Please, take a moment to thank your CS telephone operative

So today I had reason to phone the town council. The reason being I've recently moved house (I may have mentioned or, more accurately, have transcribed several tantrums during the process) and I had to sort out my council tax. I thought I'd already done it but it seemed my lettings agent and I were working at cross purposes so the balance of my old account wasn't incorporated into my new account. Consequence: £296 owed to the council that I shouldn't owe.

I phoned them, had a short conversation with a very efficient young woman and the long and the short of it is my council tax is, as I originally assumed, paid up for the year. What's more my old account had a credit of “249 pounds on it from the first year I lived on my own when I didn't know about single persons' discount so next year's council tax bill will only be about £500.

I reiterated the result verbally to her to make sure, we had come to the agreement I thought we had and then I took a moment to thank her properly:

“I just have to say you've been brilliant. I was kind of dreading this phone call but you've been great and I just wanted you to know that. I know you must get a lot of grief doing this job and I want you to know I really appreciate your work.”

The sad thing is that she was really, really grateful for my gratitude. That's just sad. So the next time you have a good customer service experience by phone, just take a moment to let your CS operative know that you appreciate their work on your behalf. Yes, it's their job but that's no reason not to tell them they're good at it (especially after they save you £796).

Now I'm going to go on Youtube and watch old episodes of The Charlie Brown And Snoopy Show to make sure the day continues to unfold upon lines of fluffy niceness.