> Present as if you are collecting a paper trail. Prominent indicia of this include notebooks, organized files, and repeatedly asking for specific names, dates, and citations for authority “for my notes.”
I worked at a smaller company where any semi-threatening support requests were escalated up the chain to me. The “I’m taking notes to use against you” trick was a sure-fire way to get your ticket escalated, but it had the reverse effect of what customers expected. Our front-line support was empowered to diagnose customer problems, issue refunds, replace product, and even give customers free upgrades as a token of apology.
However, once the customer threatened us with the note-taking act, we had to be extremely careful about anything that would admit fault, lest they try to use it against us later. Or worse, try to take our statements out of context and tweet them to the world. Once the customer escalated the request, they got slower responses (support wasn’t my primary job), more limited options (minimize potential admissions of fault), and narrowly constrained communications (assume every response will be retweeted out of context to make us look bad).
Before you try these “Dangerous Professional” tricks, please just try to be a decent human with the front-line support staff. They deal with difficult customers all day, and the last thing they want to do is encourage another person to play the difficult customer role to get what they want. The opening example (Xcode visible in dock creating mutual understanding) is very different than sending your demands directly to the company’s general counsel or threatening to take notes for future retaliation. Please don’t use that as option 1 in your communication toolbox.