Words and phrases guaranteed to anger your customer

I suspect I attract them.  I am a magnet for badly trained call centre operatives.  Customer Service is part of marketing, whether it likes it or not.  And customer service needs to think before it speaks!

My all time favourite is "With all due respect" or its baby variant "with respect".

I really do not understand how anyone can possibly believe that this is polite.  They must hear it in parliamentary debates and believe that something about it conveys respect.  yet It means exactly the reverse.  The words that come after it are almost always able to be rendered as "you are wrong".

The caller may be wrong.  The caller may be so wrong they are off the scale of wrongness, but that is not the way to handle it.  Try instead "I see what you mean," and then use the old Pace, Pace and Lead technique, or the Feel, Felt Found technique - you know the one.  "I know how you feel.  Others have felt that before.  What they have found is..."  Odd as it seems, this alms most irate customers.  It means "You are listening and understand."

Close behind is "I'm sorry, but...", which means, of course, "I am saying I am sorry, but I am not."  And the next words are pretty much "you are wrong".  Ah, OK, we're back to that again!

Then "It's against our policy" is a great follow on.  I find that, when policy comes in to the conversation, service leaves it.  The policy item tells me that there is no hope of anyone even attempting to meet my needs because they have a policy to hide behind.  Customer Service may run out of options, of course It may.  But this is not the way to handle it.

"You will have to..."  No, I will not.  I have to do nothing at all, least of all when told this over the phone by someone in a call centre.  How about "Let me help you sort this out.  I have a process I need to go through, and if you can help me with (answers) the I can help you with (problem)"

"When would be convenient to call you back?" This sounds great.  However, it is too often unchecked.  If offering a callback, and if it can not, for some reason happen at that time, you must call to state the reason why it cannot happen.  Today I was offered a callback for which I gave the entire morning as a window.  I expect a call before noon.  Neither the call nor an apology for the lack of ability to call ever came.  My expectation was set incorrectly, and I now have a new thing to complain about.  We do not want to give folk new things to complain about.

"You can't speak to a manager." Always an interesting one, that.  Why not?  Seriously, why not?  What is the manager for?  What about a different operative whose role is to "be" the manager?

"They left the office at 4,and there is no-one else who can take your call" Oh, really?  Well, why not?  I appreciate that staff work staggered shifts, but make sure that you service my needs as a customer.  I'm one of the people who pay your salary by buying stuff from your organisation after all.

"I haven't been able to speak much during this conversation"  I just had that!  Well, no, she hadn't.  I was delivering information about my complaint.  It wasn't a matter of taking turns, it was a matter of her recording what had to be recorded.  I'm truly sorry she felt the need for a bigger part.  What an extraordinary attitude and what a huge lack of goof role playing training. It's not a common one.   I think it was a one off. But it got very high on the Richter Scale immediately.

I'll add some more as I think of them.  Meanwhile how about you?  Use the comments and tell me your pet hates!