We all resort to customer service personnel on a weekly, if not a daily basis. Simply, they’re the people who are there to ensure the satisfaction of customers by solving their problems and making things run smoothly.. or not really. You see, that definition applies to efficient customer service employees and is not a generally applied one. On the other end of the spectrum, customers can either be easy to get along with or make the lives of the customer service providers a living hell.

Wanting to hear about what some Egyptians, who are either recipients or providers of customer service, have experienced, we decided to interview a random sample from both ends to hear their anecdotes.

“I regularly call the ****** (name of internet-providing company) people due to constant problems with my internet. I think I talk to them as a collective entity more than I talk to my parents and best friend combined. As I am sure most of their customers are aware, they are known for their creative and provocative methods in making you realize that no, it isn’t their problem that the service they’re providing you is down most of the time – ABSOLUTELY NOT! It’s in fact YOUR fault because you might have an AC in your room, or you might own a landline, or my personal favourite: that the climate changes that take place in the transition between day and night are the main culprit – because apparently I live near the freaking equator- they simply never own up to their failure at providing a constantly working service,” said Farida.

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Well, yes, Egypt seems to somehow be immune to proper internet.  The internet’s either slower than a slug, or not working all together. Thus, you find yourself constantly on the phone with the service providers trying to work some kind of solution- a quest that only results in you popping a vein or two from frustration.

“I called up ********* ( a famous fast food chain) to order some food and here’s how the conversation went down: “3ayza milkshake lazeez ma3 el akl?” “No, shokran” “Leh?” “Keda msh 3ayza.” Guess what? They ended up delivering the milkshake to me anyway, because apparently they know what I’m craving more than I, myself, know,” said Raghda.

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Well, for one thing, we’re one of the few lucky countries who actually abuse home delivery service- you won’t find that luxury in Europe, trust us. This does not, however, mean that the people working at a restaurant get to send you stuff you didn’t even order. That’s just absurd.

“I used to work in the client relations team of a well-known resort/compound in Sahel, and let me tell you, some customers definitely cross the red lines of professionalism. I literally got harassed by one who asked when my shift is over and if she could get my number. It was super weird,” said Omar.

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Customers must always remember that, at the end of the day, you cannot harass an employee- that’s rude, unprofessional and just… ugh. A consumer plays a role in how well a service is provided and if you make the employee feel uncomfortable, you will most likely just end up unsatisfied.

“Well, a certain telecommunications company ‘accidentally’ sold my mother’s mobile number to another customer- you heard that right! She tried to make calls but they wouldn’t go through, and whenever anyone tried to call her they would get a voice note claiming that the number wasn’t correct. She reached out to the company’s customer service only to get a million excuses about how they were changing their connection from 3G to 4G. She talked to at least 10 different customer service personnel in the span of 5 days, and it gets worse: when she finally reached the manager, she told her “I’m really sorry but my shift is over, you can talk to one of the other employees.”  So, at the end we all decided to switch our numbers to another telecom company,” said Salma.

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First off, it is completely not okay to wake up and find that your number has been sold to another person and the client has every right to go berserk on the service provider, but to make matters worse, the manager resorted to being rude. This all led to a company’s worse nightmare: customer switching to the competitors.

To wrap up, judging from the aforementioned stories, we all collectively need to go easy on the rudeness- whether we’re customer service providers or recipients. Just do your job, show respect to other people and generally try to be a pleasant and helpful human being. End of story.