Comments on: Customer Service Advice: Lose the Scripts. Hire Friendly.

By: Steff

Steff — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:01:07 +0000

I also like more personable people on the phone, however I work as a sort of in house switchboard operator for a company with many different sections, and I have to have so much information and sort of weed out this call for that place and that call for the other place- so in my position you have to have a script to make sure you get every bit of information in the first try, so scripts arent all bad- people need to remember that some one is always waiting- so try to keep the chatting down a bit. Scripts help move the calls along quickly so everyone gets through to a person. That being said- HOW people read them and inflection and energy is totally, I agree, another story. I try to keep mine warm and sincere, since I do want to help people, I just don’t have all day to do it in.

By: John Jamieson

John Jamieson — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:51:38 +0000

Hey Kevin – spot on!! Great to read this (it’s rare!) and oh, so true. Don’t worry about the heresy, all progress is made by heretics.

First Direct’s approach (the UK’s premiere telephone bank and renown for great customer service) was always to recruit for personable, outgoing, friendly people: “We can train anyone for banking skills, but not personality!”

I’ve been encouraging this since 1992 when I devised an objective system to measure the subjective feeling of how good it feels to be a customer – at its most basic, as you say, how genuinely friendly, caring and helpful they are and how good they make the customer feel. In lieu of any other term I called it “Customer Empathy”.

I have to say that I think you’d enjoy an unusual article about one of my clients where we totally threw away not just the scripts but the rule book too and simply asked call center agents to use their OWN initiative to treat their customers as they would do a friend (well, it helped that the company’s called ‘Friends Provident’!) see: http://EmpathyInsight.com/report

And it’s not just scripts, it’s ‘behaviours’ too. I have found that if you want a result (like being welcoming, say) it’s better to ask for it rather than treating people like children and telling them how to ‘behave’.

By: michael shrader

michael shrader — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:44:29 +0000

Kevin,

I would like to tell you about a technology that I think you will find really interesting. SatMap is a contact center routing software that uses over 100 psycho demographic and performance variables to match the agent to the customer thereby optimizing the interaction. As you are probably well aware empathy, affiniity and emotional connection are key attributes that can lead to outstanding customer satisfaction and loyalty. SatMap is the only technology out there that looks at the Agent, not just the Customer as key to a great customer experience. You can reach me at michaelshrader@yahoo.com.