Many customer experience blogs, including some of our own, will stress the importance of making every customer interaction personalized and engaged. Using the customer’s name, having knowledge of the purchase history, listening for empathy and comprehension, remembering to mention the current promotions or suggest the right add-ons—these are all critical. But there’s a fine line between a genuine interaction and using such an overly scripted model that will only leave a customer feeling like he or she is talking to a robot. While it’s wise to give your employees clear guidelines and training on how you want your sales and customer service processes to work, going to extremes in scripting will have unintended consequences.
Rigidity is a Distraction
The most obvious concern with scripting your sales and service interactions is the risk of creating what is little more than a flowchart that will stifle genuine conversation. Structure is good, but scripts can make interactions feel forced and artificial. In situations where employee follow a predefined script to the letter down to specific phrases, the natural flow of conversation will be disrupted, and the conversation’s artificiality will become increasingly noticeable by the customer. When customers sense the unnatural repetition or awkward transitions that a script creates, they’re going to begin to feel as though their concerns are not being genuinely understood and addressed.
Overuse of Personalization
Personalization is a hallmark of excellent customer service, and one of the best ways to do that is to use the customer’s name during the interaction. But if we overemphasize this idea, you could end up in a situation where employees insert the customer’s name into practically every sentence. What might begin as an authentically friendly interaction might transform into an annoying and insincere one. Customers might become aware of how hard the employee is working to try to forge a personal connection, which will naturally make them suspicious that the employee is trying to manipulate them in some way.
Uncommon Phraseology
The last pitfall we want to mention today is uncommon phraseology—that is, teaching your employees to use specific and attention-grabbing phrases as a kind of signature for how your business interacts with its customers. There are some famous examples, such as how one fast-food chain requires all its employees to use “my pleasure” rather than “you’re welcome.” Another example would be a consumer electronics company that has instructed its employees to never use the negative-sounding word “unfortunately” and to substitute “as it turns out” instead. We’re not saying you should never employ this tactic; just remember that your customers are savvy and that they will detect this prescribed language. When all of your employees start to sound like carbon copies of one another, their interactions will feel contrived.
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Instead of relying on robotic-sounding flowchart with forced personalization and awkward catchphrases, teach your employees to make your sales and service processes their own. That is to say, encourage them to personalize the way they personalize! While you’re right to want your employees to say the right things, don’t detract from the customer experience by transforming your employees into automated systems. If you don’t want customers to feel like numbers, don’t turn your employees into formulas!
There are ways to ensure your staff training encourages individualism and creativity, and not just script-reading. Reach out to us at The Brandt Group today to learn more about our leadership courses, as well as our world-class mystery shopping services, which are perfect for helping you learn about your customers’ point-of-view and their opinions on how authentic their interactions with your business are.
