that relay operators are so hated within the customer service community

[Cat]

I used to have a deaf friend (she went deaf, and could speak very clearly) and we'd call using the relay. The operator was always awesome, and I forgot she was there most of the time, since it was so smooth.

She would only interject when she needed spelling, since my friend and I were talking about people we knew on a MOO, and used their user name.

Relay=awesome.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

OK, I get it. You despise us, you hate us, you would like us all to die in a fire and go to hell.

Actually I have nothing against relay operators. I've a crapton of complaints against the Nigerian and Korean Scammers who use your service to try and buy laptops from my store and expect me to ship them overseas. But nothing against the relay operators.

]We take longer and we actually expect you to pay attention to our explanations about what is going on. I know this whole process is a huge inconvenience to you. But you know what, grow the fuck up and deal with it.

I've found that simply politely stating to the relay operators that I am familiar with the procedures makes things simpler for all and gets us to the meat and potatoes of the conversation quicker.

The people using relay calls have a metric fuckton more shit that they have to deal with in their lives than taking a little bit longer to take a phone call, so you can just shut up and take a little bit longer.
I understand that a lot of managers have call time expectations etc... but once again, bitch to your manager, not me, and most definitely not to your customer (which btw, if you bitch to me, your customer will have that information relayed to them).

Actually I did have my boss bitch at me for taking so long. I kinda shut him the fuck up when I showed him my sales numbers to all the deaf people who started coming to the store since they knew by word-of-mouth that there was someone at the store with the patience to deal with them and to do my level best to help them. I REALLY shut him up when we won a contract for a charity for the deaf in our area that was heavily influenced by the fact that we would go out of our way to help them even if it did take three times as long as dealing with the hearing.

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason that you would dislike relay calls is because you don't think deaf people deserve to have the same access to service as hearing people. If you want to find out what bad customer service is, arrange to team call with a relay operator for one shift.

I neither like nor dislike a relay call until I can determine if it's a real call from a customer in need (like) or the third "Can you violate US Export laws concerning shipping powerful computers to third-world nations" call of the day (dislike).

You will have CSRs play hot potato with your call in between departments...<snip>...I know that in the heirarchy of things I'm just barely above telemarketers.

Those people are just dicks.

You know what, it's all complete and utter bullshit. There are two reasons to not like relay operators, laziness (not wanting to do your job) or bigotry (not thinking deaf people have the right to be calling the same as a hearing user does). Both reasons make someone a bad CSR and both really piss me off.

Then I obviously wasn't a bad CSR. I love the deaf. Heck I love all of the disabled groups out there. When they learn of a business that treats them like the real people that they are, they'll spend big bucks at our store and tell all of their friends to do the same. I spent one hour with a deaf customer typing back and forth on a computer with notepad open so we could communicate and I made $50 fixing his computer's problem. Boss complained that it was too much time for so little return. Then the guy came back with three other people, each with computer problems. One hour's worth of communicating and we made $300. Then they started coming in and buying new computers at $500 a pop profit (high-end gaming rigs). Then we got the contract for a Client-Server network (wiring included) and we made $75,000 profit on that one.

I agree with you. CSR's can be douchey about relay calls and the disabled in general. But they do not understand that these people are people too and they have many of the same needs as we do. They need to PWN the Lich King in World of Warcraft. They need to have Document Management and Storage solutions for their offices. They need the products and services that we provide as much as the next fellow.

The Lazy CSR's will help drive their companies out of business allowing the ones with good CSR's to thrive in their absence.