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Scripted Sincerity Hits Customer Support
I know that I have been preaching about customer service for more than a decade. As a company we’ve counseled marketers about the bottom line impact of annoying today’s Vigilante Shopper. But now I’m afraid that some brands are over-doing it and are in danger of a shopper backlash against all of this “nice-ness.”
Last week I had a BlackBerry meltdown in an airport. Once I arrived back to my home base I called my carrier who shall remain nameless (hint – it has a hyphen) for what I predicted would be a long, frustrating call. I had even made myself a snack to keep me busy.
After navigating my way out of the voice automated system (hint – always say “BlackBerry” when prompted about your problem because you go straight to the specialist), I was greeted by the world’s happiest young woman.
“It’s a great day at XXX in BlackBerry support, how can I help you?” After I give her my name, rank and serial number I tell her that my audio isn’t working and that I can only use the speaker feature to carry on phone calls.
This turned her empathy to super drive and she told me in a chirpy voice, “That must be just awful to be inconvenienced like that. I am so sorry that this happened to you and we will find a way to fix it right now.” Sounds innocent enough? It even sounds like this company has been paying attention to the lessons in our books and presentations about showing empathy and being about problem solving.
So where is the problem? The problem is that their employees are reading from the world’s most patronizing and annoying script. As a caller you can almost feel the support rep reading her computer screen. Proper training is replaced by sappy, pre-written small talk. I was tempted to ask about the weather to see if she had an answer for that.
She put me on hold for a millisecond and came back with, “I am so sorry that I put you on hold. I know that your time is important and waiting can be frustrating.” It took her longer to apologize than the entire time on I was on hold!
In the end my BlackBerry bit the dust and I bought a new one, but that’s not the point.
The point is that in telephone customer support, there is the kind of authentic friendliness and earnestness that make brands like Land’s End and Red Envelope stand out from the pack and then there are over-scripted efforts that take the human out of the transaction.
The best part was when the rep closed the call by saying, “Thank you for being our customer since ….” and then had to wait just a second too long for the computer screen to spit out the rest “…2005.”
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