I contacted my cable company this week to try to get a problem fixed that had allegedly been fixed three times before. My digital picture was breaking up on occasion, especially during prime time or important sporting events. The last technician who came to my house to fix it said that if his solution didn’t work, the problem was likely a switcher my next-door neighbor was using.
After a summer of light TV watching, the problem started happening again, which told me my next-door neighbor had started watching TV again and using the switcher. This time, however, in an attempt to save time, I decided to talk to someone from the cable company’s online chat. “Jerome” came on line to help me. Let’s see if you can spot the scripted dialogue.
Jerome: Hello Steve. Thank you for contacting (company) live chat support. My name is Jerome. Please give me one moment to review your information.
(pause)
Jerome: I do apologize hearing this from you and I know where you are coming from. Let me address this concern for you in the best way I can.
(pause)
Jerome: I understand you have a concern on your cable service by having a break picture and the technician visit about this concern as well. I definitely know where you’re coming from (Haven’t we heard this line before?) and I truly apologize for the inconvenience. I ams determined to resolve your issue today and I know we can do this together. I would like to verify how long have you been dealing with this concern, please? If you won’t mind me asking.
Actually, I do mind him asking because he did tell me he was taking a moment to review my information. If he reviewed my information, he’d know the answer.
Steve: It’s got to be over a year. Have you checked my problem history? Everything should be in there.
Jerome: I am very sorry to hear that this issue happened to you. I can understand the frustration when something is not working the way it is supposed to. I am glad you came to chat. I will do my best to assist you in resolving this issue. Let me check it through the account.
At this point, I’ve already heard three actual apologies, two “I know where you’re coming from” statements and one “I can understand the frustration when something is not working” statement as well as a couple of statements saying he’ll do his best to help me. It’s been 3-4 minutes already and he still hasn’t helped me because 90% of what he has said came from pre-written scripts. Which doesn’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies.
Then, some more scripts:
Jerome: I am very happy to check this for you. Please allow me two minutes to put you on hold and check this account and get back to you after. Is it okay with you?
Steve: It’s fine (considering he told me earlier that he reviewed my account, which apparently he hadn’t)
Jerome: Okay. Please allow me two minutes to check this account. By the way, while waiting for your account to pull up, I will share a feature that you can truly benefit from. Do you know that we have Pay Direct?
Because of his scripts, he has now violated the first rule of up-selling and cross-selling – never try to sell the customer something when he’s upset and/or you haven’t solved the problem yet.
After I said “No, I’m really not interested”, he popped in another scripted statement that started with “Great! I know this will help you a lot” before proceeding to explain the program.
The chat went on like that for another 15 minutes while he used script after script and didn’t solve my problem. Not once did I feel the empathy he had so badly tried to convince me he had at the beginning of the conversation. Finally, I said goodbye, called the customer service line and spoke to a real person who could hear the emotion in my voice and seemed to jettison the scripts.
Here’s the thing: Customers aren’t stupid. They know a script as soon as they hear it or see it. They know a script is impersonal, doesn’t address the issue, doesn’t show empathy, and is created not for their benefit but for the benefit of the company. Remember form letters? Those were the scripts we used to send by mail. Customers knew it was a form letter then too.
Supervisors and companies need to trust their people to say the right things, ask the right questions, give the right answers, and solve the problems without scripts. To do this, these people need to be trained, trained, trained. After training them, test them on their knowledge and ability to solve problems. Then let them do their jobs.
If you don’t trust them, don’t hire them. If you hire them, educate them. Your customers will appreciate it.
