Writing in Inc., Geoffrey James has put into words what a lot of people, including myself, feel about modern customer service, and especially the fraud that AI provides an adequate replacement for knowledgeable service. Tech companies have sold that fantasy to boards of directors, but it remains an incredibly fast way to break customer loyalty.
James’ article is short and has been reposted online already, so it is repeated here in its entirety for your amusement.
If you haven’t felt this way while waiting on hold recently, please tell me how?
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I was recently on hold for customer service for a big website and the more I listened to their pre-recorded messages, the more I realized that the standard customer service on-hold verbiage was weasel wording of the worst stripe. Here are the 9 worst offenders and what they really mean:
1. “For your convenience…”
Translation: “We are going to greatly inconvenience you in order to increase our profit margins by having you wait.”
2. “Please remain on the line and we will be with you shortly.”
Translation: “Grab a sandwich and fire up YouTube in a side window because you’re going to be waiting for a long, long time.”
3. “Due to an unusually large call volume…”
Translation: “Due to the fact that we aren’t willing to staff up customer service…”
4. “Your call is important to us.”
Translation: “You are an expensive annoyance to us.” [VC: Your call is very unimportant to us.]
5. “Our representatives are helping customers just like you.”
Translation: “The one person we assigned to do customer service is at lunch.”
6. “Your feedback is important to us.”
Translation: “We want you to rat out the service reps if they don’t suck it up when you yell at them so we can stiff them, come salary review time.”
7. “You can find support more quickly on our website.”
Translation: “Please go away before we have to pay somebody to help you; we’d rather you waste your time pretending our “AI” can get you a useful answer.”
8. “We can’t wait to exceed your expectations.”
Translation: “We are actively trying, by our service policies and long wait times, to lower your expectations to the depths where you’ll be grateful if you end up talking to anything with a pulse.” [VC: Oh, and we offshore first line support to someone who speaks only Latin and located on Mars.]
9. “We appreciate your business.”
Translation: “LOL”
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