New survey by business review site reveals what makes customers lose their cool Just don't make us wait, reveals a new survey. WAITING for tradies to show up bugs Australians more than poor quality or messy work. According to a new online survey by business review site WOMO.com.au, 35 per cent of 1730 respondents hated hanging around for workers, while only 3.5 per cent were frustrated by tradies leaving a mess behind. Just over 10 per cent listed rudeness as their biggest tradie beef and poor quality work was the number one pet hate for 22 per cent of those surveyed. In the retail world, rude sales assistants infuriated 30 per cent while 22 per cent rated staff who don't greet them as their number one complaint. This was followed by poorly trained sales assistants (15 per cent), sales staff who are overly sales focused (11 per cent) and upselling to products of no relevance (7.9 per cent). Only 5.9 per cent selected poor returns or refund policies as their main annoyance in-store. When asked about customer service via the phone, dealing with overseas call centres angered 30 per cent. Automated phone services angered 20 per cent of the respondents and 12 per cent hated being put on hold for more than five minutes. Founder of WOMO.com.au and customer service expert, Fiona Adler, said that an individual's gauge of good customer service is based on the emotional connection that they expect to feel with the service provider. "In-store shopping is a very emotive task with more factors coming into play than just price and convenience," she said. The results illustrate that we have a need to feel special and make a connection with what we're buying. These similarities occur over the phone too. We need the operator to empathise and make a connection with our issue. For tradespeople, we seem to have a whole new set of assessment criteria. Even though we're doing something as personable as welcoming tradies into our homes, our brain is more focused on the task at hand, how much it will cost and the standard of the job. Therefore, how we measure their service is completely different.