Thanks, Emily

1. Document all calls
Make note of the time you call, are put on hold, and finally get through. Write down everyone’s names, and ask how to spell them, to show you are paying attention. Make notes on all that is agreed. If you have to backtrack with supervisors, saying, “I called at 10:24 on Wednesday the 10th and spoke to Angela,” is stronger than, “I called sometime last week.”

2. Remember your call is a business transaction, not a personal relationship
Even though they are complete strangers, some customer service agents can make us more as angry than our closest friends and family. Remind yourself, and the agent, that you don’t know each other. Their insults and disrespect are not really about you. And your criticism or anger is about the company not that agent.

3. Encourage the agent to work with you (not against you) to solve your problem
This one is pretty Zen. And in some cases it may be impossible. But calls often start out with customers and agents on the defensive, because of unpleasant past experiences on both sides. Recognize that potential and don’t get blindsided by a particularly unhelpful agent. There are probably circumstances way beyond your control, or the agent’s, for that agent’s attitude. So work to get the agent on the same team as you, and maybe the company will follow. In the long run it is in the company’s best interest to resolve your issues to your satisfaction as quickly as possible.

4. Recognize your value as a customer, and use it, but don’t abuse it
Figure out how much you spend with the company each year — $100 a month is $1,200 a year. Don’t let the agent or supervisor disregard that worth. State your case unemotionally, and grounded in the facts. You spend money with this company. You are not getting paid to call them with this problem. In fact, you paid to be their customer. But the agent is getting paid to listen to and resolve your problem. Just remember, the agent might have to deal with one-hundred or more customers in a day. So try not to throw your weight around in a way that alienates the people charged with helping you.

5. Not all companies care as much about customer service as we might want
Some really backward companies still view customer service as merely an inescapable nuisance. Realize that most of the world is moving on from that retro view. You might not get better service, but you probably will be more likely to support companies with a cutting-edge customer service approach. Eventually laggards will be forced to catch up or fade away.

6. If all else fails, appeal to a higher power
Not a divine power necessarily, but when talking with agents and supervisors turns futile, take your story to the top executives — many in large corporations have people in their offices who deal with customer issues. Also, the internet has become an outlet for customer complaints. You can Twitter about the company or visit other consumer complaint sites that some companies monitor, such as Get Satisfaction or Consumerist. The internet can be the way out of a customer service dead end.

Available August 17, 2010

Click on logos below to purchase online

Burke's Bookstore is near Emily's home and can ship freshly signed books anywhere, if you contact them directly

How other booksellers describe Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us:

Half.com

Synopsis: If you would like an outstanding history of the maddening world of telephone customer service, please press 1. If you want stories of abysmal, appalling, and antagonistic encounters between irate customers and supercilious operators, please press 2. If you want to go inside these call centers, and meet the mild-mannered housewives and college kids who answer calls in marginal locations from Utah to Timbuktu, please press 3. If you want some idea of the ridiculous lengths some companies will go to place automated buffers between themselves and their customers, please press 4. If you want all of the above, please read this book by Emily Yellin, and all of your questions will be answered in the order in which they were received.

The Strand Bookstore in NYC

Description: There are probably very few of us who have been able to bypass the  potentially infuriating trap of poor customer service. Be it through long lines, or insanely long hold times, the methods and madness of customer service today creep into all of our lives. In “Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us” journalist Emily Yellin invites readers to follow her around the globe on a quest to discover the in’s and out’s of this global industry. The result is an astonishing chronicle that goes well beyond practical definition in its exploration of how and why this industry affects those in business and those in need of help.

Newsweek — Page Turner

Emily Yellin’s customer-friendly romp through this unfriendly world rings so true

The Wall Street Journal

Ms. Yellin is an illuminating guide whose conclusions are sound

Library Journal — Starred Review and on list of Best Business Books of 2009

This fascinating history of humanity and technology meeting head-on will be of interest to a wide variety of readers and is highly recommended.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Entertaining because Yellin is smart and funny throughout

Fortune Small Business/CNN Money

Our picks for the best new business books

Publishers Weekly

Yellin dives into the often dysfunctional world of customer service, exploring the multibillion-dollar industry from various points of view ...

From Half.com

If you would like an outstanding history of the maddening world of telephone customer service, please press 1. If you want stories of abysmal, appalling, and antagonistic encounters between irate customers and supercilious operators, please press 2. If you want to go inside these call centers, and meet the mild-mannered housewives and college kids who answer calls in marginal locations from Utah to Timbuktu, please press 3. If you want some idea of the ridiculous lengths some companies will go to place automated buffers between themselves and their customers, please press 4. If you want all of the above, please read this book by Emily Yellin, and all of your questions will be answered in the order in which they were received.

Q&A with Emily for the paperback release — August 2010

Thopen

Emily Yellin is the author of Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us (Free Press 2009) and Our Mothers’ War (Free Press 2004), and was a longtime contributor to The New York Times. She has also written for Time, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications.

Born in White Plains, New York, Emily grew up in Memphis. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a degree in English literature, and received a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. She has lived in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and London, but currently lives in Memphis.

Emily decided to write Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us while waiting on hold one day in her freezing cold house, only to argue on the phone for hours with customer service at a home warranty company before convincing someone to come fix her broken furnace.

Nicole Kalian Abbott
Free Press
Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
212-632-4992
nicole.kalian@simonandschuster.com

For speaking inquiries:

Les Tuerk
BrightSight Group
268 Wall Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
609-924-3060
les@brightsightgroup.com

www.brightsightgroup.com

To contact Emily directly:

emily@emilyyellin.com

or

Please, Stay on the Line — A tour through the maddening world of customer service. — By Barbara D. Phillips  … In “Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us,” Emily Yellin strives to “seek out the humanity and reason behind the customer service experiences that many people find to be inhuman and nonsensical.”

Ms. Yellin, a Memphis-based journalist, mixes polls and studies with excerpts from published reports and her own insightful reporting from call centers and related businesses in the U.S. and overseas. read more …

U.S. Airways Magazine — Must Read

Customer service can make or break a business’s reputation. Excerpt of first chapter of the book. read more …

Talk of the Nation — National Public Radio

Frustrating customer service stories are commonplace. For her book Your Call Is (Not That) Important To Us, Emily Yellin looked into the history and future of customer service. She spoke with people at every link of the customer service chain. And she thinks it’s possible things will improve. Host Neal Conan talks to Emily Yellin and they take listener calls. listen to more…

The Conversation with Ross Reynolds — KUOW-FM Seattle

If You’d Like To Hear A Segment On Customer Service, Please Press One – Emily Yellin joins us to talk about the ever changing world of customer service. We also take listener calls. listen to more …

Miami Herald — You Can Get Most Anything at a Kiosk

By Bridget Carey – Check in at the doctor’s, rent DVDs, buy swimsuits at the latest self-service machines… Emily Yellin, author of customer service book Your Call is (Not That) Important to Us, hasn’t been a big fan of kiosks since a kiosk malfunctioned when she tried to get movie tickets in New York. read more…

Newsweek — Page Turner

by Matthew Phillips – After death, taxes and inclement weather, it’s one of life’s most inescapable downers: the customer-service call. Getting help can be an automated hell, an eternity of Muzak, code punching and security questions. Which is why the title of Emily Yellin’s customer-friendly romp through this unfriendly world rings so true: “Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us.” read more …

Fortune Q &A

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Most Americans dread calling customer service, and it’s easy to see why. Whether it’s the seemingly endless “press 1 now” steps, android representatives, or long waits, it can seem like companies just don’t care.

So why has this multibillion-dollar industry gotten so bad, and will it ever get better? Emily Yellin tackles the question in her new book …  read more …

U.S. News & World Report — Alpha Consumer — Q & A

by Kimberly Palmer – Why Customer Service Has Gotten So Bad – Wondering why you have to wait on hold for an hour each time your credit card company makes a mistake? Or why the cable company demands that you sit at home for three hours and wait for its representative to show up? Journalist Emily Yellin’s new book, Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us: Customer Service and What It Reveals About Our World and Our Lives, answers those questions and more. She takes on the customer service industry, and explains why it makes so many of us miserable. read more …

Listen to the U.S. News & World Report Alpha Consumer podcast …

New York Daily News

Customer service is a two-way street: Remain calm to get what you want — by Jean Chatsky — Before picking up the phone to deal with a pesky customer service issue, make an outline for yourself in order to help stay calm…. read more …

Ventura County Star

Customer disservice  – Frustrated consumers can vent on Internet, so poor responses can sink company reputations.  By Stephanie Hoops     If you’ve ever been asked to hold for an operator only to be left waiting until your ear grows numb, Emily Yellin feels your pain — so much so that she wrote a book about it. read more …

New York City Public Radio — The Brian Lehrer Show — WNYC

Americans make more than 43 billion customer service calls each year. To find out what’s really going on at the other end of the line, Emily Yellin, author of the new book, Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us, traveled the world to investigate the multi-billion dollar customer service industry. hear the segment …

Customer Creation Podcast

Blake Landau interviews Emily Yellin, whose new book is a modern, humorous and engaging account of the customer service industry today. In this interview, Yellin gives surprising and counterintuitive insights into her in-the-trenches customer service research. Yellin gives a fair account of customer service and contact center issues. She has interviewed hundreds of people at corporations, call center representatives, customers and everyone in between.  hear the podcast …

AARP Radio

Your Call Is (Not That) Important – What Lousy Customer Service Reveals About Our World – When you call for customer care, do you ever feel like your call is not that important to the representative helping you?

If so, you’re not alone. Every year, more than 43 billion calls are made to customer service representatives, yet companies still haven’t learned the value of good customer service.

Journalist Emily Yellin explores the inner workings of this multi-billion-dollar industry in her book: “Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us: Customer Service and What It Reveals About Our World and Our Lives.” hear the segment …

Brent Leary’s CRM blog and podcast

… In the immortal words of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five – “Don’t push me cuz I’m close to the edge, I’m trying not to lose my head…”. There are too many ways for us as customers to show our discontent that go way beyond just not spending our hard-earned dollars….  Emily Yellin and I recently had a fun conversation about her book. She shares some insights she gained from conversations with folks like Fedex CEO Fred Smith and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. She also talks about the Customer Rage study, and the things that surprised her as she traveled throughout the world visiting call centers in places like Egypt and Argentina. listen to the podcast …

The Memphis Flyer

Call Waiting  – Can business and customers find common ground?  by Leonard Gill – Fed up with customer service by phone? God knows you’ve got your reasons: the wait, the runaround, that voice from halfway around the world…. [Customer service is]  according to Emily Yellin, a barometer of how we communicate and how we treat each other not only nationally but globally and across all sorts of barriers. ”Race, gender, class, nationality … customer service is a crossroads of contemporary culture,” Yellin said. “From people on welfare to Nordstrom shoppers, it’s an amazing way to look at the world.” read more …

Memphis Commercial Appeal

By Michael Lollar – The furnace had gone out on a cold November day. Emily Yellin was on the phone with a customer service agent, then another, then another. In all, it took four people before she could persuade her home warranty company to schedule a repair.

A journalist, she was taking notes, keeping track of each exasperating conversation and the names of each person who stood between her and warmth. Suddenly her frustrations crystallized: “‘Somebody ought to look into this, and I could be the one to do it.’ ” read more …

The Afternoon Magazine with Celeste Quinn — Champaign-Urbana Public Radio

Celeste Quinn interviews Emily Yellin and they take listeners calls. hear the show …

New Hampshire Public Radio — Word of Mouth

By Virgina Prescott  – Calling customer service often feels like you’re in a one way relationship. It’s time to face it: your call center’s just not that into you. hear the segment …

KMOX St. Louis The Mark Reardon Show

Customer service is important to most every person whether it be the customer or the employer. Mark talks about that and more with Emily Yellin, author of “Your Call is (not that) Important to Us.” hear the segment …

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Book Review

By Susan LaBrier —  There is a satisfying scene in the 1999 movie “Office Space” that involves the smashing of a fax machine with a baseball bat while the soundtrack plays “Damn It Feels Good To Be a Gangster.”

Emily Yellin’s book begins in a similarly satisfying way when she describes a real-life customer’s infuriating search for service at a “communications” company. The customer, 76, turns into a folk hero by applying a hammer to a Comcast rep’s keyboard.  read more …

Frugal Yankee with Garen Daly

Emily Yellin tells how calling customer service is a disservice in her book YOUR CALL IS (not that) IMPORTANT TO US, an examination of a huge, aggravating industry. We ask, “Is there hope or will we be on hold forever? hear the podcast …

Washington Post Book World podcast — Ron Charles interviews Emily Yellin

hear the podcast …

Tampa Tribune — 2 Months After J.D. Power Honor, Regulators Stepped In At WellCare

By Richard Mullins — Tampa

…”Some skepticism by consumers is a healthy thing here,” said Emily Yellin , author of “Your Call is Not That Important To Us,” which is about call centers. Ratings companies may interview thousands of customers of a service provider, but “it’s all about how you phrase the question.” read more …

Reuters: Business Books: Customer service, from both ends of the phone

By Lisa Von Ahn — New York — There’s no question that “customer care representatives” are the people U.S. customers love to hate, but the feeling is often mutual. Consumers gripe about the confusing phone prompts, lengthy hold times and ill-prepared employees that are often the hallmarks of a call to a company — and many have no compunction about taking their frustration out on those at the other end of the phone.

Emily Yellin, author of an upcoming book with the tongue-in-cheek title “Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us,” sees room for improvement on both sides.   read more …

Why does everyone hate calling customer service and who is to blame for it being so bad?

There’s a long answer and a short answer to that question. The long answer is my book.

The somewhat shorter answer is that in the past 30 years or so, as customer service has become a mostly

telephone-based industry, companies have tried to find the cheapest, most efficient ways of doing it. Part of

the result is the long hold times we all hate, as well as being passed around from person to person or

country to country within a company, and automated agents that make it hard for you even to talk to a real

human being. Still, while companies have achieved their corporate goals of saving money, they have not

paid much attention to the long-term effects of all that dehumanizing, time-wasting treatment on the

psyches of the people who make the calls (customers), and the people who handle the calls for companies

(agents). But the long-term is now, and the corporate world is just beginning to acknowledge the price of

their customer service missteps so far.

Times Topics archive of NYT articles by Emily Yellin

They Needed to Talk – by Emily Yellin May, 2007

D-DAY / 60 years later

For speaking inquiries:

Les Tuerk
BrightSight Group
268 Wall Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
609-924-3060
les@brightsightgroup.com

www.brightsightgroup.com

Speech Technology Magazine

Day 1 Keynoter: How you say it as important as what you say — Emily Yellin

By Kathleen Savino – Aug 2, 2010 – NEW YORK (SpeechTEK) — Kicking off this year’s conference, Emily Yellin gave a rousing speech based on her new book Your Call is Not That Important To Us. Yellin, a journalist, gave a well-attended talk that was a call to arms for companies to amend bad business practices, such as one she says initially inspired the book’s concept. She was on hold for hours for her home warranty company that was supposed to fix her furnace. It was then, that she realized that someone needed to look into these kinds of practices. “I try to do my reporting from the customer’s perspective,” she said. read more…

Destination CRM Magazine

CRM Evolution 2010 Opens with a Bit of Yellin

NEW YORK, August 2, 2010 — At the kickoff of this year’s CRM Evolution conference here, opening keynote presenter Emily Yellin shared a series of observations about the potential pitfalls in customer service. Rather than rattle off a series of CRM’s Greatest Hits to an audience of CRM (and CRM trade show) veterans, Yellin (@eyellin on Twitter) painted the picture with anecdotes from her personal experience. read more…