Secrets to Getting Great Customer Service & The Curious Story of Remote Controls
Something You Should Know
This episode of 'Something You Should Know' explores the science behind smell and memory, offers practical strategies for getting effective
Key takeaways
- Smells trigger vivid, emotional memories due to their direct link to brain regions involved in emotion and memory.
- Customer complaints are more likely to succeed when approached factually and calmly rather than emotionally or with threats.
Main topics
- The neuroscience of smell and memory
Notable quotes
Smell has an unusually direct connection to areas of the brain involved in emotion and memory.
Conclusion
Understanding how memory works through smell, using smart tactics in customer
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) There is one word I think gets people in trouble with money. It's probably. I'm probably spending about this much every month. I'm probably saving enough. I'm probably on track for retirement. Probably is not a financial plan. I've been using Monarch. It's a personal finance app that puts your whole financial picture in one place. And it replaces probably with actual numbers. For example, Monarch showed me that our spending last month jumped about 30 % from the month before. 30%. We had some home repairs, but none of the bills seemed like a big hit at the time. But put them all together, and wow. But I didn't realize how much our spending had jumped until Monarch showed me. And I think that's how money can get away from you. It's not necessarily one giant expense that sets off alarm bells. It's all the things that add up that you don't really notice. That's what I like about Monarch. You can see your spending, accounts, investments, and savings goals all in one place and see what's really going on with your money. If you're operating on probably, maybe it's time to find out. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code SYSK at Monarch.com. to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50 % off your first year at Monarch.com with code S-Y-S-K. Speaker 2 (1:35) Today on Something You Should Know, why do certain smells bring back such vivid memories? Then, getting good customer service, the right and the wrong ways to complain. If you say, Speaker 3 (1:49) I'm contacting a lawyer, that gets rooted to the legal department, and that's where complaints go to die. Here's another favorite of mine is, I'm never staying in your hotel or flying on your airline again. What incentive do they have to fix the problem if you're leaving? Speaker 2 (2:05) Also, the real reason your fingers get wrinkly in the bathtub. And the interesting and curious story of your TV's remote control. Speaker 1 (2:15) So you might be wondering, why does your television remote have so many buttons you never use? Those are actually called vestigial buttons. And remote control designers know you're not using them. Speaker 2 (2:30) All this today on Something You Should Know. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility. Sell it. Every day people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted. Listing is quick and simple. And when an item sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. And importantly, there are no seller fees on Vinted. So when you sell something, you keep everything you earn. I like this whole idea because instead of clothes just taking up space, Somebody else gets to wear them and you get some money out of the deal. Your closet looks better too. I mean, everybody wins, even the closet. So maybe it's time to stop waiting for someday. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees so you keep everything you earn. Speaker 2 (3:51) Something you should know. Speaker 3 (3:52) Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Speaker 2 (4:04) We all have lots of triggers that will bring back memories. But there's something about a smell that's pretty special. And that's what we're going to start with today on this episode of Something You Should Know. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers. So you can look at an old photograph and remember the past, but catch a whiff of your grandmother's perfume or your childhood home or freshly cut grass. and suddenly you can feel as if you've actually been transported. There's a reason that smell can have such an extraordinary effect on memory. Information from most of our senses takes a more roundabout route through the brain, but smell has an unusually direct connection to areas of the brain involved in emotion and memory, and studies have found that memories triggered by odors tend to be particularly emotional. and often come from earlier periods in our lives. There's even a useful way to take advantage of this. If you're trying to remember something from long ago, don't just think harder. Try recreating some of the sensory cues that surround it. A particular perfume, a song, a location, or other familiar smell. Sometimes the memory isn't gone, you just haven't found the right key to unlock it. And that is something you should know. Speaker 2 (5:31) Everybody has at least one good customer service nightmare story. You have a problem, you call the company, and before long you're trapped in a maze of automated menus, chatbots, hold music, and representatives who either can't or won't fix the problem. And sometimes just figuring out how to reach an actual human being feels like an accomplishment. But now here's the good news. When something goes wrong, there are ways to dramatically improve your chances of getting the company to actually help you. There are certain things to say, people to contact, and strategies that work surprisingly well. And there are also some common things customers do that make the situation worse. Christopher Elliott has spent years helping consumers solve exactly these kinds of problems. He is a consumer advocate and nationally syndicated columnist who writes the newsletter Elliot Confidential, and he recently launched a podcast. He knows how companies handle complaints, where the pressure points are, and what you can do to get better customer service when things go wrong. Hi, Christopher. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks for having me. So if you had to take a snapshot of the world of customer service and grade it, Where are we? Is it good? Is it better? Is it getting worse? What do you think of the world of customer service? Speaker 3 (6:58) Well, I should preface my answer by saying that one of my specialties is travel. So I deal with a lot of travel complaints, but I also deal with a fair number of other consumer complaints. Things like, you know, cars that you bought at a dealership that ended up breaking down or appliances that stopped working. And overall, right now, we're in a phase of automation. Which is to say, when you call a company, you get put through to a chatbot and you have to deal with phone trees, chatbots, AI, that sort of thing. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But we're in the early stages of that now. I don't know how it's going to end. Overall, I'm kind of mildly optimistic that automation might improve things, but the jury is still out. Speaker 2 (7:47) So often when people talk about customer service, what they're really meaning is complaining. They have a complaint. Seldom are they calling to say how wonderful everything is. They're calling because there's a problem. And I would imagine, I mean, in my sense is that how you approach it, who you come off as, if you're a jerk or if you're a reasonable human being, that has a lot to do with how this conversation is going to go. Speaker 3 (8:16) You're absolutely correct. The approach is really important. It's probably more important now than ever. Most people, well, I would say of a certain generation, but certainly it applies to all readers that I've encountered. They think that if you just pick the phone up and call the company that you're going to be able to fix a problem. And increasingly, that is not the case anymore. You have to have a paper trail and you have to be factual. not emotional when you're dealing with a company. And you can't come off as being complaining or whiny because that can actually affect the outcome of your complaint. And I'll just give you an example if you want. Yeah, please. If you say I'm contacting a lawyer, which a lot of people will do out of frustration, even though they don't even have access to a lawyer, that gets rooted to the legal department. And that's where complaints go to die. Speaker 2 (9:12) So those kind of threats don't do much. Speaker 3 (9:15) I mean, unless you actually are prepared to go to court. But here's the thing, though. If you are going to go to court, you don't make a threat to a customer service representative. You send a legal letter and it goes to the legal department and that's where it gets dealt with. Here's another favorite of mine is I'm never staying in your hotel or flying on your airline again. What? incentive do they have to fix the problem if you're leaving? So those are some of the things that will kill your complaint immediately. Speaker 2 (9:47) What about threatening, you know, it's not even a threat, but what about going to the top rather than deal with a customer service rep? Let me speak to your supervisor and let me speak to his supervisor or her supervisor until somebody gives me the answer I want. Speaker 3 (10:04) About two decades ago, I tried helping a reader who asked almost the identical question, is there someone I can appeal this to? And I did a lot of research and finally found an email address. Back then, people still, their email addresses were still relatively hidden and helped someone with their complaint because they ended up escalating it too. It wasn't the CEO, it was like the chief customer service officer. And out of that came this idea for our directory of executive contacts. And it started with just travel, but it expanded quickly beyond that. And now we have nearly 3,000 companies at elliot.org. That's E-L-L-I-O-T-T dot O-R-G. If you go there, you can just find that directory. And to answer your question in a very roundabout way, yes, it does help. You can escalate. When someone tells you on the phone there's no one to appeal to, they are lying. There's always someone to appeal to. And these executives try really hard to keep their email addresses and phone numbers a secret. You would be shocked at the number of lawyer letters that I get demanding that I take down this information. But it is protected under the First Amendment. And there is a correct way of using this, too. You don't start with the CEO. You start with creating a really good paper trail. And then