Customer interactions, both good and bad, are likely to affect brand loyalty. You, as a customer service agent, must ensure that every caller is pleased with your service skills, so that the business which you represent is not negatively affected by the consequences of your customer interaction. To do this, you must be made aware of common customer service phrases that irritate callers.
Listed below are 5 such statements and suitable suggestions for how to refrain from using them.
1. What were your details again?
A common source of customer frustration comes from when they are made to repeat their personal information and details to a call center agent. Customers appreciate efficiency, so make sure that you have clearly recorded such details in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, in order to avoid repeating yourself. As a representative of your company, the customer will consider your efficiency as a trademark for the business.
2. I’ll get him/her to call you back in a minute.
Putting an ambitious time limit on when a colleague will continue a customer enquiry can be tricky. If you offer the customer such a time restriction, and your co-worker fails to work to it, this can be misconstrued as laziness on your colleague’s and your own part. Thus, you risk damaging your company’s reputation. Unless you are absolutely certain that the other person will be able to contact the customer within the required time limit, never offer one.
3. Let me investigate.
Whilst it may seem a perfectly legitimate statement to make, this phrase is too vague and can cause the customer to feel like they are about to be involved in a massively drawn-out situation. You must remember that efficiency is crucial to effective customer service. Therefore, you should inform them of your action plan for resolving their query and provide them with a realistic time period in which you will deliver that solution.
4. You are our priority.
As a call center agent, you are probably going to receive hundreds of calls every day, and the majority of these callers will understand the sheer number of people that you have been talking to. Therefore, it is likely that the customer will feel patronised by such a comment, knowing that you have only said it to “sweeten them up”. So instead, divert yourself from using such language and simply present your intentions to solve the matter, whist ensuring that the customer is happy with each detail provided.
5. Please can you hold for a moment?
Being forced to wait is something that no customer enjoys and it can cause them to feel frustrated when they have little idea of why you have done so. In order to minimise such frustration, keep them informed of the actions that you intend to take while they are on hold.
