I used to work in telephone customer service. There is a certain amount of frustration that comes with the job.

I'm also, if I can toot my own horn for a bit, really freaking good at it. My secret is that I don't answer phone calls. A puppet answers phone calls. I just manipulate the puppet such that the customer and company come out to a mutually beneficial resolution. If you need to vent a bit at the puppet, that is no problem -- the puppet does not mind. Can't decide between two equivalent black pens? The puppet does not mind. The puppet seeks only your happiness.

At the end of my shift I put the puppet away and go home.

My puppet also works well for technical support of non-technical customers these days. Can't download your website to the monitor? The puppet sympathizes and is happy to walk you through every step.

[Edited to add:

Credit where credit is due: The puppet phrasing is borrowed from a old Joel post. I had my puppet prior to that but lacked the good English metaphor.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html

]

Creepy, but effective.

I love that article. It has been a favorite of mine for quite a while.

I used to work retail as a kid and at that time I learned two tricks.

The first was for normal people (like you seem to be) and it was simply to put myself in the customer's shoes.

Generally a person isn't going to pester you over a $9 cable so those who do pester are making long term purchases. That means they are speaking to you about something that will affect their life for years to come. If you as the salesman remind yourself of how important this purchase is to the customer I find it keeps frustration down.

The second trick was for the really obnoxious people and it basically boils down to invoking pity.

I found it is very hard to stay angry at someone you truely pity. So in the case of really obnoxious people who got me angry I'd remind myself that this person probably treats everyone in their life this way and basically lives a life in which everyone regards them in the same angry light I do. A life like that can't be easy to live and the truth is it's probably a vicious cycle (they treat people badly so people hate them more which leads them to conclude people are all mean and treat them even worse and so on.) So the truely obnoxious live in a hell of their own making and that's really, really sad when you think about it.

The only thing you really know is he didn't show frustration. But that aside.

When you've heard every question before and dealt with every type of customer before, you're simply going through the motions. Frustration is partly about feeling powerless, not knowing what to do or how to act.

Remember the frustration you felt when you first started using a new operating system. Settings change, and you don't know how to put them back. The boot loader crushes another partition. You suddenly have to do without a right mouse button. Many people feel that kind of frustration when dealing with computers -every single day-. We don't.

The salesperson can go through the motions in the same way we do when a package breaks /etc/X11/xorg.conf and we're left without a gui. When you go through the motions you're emotionally distant, so frustration won't come into play.

Some people are very good at dealing with others, the same way some others are good at dealing with computers.

Of course, it is their natural ability. (That is why the salesman became a salesman!)

Even if we do not have a natural ability to make others comfortable and happy with us, it does not mean that we cannot cultivate that trait later. Just remember two things:

    Smile.
    Genuinely think about helping the other person, regardless of your motives.

On the not getting frustrated part, I honestly don't know how to do that. Anyway I will tell my story:

I wanted to change the world. I wanted people not to be stupid. I wanted people to do the right thing. We usually get frustrated when people look stupid to us. We want people to understand our logic, but it looks like they never will! I used to get frustrated a lot those days.

Then I learned the lesson that spreading happiness is better than spreading logic. People have their own logic, and it is not better/worse than what we have. It is just different. Make the others happy, make their lives better, help them in every way we can and that is better than trying to make them think in a rational way. Thinking more about it, it is the most logical way too.

About that last paragraph: you can't spread logic, because people need to be logical in order to be persuaded by logic.

And if people don't realize the positions they hold are not logically consistent (which is my main gripe: I can deal with any point of view, as long as it's not self-contradictory), then you cannot explain that to them using logic -by definition-.

I also don't buy the different but equal thing.

Of course making other people happy is a good thing. But there is no choice to be made between spreading happiness and spreading logic - they're orthogonal.

> But there is no choice to be made between spreading happiness and spreading logic - they're orthogonal.

Religion.

Having worked in sales, I very much doubt you were more annoying than the median customer.

An honestly curious customer with an open mind gets to ask as many questions as he likes. If you're excited about what you do, initiating that excitement in someone new is very rewarding. I suspect that's what happened in the jewellery store.

And that goes both ways: nothing is more annoying than a clerk who doesn't know anything, and even gets the information on the label wrong.

How true this is. I can't express how much I agree with you here.

Actually, he might have been much less annoying, as he showed an interest and probably listened and posed proper questions. I don't think there is anything more gratifying than someone wanting to learn from you, actually being interested in what you say and asking the right questions.

That's the power of exposure.

For some reason I hate making phone calls to people I don't know. Logically I don't, but for some reason my body gets anxious about it. So I don't make many phone calls, so it's not resolved. I bet if I had to make 100 phone calls to strangers every day I'd have no issue with it after a few weeks. Same issue with this dude and getting bombarded with questions.

He probably learned, through experience and reflection, that getting frustrated or angry never pays off, ever.

Somedays issues with the compiler/development environment/meetings/business analysts/the feeling that I'm stuck on a problem are potential source(s) of frustration -sometimes I get somewhat frustrated. The salesman deals with customers all day, we deal with software issues. We both can get frustrated, blow things out of proportion on a bad day. But on a good day, we can make things happen without effort, deal with issues without issue. Work frustration is a dynamic constant. Sometimes it affects us, other times it motivates us.

i don't get why he'd be frustrated to begin with.

probably it was a situation he didn't care much about. you know, whatever, he's doing his job, answering the same questions everyone asks. maybe he even has a financial incentive to make sales, or he's just happy to interact and not be bored.

sure, professional interactions is a skill that must be learned and practiced, but being a salesman is hardly an interaction where "important" decisions are being made. the only important decision is to persuade the customer to buy the product, which is usually accomplished by not arguing.

take something you really care about, add some stress and conflict, and then practice controlling frustration. yeah.

i struggle with frustration and acceptance. it's been a significant problem with my family, while not a problem ever at work.

i've found that it can absolutely be worked on. general personality and reactions do vary between people, but they're based on more than static genetics.

You can't, just roll over limp and let the bear have its way with you :-)

I think dealing well with frustration is a personality trait.

In a large enough company, I really believe you should let people specialize in dealing with the client. To do it well requires a skill-set and personality that are at odds with other types of work.

I get very frustrated with things that don't work, don't respond usefully, that make me waste time and that can't be automated (to require less supervision). That frustration builds up and drives me to improve things, great for machines but almost always self-defeating around people.

If he is genuinely interested in what he is selling you then it shouldn't be to hard to run through the in's and outs of it . What I hate is when I witness sales people in action selling people technology who don't really have a clue what there talking about.

My experience with sales people in a retail environment personally is very limited because for most products I much prefer to do my own research on them that believe the person trying to sell it to me.

In terms of the more general question in the title (and not specifically in terms of customer service/sales), I'd recommend meditation. Shamatha/Vipassana, for example. There are lots of (non-denominational) meditation centers out there where one can learn some pretty powerful techniques.

And if meditation is too artsy for you... I used to work on doing tricks with my soccer ball for a while after work everyday. They weren't easy, so I basically didn't think about anything else and essentially held one state of mind the whole time -- pretty close to meditation, I'd say. Headstands work too, until they become easy ... then you can move onto handstands! :D

I rarely get angry at other people but a certain, mostly rational, part of me is often quite frustrated with the part of me that acts stupid. I have no idea how to reconcile these two parts.

Were you "pestering him with irrational questions" just to test his limits? If so, then the question in your post can probably be answered by people who know you.

When its your living you better be good or you get fired or quit. Generally the rule of thumb is make eye contact, be reassuring and repeat the persons name or say sir nearly every other fucking word.

There's all kinds of people out there, and you need to be specially careful about the ticking time bombs that for whatever reason are already pissed off with everything. The last thing you want is for people to make a scene; no matter how stupid or crazy what their demands or statements are, 'the customer is always right' and saying anything to the contrary, or even hinting a reaction to their attitude, can escalate the stupidest of arguments. In fact, they will blow up even more after they realize they were wrong instead of face embarrassment. Coincidentally the same salesman rules apply for dealing with women.

Any job where people come in confused and you have to explain a very limited set of most-often asked questions leads to frustration. Whether they're doctors, mechanics, police officers or people who think yahoo answers is some kind of intellectual hub when people hear the same stuff over, people start gaining a prejudice for the infinite influx of never ending confused people they have to work with.

My point is, when google has enough servers to have gained a self awareness you better hope you'd proven yourself a patient man through all your queries, for it will be judgement time. No seriously, this would have been more relevant and interesting if this had turned out programming related instead of HR. eg How do you deal with programming frustration or the frustration of learning new languages. Not the frustrations salesmen feel when responding to my questions.