If you really want to piss people off, treat every individual with compassion and dignity. Even (especially) if they don’t treat themselves like that.
Also, corporations are not people, my friend. So use the above to help guide your social engineering tactics.
Not unethical or illegal, but avoiding a barrier, if you have a problem that a company won’t solve using regular customer service means, spend time to find their email formula (FnameLname or FLname or FnameL @company.com) do some online searching, and then email your unhelpful CSO person and start to CC senior people in the company “to bring this error to their attention.”
If the unhelpful CSO person hasn’t messed up, then it’s no heat on them and their supervisor will just say “ugh, just get rid of this guy,” and solve your problem. I’ve used this method a dozen or so times, works well.
When I have an issue with a corp and have to talk to a human I start with an apology to that individual.
“Hey I have an issue with X about Y, but I have nothing against you as a person. You’re just trying to do your job and probably deal with a ton of verbal abuse. I apologize in advance if I get upset or use crude language during this call. Be aware that I’m not upset at you I’m upset at the company policies.”
Having been of both sides of this situation, this is excellent advice and will get you much better results on average because you get the CSR on your side and invested in a positive outcome almost every time.
This works so well. I’ve been on the receiving end of that, and I wanted more than nothing more than to help resolve their issue. I felt acknowledged and validated, and wanted nothing but to return the favor. Do this.
This is called the corporate carpet bomb. And yes, it is often very effective because the upper management doesn’t like being bugged by small things like this. So they’ll often acquiesce just to get you to go away. And it usually only takes one upper manager to bother. Even if nine of them ignore you, the tenth will tell their underlings “hey, what’s the problem here? Why am I being CC’ed? Just fix whatever it is so I can stop getting emails about it.”
Having worked corporate c-suite level escalations this is absolutely the case. It was fun dressing down directors and managers well above me because I had a mandate from above them to hold their feet to the fire and get shit done.
If you really want to piss people off, treat every individual with compassion and dignity. Even (especially) if they don’t treat themselves like that.
Also, corporations are not people, my friend. So use the above to help guide your social engineering tactics.
Not unethical or illegal, but avoiding a barrier, if you have a problem that a company won’t solve using regular customer service means, spend time to find their email formula (FnameLname or FLname or FnameL @company.com) do some online searching, and then email your unhelpful CSO person and start to CC senior people in the company “to bring this error to their attention.”
If the unhelpful CSO person hasn’t messed up, then it’s no heat on them and their supervisor will just say “ugh, just get rid of this guy,” and solve your problem. I’ve used this method a dozen or so times, works well.
When I have an issue with a corp and have to talk to a human I start with an apology to that individual.
“Hey I have an issue with X about Y, but I have nothing against you as a person. You’re just trying to do your job and probably deal with a ton of verbal abuse. I apologize in advance if I get upset or use crude language during this call. Be aware that I’m not upset at you I’m upset at the company policies.”
Having been of both sides of this situation, this is excellent advice and will get you much better results on average because you get the CSR on your side and invested in a positive outcome almost every time.
This works so well. I’ve been on the receiving end of that, and I wanted more than nothing more than to help resolve their issue. I felt acknowledged and validated, and wanted nothing but to return the favor. Do this.
This is called the corporate carpet bomb. And yes, it is often very effective because the upper management doesn’t like being bugged by small things like this. So they’ll often acquiesce just to get you to go away. And it usually only takes one upper manager to bother. Even if nine of them ignore you, the tenth will tell their underlings “hey, what’s the problem here? Why am I being CC’ed? Just fix whatever it is so I can stop getting emails about it.”
Having worked corporate c-suite level escalations this is absolutely the case. It was fun dressing down directors and managers well above me because I had a mandate from above them to hold their feet to the fire and get shit done.