I really hope everything goes well for you at your new job
@Armus.
I can totally feel for what you're going through, I'm also quite socially awkward and introverted, and I've had to work customer facing jobs before too. I used to be a bank teller for almost five years, and then I was in bank telephone service for almost two and a half years, and sometimes I found it really difficult interacting with my customers.
When I was working with customers face to face, I found what made things easiest for me was to just really care about people, and even though I'm introverted I found that came really naturally. I learned everyone's names, I always smiled, I greeted people when they came inside, and I found out how people like things and I did whatever I could to make their lives easier, and I had a really good relationship with my customers and that made my life so much easier also.
I really found working on the phone to be so much more difficult for me, especially because I just don't like phone calls, I prefer to talk either in person or by writing, so that was a challenge. What I found really helped me there was to just really know everything I was working with, I really learned my company's products and policies, so I had confidence I knew what I'm talking about to people. I also would pretend everyone I was speaking to was someone important to me, so I could make sure I would care about his or her issue. I think people can tell when you don't care about them and just want them to go away.
I had a harder time when I was taking supervisor calls, because people were already upset, and I don't have a very authoritative sounding voice, and sometimes I'd get real nonsense like some rude guy asking to speak to "the real MANager" (he'd stress it like that, you'd be surprised how often that happens).
Oh and something else I found helped me, was to always be positive and be a solution person, not a problem person, and especially as a teller this made things sooo much easier for me to get along with my customers than a lot of my coworkers. Like this was when we still would put 7 day holds on checks, and my coworkers would say things like "We're going to hold your check for seven days," and people would get upset, but I found I had better luck saying things like "We're going to be able to make this available for you next Monday." Just little ways of phrasing things, as like something you're going to do
for them instead of something you're going to do
to them, if I'm making sense?
I REALLY needed my time off, I'd quite look forward to my weekends and vacation time so I could recharge.
So I guess my short answer for my advice is to care and to be knowledgeable. I think people can really feel when you want to help them and also when you know how, and you'll be appreciated. But also knowing that there are some people who sadly are just sour and there's nothing you can do, and I had to learn over time to just not let those people ruin my day.
Oh and good luck again, I feel new jobs are always so exciting!
However composing a call to someone I would feel just a little more self-conscious again.
