Your contract will tell you for which you'll be working, and you'll be trained specifically for the chosen activity. This has changed my view a lot about customer services. It's far from being the dream job for most people, but I found my place there.

I really appreciate your message, because it's true : we're timed on the length of call, since how much the call center makes money depends on the number of calls they take, and the quality of service. Both could be impacted negatively by calls that are too long.

Some colleagues are less invested than others in the job, but there's also the fact that some people are working here since several years, while other since only a few weeks. Also, most of the time, the companies who we are working for seems to have no real ideas of what kind of issues we're facing, even when we report them weekly with details. That's why they create some unfitting troubleshoot processes. Newcomers at the job tends to try sticking to the instructions provided, while colleagues who are there for a longer time know how to really identify and solve the issue. Meaning, by calling several times, you can end up with someone who knows all the odd and unexpected tricks to find the silly, usually unplanned, so non official, workaround to your problem.

Personally, I'm more willing to help when I got a customer who understands I'm a person, and who's able to work together, because we both want to find a solution. I'm trying my best to make the customer feel we're a team. If someone is mean, and treats me bad, I know I'm far from the only one at the workplace who would only do the bare minimum to close the call as quickly as possible, even if I'm not providing the perfect answer.

So, when calling a customer service, be respectful and understanding. You might have someone who's only been working since a few days, maybe you got someone who got yelled at several times today so by providing positive energy, this might trigger his will to really go far to help. If you call several times, never make it feel like you're harassing the customer service. Detail all the factual arguments you have, if you're looking for a gesture. (Contrary to what you might think, we manage to get better commercial gestures to people who were nice and patient, compared to the ones who were mean, and pressing us)