Hi folks:

I said I’d post the customerservant.com intro, just to give you guys a glimpse. These are my intentions for the site, and, as I said in my last post, I hope it’s a success. Anyway, here it is. If you want, you can leave comments here or at the site, And speaking of comments, can anyone tell me where you set the option to have comments sent via email for livejournal? Thanks.

The concept of customerservant.com has been taking shape in my mind for a while.
I first got the idea from a couple of friends, with whom I was joking around about a work-related comic, which would be different than Dilbert, at least in its aim.
We’ve been kicking around the idea for the last several months, but we couldn’t come up with a suitable name for the site itself, which I wanted to include not only the comic, but other resources devoted to the well-being and sanity of fellow customer servants like myself: People who are intelligent, and who get tired of the constant stupidity, whether it be from the people on the phone or off; having to endure endless corporate dribble, and then act as though it’s sacred scripture; having to follow absurd quality regulations that don’t ensure quality, just complete submission to the customer-is-always-right-no-matter-what principal; being forced to produce quantity instead of quality, and being prohibited from using your judgment, no matter how long you’ve been doing this; in short, being forced to work within a model developed by people who, it’s pretty safe to assume, have either never dealt with a customer in this type of situation, or have spent so much time between their stay at the bottom, (or near bottom), and their current position, that they’ve forgotten how.
While this site is primarily intended for people working within the customer service industry, it is also intended for those working in the IT industry, since, although the work isn’t the same, a lot of the drawbacks are, and sometimes IT workers have to put up with the added problem of watching their jobs get outsourced to call centers, staffed for the most part with people who have no idea what they’re doing, and who go through a crash course on some rudimentary computer knowledge, and then are placed in the position of trying to provide technical support for something they know little or nothing about.
There’s also the problem of IT workers being forced in to the customer service rat race, because their jobs are being outsourced to make sure that the folks on top make as much profit as possible.
This site is also targeted at telemarketers, or rather, the people who man the phones for the telemarketing corporations, and have to put up with the residual crap from the people on the other end of the phone, and who have consequently been put in the position of being bent over the sink as consumer public enemy number one.
More on that later.
This site’s aim is not only to serve as a place for people in these fields to vent, regardless of who they work for, but also to serve as a place for people to kick around ideas, and tips on how to deal with the issues involved, in a manner that truly helps, instead of trying to just smooth everything over by listening to some sort of prefabricated corporate solution that everybody knows doesn’t even come close to working.
I’m not proposing any quick-and-easy solutions, but I think it’s a good idea for us all to band together as much as possible, given that we have no unions, or any other advocates for that matter.
I think that, if we have any chance of dealing with the issues associated with our jobs, and being successful at it, the solutions will have to come from us.
And I also think that we’ll get more accomplished if we put our resources together, and try to share what we’ve learned, and what helps us as individuals, and the throw a little humor in, because laughter really is the best medicine.
I welcome any feedback, and, if anyone is interested in contributing, please feel free to email me.
Here’s hoping this site achieves everything it strives to.