When you lack peace of mind, you snap over the smallest things | Insights from work

Have you ever handled customer inquiries?

I used to work in a department where calls were transferred whenever external inquiries came in. During busy seasons, the phones would ring from morning until night, and we would be answering them incessantly.

In this day and age, people might think that fewer people make inquiries by phone, but in my experience, that is not the case.

While we call them inquiries, the content varies; some people are genuinely in trouble, while others simply haven't read the materials properly.
Those are the easy ones.

The difficult ones are the people who complain about everything.

This is a record of the author, who managed to handle inquiry responses while feeling emotionally drained.

■ The Author's Inquiry Incident Log

When talking on the phone, have you ever started speaking at the same time as the other person because your timing was off? When you start speaking at the same time, it's fine once, but if it happens repeatedly, it gets quite awkward.

While handling an inquiry from an elderly man, our conversation tempo didn't match, and

"I'm talking, so shut up and listen!"

I was yelled at with such intensity.
...It was incredibly scary.

He kept saying nonsensical things, so I just wanted to say, "That is incorrect."

Admittedly, my timing might have been poor. But, couldn't you have avoided getting that angry?

Huh? Is this because I'm bad at phone calls? Is it my fault? Wouldn't this type of person get angry and ask, "Are you listening?" if I just stayed silent and listened? (A huge prejudice).

Why are they so narrow-minded? Am I narrow-minded for complaining about this... my heart....

These kinds of calls aren't limited to just one or two people.
I realized after becoming a working adult that adults who grovel during complaint handling actually exist. (I didn't want to realize that.)

At first, I would get depressed and cry. I wasn't supposed to become an adult like this....

However, being competitive, I handled the calls with an indomitable spirit, and by the time a year had passed, I had become a model for handling inquiries.
This is one of the few things I can boast about to others.

■ It doesn't start until you get them to listen

So, how did I acquire the skills to handle this?
You could call it "getting used to it," but when I was a new employee, my boss taught me
“You have to say that what is wrong is wrong,”
and that was a huge lesson for me.

That's right. Even if the other person is a customer, what is wrong is wrong and what cannot be done cannot be done.

When an inquiry comes in, if we are at fault, we must of course apologize sincerely.

However, if you don't clearly refuse things that are fundamentally wrong, you end up giving the other person false hope.
Reporting back later to say, "Actually, it wasn't possible after all," is unfortunate for both them and yourself.

Besides, when we are in the right, if we don't communicate that properly, it becomes a situation where the loudest person gets their way and acts as selfishly as they please.

It is unacceptable for our workload to increase because of selfish people.
That is why I fought daily, striving to remain calm.

Yes.

Handling inquiries is a battle.

The most important thing in this battle is not to lose your composure.
If you panic, you lose the ability to make sound judgments, and you stop hearing what the other person is saying.
Even though it is a battle, it is a quiet one.

Next, steer the conversation so that you can speak on equal footing with the other person. Do not try to gain the upper hand here.

While conveying our side of the situation, lead the conversation to therefore, please comply.

If you say “I will check” from the start in response to an unreasonable demand, you have already lost at that point.

Be polite in your language, but do not break your stance of resistance.
This might be very difficult for kind people, but I want you to harden your heart. This is a place where it is okay to be a demon.

No matter how much they yell over the phone, the other person is not right in front of you, so they cannot lay a hand on you.
Therefore, you just need to maintain a firm attitude.

If your heart starts pounding when you are yelled at, listen closely to your own voice.
Since your own voice is the sound you are most accustomed to, if you consciously try to listen to it, you can gradually regain your composure. A mentor from my student days taught me this.

When you try to listen to your own voice, your speaking speed naturally slows down, and not only you, but the person on the other end of the phone will also start to speak more calmly.

That is how I fought my way through.

■ A decision regarding a single case is not just for one person

Being this stubborn isn't about not wanting to do anything troublesome or wanting to be mean.
I, too, would like to treat everyone kindly if I could.

However, if I were to do that, there would be no end to it.

If it were a matter of just dealing with that one person to get through the moment, I might try to help, but that is usually not the case.
Once I make an exception for one case, I have to do the same for everything thereafter.Otherwise, it would be unfair.

However, if I am to handle everything from then on, I have to think carefully not just about getting through the moment, but about the future as well.
Then, naturally, it takes time to consider.

And once we decide to go ahead and handle it, the workload increases again.

As a result, while I am considering how to handle things for an unspecified number of people, the response to the person who was angry in the first place is delayed, leading to them getting even angrier... a negative spiral.
Honestly, I cannot keep doing this.

If I took everything deathly seriously with the spirit that “the customer is god,” my work would increase infinitely. Therefore, I think the basic stance should be “do not deviate from the initial policy as much as possible”.

It might be seen as cold, but I have no such intention at all.
Accepting selfishness is not the same as providing a sincere response.

I wonder if things like customer harassment happen because a certain number of people have these concepts mixed up.

“Kindness” is not the standard—everyone should keep that in mind.

■ When you lack peace of mind, you snap over the smallest things

What I have written so far is my own way of brushing off troublesome inquiries, and I do not think this is the only correct answer.

It goes without saying that it is better not to have fights over inquiries. Even if you brush them off, it still wears down your heart. Fights drain both your mental and physical energy.

If you keep responding while worn down, either the thread will snap at some point, or you will stop feeling anything at all.
I was more the latter, but if I had been the former, I might have ended up in a fight with the customer. Oh, how scary, how scary.

Therefore, returning to the initial topic, even if our voices overlap when we start talking on the phone, I want to be a person with enough peace of mind to be able to say with a smile,

“I'm sorry, please go ahead, what is it?”

.

Both as a customer and as the person receiving the call.