I am certain that companies create standard customer service scripts to represent the “right” messaging to their customers – in any event, or situation, What they did not intend, is for them to sound like it was a pre-recorded robot script.

I get it, I am calling companies after the (most likely) busiest and most stressful time of their employees’ year. However, if something isn’t going quite “right” – please empower your employees to answer me in a way that sounds like they understand me and are doing their very best to answer my inquiry and to help me, too.

I literally heard the exact same phrase 8 times in a five-minute conversation today. This is not just a $2 nor a $20, it’s not even a $200 transaction… and I expected more. You can just imagine my horror and the amount of cringing I was doing on my end of the phone when I heard him essentially say that there was NOTHING he could do for me today, again. The same exact way he’d answered another question and 3 others before that one. He didn’t stop saying it. UGH.

In fact, after all is said and done, when I am advising clients I would recommend some sort of standardization to responses … but please – let them be human!  Coach them to take what you give them and make it their own. “Stay on message, be sincere and make the customer feel better – not worse – after the call.” It’s not easy, but, it works. The other way… does not.

You could pretty much say “you are SOL” but said in the right way, I won’t feel quite as bad as I did today when I had to listen to the robot tell me he couldn’t help me – oh, he stayed on script all right… what he didn’t do, was honor the company’s message.

~ Dawn aka Hat Girl