From my experience, most users are friendly when asking for help while others are straight up rude. It seems that it gets worse when working as an IT managed services environment. Maybe it is because they view you as a vendor rather than a co-worker.
Do you think this something the technician should handle themselves or bring up to their supervisor for them to handle?
153 Spice ups
Mike400
(Mike400)
2
I hang up on habitually rude coworkers. It’s amazing how fast that gets their attention.
180 Spice ups
They go to the bottom of the pile and their job always takes a LOT longer to solve than the problems from nice people. It’s amazing how often I’m waiting for an answer from Microsoft when someone is rude.
Haven’t experienced it for a long time though, I guess I have them trained.
133 Spice ups
Your manager and/or supervisor are the only people who should act in these situations, its better off for all involved. Keep your cool, don’t let people bait you into snapping or getting in a twist. I’m not sure if its the same in every case but all our calls are recorded so as long as you keep civil your a$$ is covered which is a plus. Its not worth it in the end to snap at people who are just plain rude. It just validates their behaviour if nothing else.
56 Spice ups
Are you referring to a particular kind of rude?
For example:
A know it all - I like to pull some real technical stuff on them. Don’t be condescending about it, but do it like they are on your level of IT knowledge. If there internet isn’t working - They are like " I have rebooted the computer" , " I have closed the browser and reopened it", “I work on computers in my spare time!” then you say “Did you clear the ARP cache?”
A frustrated user - Try to calm them down and reassure them. Try to be patient.
Just a rude person - sometimes being super nice will help them to do better or make them angrier. Just help and move on with your day.
59 Spice ups
mradam
(MrAdam)
6
As a MSP, you are a vendor and not a co-worker; BUT that is no excuse to treat you poorly. I suspect that this person is a general $%#*head who does this to co-workers also and yes, because you are a vendor they feel they can get away with more. The agreement between a business and a MSP is a professional one and should be upheld as such; file a complaint within your company and allow your uppers to contact the customer about their problematic employee.
When I was running a one-man MSP I ended up terminating a very lucrative long term contract prematurely because the employee left in charge when the IT manager was gone was abusing their power over me. This was a on going issue that the manager had addressed several times having seen her over stepping in person when she thought he was not around, but he was powerless over this employee and I was the lowest common denominator.
For a multi employee MSP they probably try a different onsite if the problem cannot be resolved before ever terminating the contract. Cover your @$$ and make sure it is documented that they employee at the customer’s site is the issue. I got to the point where I was including notes in my work orders, when the time came for me to terminate the contract there was no question; I was released and got an apology.
11 Spice ups
We only have a couple. They’re under the mindset that everything should work perfectly all the time and because of that IT is a waste of time.
I treat them with kindness for the most part. If they’re overly rude, I tell them to cut it out. If that doesn’t work, I let me supervisor know, and the rest is out of my hands.
30 Spice ups
mradam
(MrAdam)
8
And there is alwasy the old “Kill them kindness” philosophy.
Now if “Kindness” just happens to be the name of a trained attack bear, well I consider that a coincidence…
157 Spice ups
harry1028
(Harry Lui)
9
Professionally.
“I’m here to help” line seems to work well for me.
42 Spice ups
I had a sales manager in one of my previous roles that was often quite rude in terms of just being like “well I don’t know, that’s IT’s job isn’t it” while smirking at me when he had an issue. It was usually a really simple issue (setting up the wifi on his phone type things), and I was well aware that he could do them, but he used to just constantly be like, it’s IT’s job. He was particularly snarky about it one day when I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea so I remained polite and then informed my manager when I got back to our office that I refused to help this guy further until he could be civil to me and not just constantly make snarky comments.
My understanding is that my manager had a word but the next time I talked to him he seemed much more polite…
11 Spice ups
bbigford
(bbigford)
11
I’m with Mike, I’ll hang up on anyone I’d they are very rude. Gives them time to cool off.
15 Spice ups
tazking
(Dave4113)
12
In my opinion the tech should bring it up to their supervisor only if it is really rude, other than that just respond with professionalism and be respectful. You never know what is happening on their side, not that it makes it right they should take it out on you.
10 Spice ups
davidauth
(David Auth)
13
StandardAnswers[*] . (Wow, this is coming in super useful today!)
6 Spice ups
Here there are strict rules, any client who is rude or abusive to any member of the team gets reported to me (as head of dept) and i deal with it. My team are allowed to hang up and then come to me or message me to tell me the situation.
I then talk to either the client directly or management at the company and remind them of their contract with us and that abuse isn’t allowed and will not be tolerated.
10 Spice ups
ranhalt
(ranhalt)
16
I had an exceptional experience with a user last year. They hadn’t been with the company a year, had an understandably urgent issue, and was frantically searching that building for IT and eventually called around and got me. I told them that I was here to help (I see someone else knows that line), but I need them to calm down. They told me, “Oh no, you’ll know when I’m excited!” and hung up on me. I don’t know where the “when I’m excited” part comes from, but that was the response. There was an in person witness at that location who can corroborate my story.
I thoroughly documented the experience by the minute and provided that to my boss. He gave that to our HR, and their response was “that’s one side of the story”. There is background context why some employees are impervious to negative feedback. Anyway, the employee sent me a non-apology email a day or so after along the lines of “I’m sorry you made me hit you” and unrelated, is apparently on anti-anxiety meds now. BTW, my side of the story is still “one side of the story”. This employee is still inappropriately frantic whenever there is an issue and lashes out whenever one of us tries to de-escalate the situation, but they are still employed.
What do you do at that point? All I can think to do is to intentionally troll them with politeness as loudly and publicly as possible just to get more witnesses and make them do something that has consequences.
This is why I’m going to start pushing for random sampling recordings of phone conversations “for quality assurance purposes”
36 Spice ups
Fortunately I don’t have to deal with rudeness very often, but I’ve had pretty good luck with interrupting in mid-sentence with a very polite “I’m sorry, but I need to put you on hold for just a second” then picking up again in about 2 minutes. Every so often it makes things worse, but I’m surprised how well it usually works.
8 Spice ups
td0001
(Natsu_Dragneel)
20
Dealing with rude users, very simple, I don’t.
10 Spice ups
