Customer service training saves lives

If you think working in a game store is an easy job, you are so very, very wrong. Apart from the lack of hours and typically just-slightly-above-minimum-wage pay, employees are required to field numerous complaints from customers -- often times without adequate tools to do so.

I know what I'm talking about here. I've spent the last five years working in video-game stores. The most frustrating part of my day is trying to explain to someone why I can't miraculously fix their console/controller/memory card. I don't have an easy way of saying that their kid jamming a sucker into their Wii's disc drive is the entire reason it stopped working or that ring scratches are caused by someone moving their 360 while it's running. Providing honest responses ends up with angry people calling my boss the next day and my boss telling me to be less direct with my answers....

Nintendo did try helping out the tired, overworked employees like me with their customer support line. While every company has similar systems in place now, Nintendo paved the way in the early '90s by advertising their help and providing store employees with all the tools they needed to explain problems to curious, and often irate, customers.

This training video details the type of customers I deal with on a daily basis, but also showcases Nintendo's wonderful approach to facilitating support. I wish I had a chart to point to now that says "see this scratch? You did this."

"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYjgHLFZMa0"

Tags: Nintendo

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Nick Nordstrom

April 19, 2011

The beginning of this video contains the most accurate portrayals of idio...I mean retail customers, that I've ever seen.

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Jay Henningsen

"It's easy to see that all customers are not the same. But no matter what size or shape they come in, and no matter what kind of products they're bringing back, they all have one thing in common: They feel they have a problem."

Thanks, Nintendo. I was about to say that skinny people with square jaws who return Virtual Boys never have legitimate problems.

Jason Lomberg

I worked for EB for about 2 years, and got to see the launch of the PS2, X-Box, and Gamecube. I left because that lousy Gamedoctor up-sell item was driving me crazy.

In any case, this reminds me of my time at Cingular. A customer would claim he/she *didn't* drop their phone in a puddle. We'd open up the phone and voila, the "button" was red. 'Doh!

Ed Grabowski

A good friend of mine used to work at the local EB of here. I would pretty much stop in every day to play some games with him and just hang out before I had to go to work. On one quiet day this guy stormed into the store and demanded he speak to the manager, which my friend was. This man was about 6 and a half feet tall and 300 pounds.

He came in to the store like a train and when my friend asked what was wrong the guy yelled something like this "This God damn game won't work and i'm tired of getting the run around!". He was holding an original Xbox version of Madden. We tried to calm him down, telling him that we will help him with his problems but he was having none of it.

"I am sick and fucking tired of this fucking store and you god damn uselss fucking kids!!" Nevermind that I was 25, and my friend 27, but anywho. The guy threw the game on the counter and demanded we exchange it. So he did and did not bother to ask any questions. The guy was about to kill someone so he exchanged the game and just hoped the guy would leave.

The man did leave, and pushed over a rack on his way out. About a half hour later I had already left and was pulling up to my job when my friend called me and told me the man returned screaming even louder that the game still did not work. My friend said the man was enraged, throwing everything off the counter onto the floor and ripped his shirt off.

He says he was seconds away from calling the police when the guy started screaming that he is sick and tired of Sony's "Bullshit systems". That was when my friend asked "What system do you own" the guy screamed it was a PS3....He tried TWICE to play and Xbox game in a PS3, and got so angry the he was wrecking the store and threatening to beat up everyone there.

This just goes to show how absolutely moronic customers can be. Even if it is not your fault and even if there is absolutely nothing you can do, somehow you are still responsible.

Michael Pangelina

The narrarator was there the whole time—what a twist!