Measure your successes with the experiences of failure!

Working in a customer service sector is ensuring that you have patience and skill to listen to irate customers and provide reliable reasons for not offering the services they pay for and quell their anger. I handle customers who are irate, perplexed, agitated and sometimes jolly. It’s how you tackle them and how dexterous you’re in turning unsatisfactory situations into satisfactory ones. I had an innate technique of building rapport with my customers which my colleagues found it futile. I used to ask the customers how their day had been. There would be a grim look on most of my colleagues, the look which meant “Why the $#@k would you ask that?” That’s my style – would be my retaliation statement. Making the customer comfortable talking to me, asserting the problem in hand and at the same time not being so monotonous only asking about what services they’re facing some problem with was not in my appetite. Asking from which part of the United Kingdom were they calling from, blabber about the temperature and climate which would be mercurial in the different parts of United Kingdom and asking about their day and the famous ongoing Barclay’s Premier League football tournament or the Ashes test series that England triumphed or the Rugby team they were supporting, asking whether they had been to India – if I’m lucky I would get amazing answers to build a conversation would be interesting sometimes. If I’m very lucky I would end with an Indian who is settled in the UK. To be frank, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus – opposite sex conversation is so skeptical and full of surprises. You may never know when you may hear the unexpected.

One such fine day it was 20.00 hours in India back in the UK it was 15.30 hours. My friend was dealing with a customer who was blind and unable to remember the password of his email. She couldn’t handle him and after assiduous efforts, she told he would be receiving a call back from someone else. I just took her call and tried to solve his email problems. Inadvertently without knowing the entire scenario I took ownership of the call because I presumed he was partially blind. He explained to me that he wasn’t able to get into his email as he had forgotten his password. I got him through the email page where he was supposed to login. I being foolhardy asked him “Can you see the top right corner where it says Enter your email address and just below that it asks you to type in the password”. He said, “No I can’t see anything I’m blind”. My heart sank and just confirmed with him “Are you unable to see the login page” and there was a firm answer “No”. I was really unaware of how to help him. Google – the ultimate search engine “Please help me” – was the thought which struck my mind. Searched a whole lot of websites to find how a blind will be able to operate his computer. Later I heard a voice over on the other side of the phone and I was wondering why nobody is helping him. Christ! It was the screen reader – a built-in application for blind people just to know where they are heading on the computer. So quickly I asked my fellow customer which operating system or which device was he accessing to check his emails. He wasn’t aware. I was shooting the stars in dark with no help. I gave a hundred thoughts of how I’ll be able to help him.

The pressure of completing the call in a stipulated time of 20 minutes and maintaining my average handling time and at the same time fulfilling customer satisfaction was all over my head. Hastily I searched different websites just to find failure. YouTube – why is it blocked sometimes in corporate world… damn, I should have been a hacker or a cracker to get into a proxy website of YouTube wherein I would have found an alternative solution to the challenge which I was put on. No connotation of aid from anyone – supervisor was unable to help me. After sedulous efforts of having a word with the customer, I could only lead him to the login page of the website but couldn’t dock him to the login button. Being helpless and hopeless I gave up on my customer saying that I tried my best to help but couldn’t – the same unaided statement which people use for granted.- Came back home and the thought of not being able to help the customer hovered over me. I couldn’t have a sound sleep because I do my work religiously and I find myself satiated when people are guided properly.

I searched the web about how blind people use the computer and the internet and how are they aided by software like the Apple VoiceOver and different applications which are easily downloadable from the Internet. I just learned how to go through the customer’s computer and how can I guide him properly. Some scenarios in life are not taught to us as righteously told by my Trainer, you just have to learn by experiencing them. The more you fall, the more you pick yourself up, brush yourself up and move ahead in life, the way you adapt, the way you push yourself is what life teaches you the harder way. Never give up on situations where you will have to fail, rather learn from them and make the most of it by the experiences you will have to face in the near future. After that scenario I gave a word to myself be it anything I will make sure that I keep my best foot forward for helping people and will surely call that customer again to resolve his issue if it hasn’t been resolved. You will surely hit a top corner goal in your life if you do that in all your real life scenarios. Life is all about taking the opportunities and making the best of it. If you learn how to make best of the situations you will learn from every moment. Just live every breath of your life as it were the last and you will succeed or learn from failure. Every small bit of knowledge will save your life because you had experienced it. Breathe and live your life!