Daniel Greene

Blog

  • Straight Talk for Customer Service Reps

    Heads up, customer service representatives! The way you talk to me is bugging me. Here are some of the phrases I could do without:

    “With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

    You say ‘with’ at the beginning of the sentence or at the end, not both. Better yet, don’t say this prissy phrase at all. Just ask me what my name is, please.

    “I will be more than happy to help you.”

    ‘Happy’ would be more than happy enough. Don’t tell me you’ll be happy to help me. Just help me.

    “I know exactly how you feel.”

    No, you don’t. Anyway, I’m not asking for your empathy. I’m asking for your help. You don’t need to say, “I know I would be really frustrated if I couldn’t get on the Internet, use my apps, or make phone calls and text.” What I really feel you are doing with these empathic paraphrases is subliminally reminding me how much I need my cell phone and your service. Thanks, but I don’t need to be reminded that you have me by the balls. 😉

    “Definitely / Absolutely / Fantastic / Perfect”

    Few things in this world are definite, absolute, fantastic, or perfect. You are using empty superlatives. And it really bothers me when you use them in every sentence. “I can definitely help you with that. I can definitely understand your concern. I can definitely get you over to another representative who can help you with that.” You know what? That’s not communication. It’s interference.

    “Just give me a moment…”

    Believe it or not, I am relatively patient. Ask me to hold and I’ll hold. But ask me to bear with you every 15 seconds and you try my patience. Just put me on hold, do your thing, and get back to me. Every moment you ask me to give you another moment is a moment you could solve my problem while I chill out.

    “My computer’s running slow today… I need to get to another screen…”

    Really? A slow computer? That is so last century. Another screen? I don’t care how many screens you have to get to. That’s your business. I don’t need to know how you do your job. I just need you to do it.

    And finally… “Is there anything else I can help you with before I transfer you?”

    No! 99.9% of the time, no. Your question presumes that you helped me with anything in the first place. If you have to transfer me to a higher level of tech support, you obviously couldn’t help me. I know you tried to help me, but you didn’t help me. And if I asked for your help before but I didn’t get it from you, why would I make the same mistake twice? Just transfer me so I can get the help I need, thanks.

    Here’s what you can do:

    Here’s what you can do, reps: tell your bosses that your customers aren’t happy with the scripts. Yes, I know you have scripts. Everyone has scripts. Don’t tell me you don’t have scripts. Tell your higher-ups that those scripts are tired, old, and irritating (to the customers, that is; you don’t have to tell them you you really feel). Tell them your customers are asking for plain English, short scripts, and real help. And when you don’t have a script telling you what to say, don’t say so much.

    Here’s what you can do, customers: tell your reps what I just told them to tell their bosses. Ask to speak with a supervisor and tell them how you feel. Share this on Facebook. Retweet it on Twitter. Print it and mail it to your granny; that is, if she isn’t on Facebook already.

    Here’s what you can do, bosses: listen to your reps and your customers! If you are a process designer, systems engineer, customer satisfaction specialist, or what-have-you, then you are a highly-educated, well-intentioned person. So take note. Things were better when people talked plain before you taught them to talk pretty. Let your reps keep it short and sweet. Keep their scripts to a minimum. Teach them succinctness and simplicity.

    Drop the nonsense. You could boost customer satisfaction and efficiency by talking less and doing more. You could serve more customers in less time. And you could seem smarter doing it.

    Talk to me

    What are your pet peeves? How do you want to be helped? Do you have any ideas on how to give good customer service without talking so much? Leave a comment, and if it’s not spam, I’ll allow it. 🙂

  • Shakespeare or Bust



    Shakespeare or Bust
    Originally uploaded by Daniel Greene

    I’ll be interpreting the Southwest Shakespeare Company‘s production of Richard III this Saturday at the Mesa Arts Center. I have listened to the readthru umpteen times, rented the movie with Ian McKellan, spent hours translating the Elizabethan English into ASL, seen the show four times and practiced interpreting it twice. Tonight I and my interpreting partner will do a “dress rehearsal” of interpreting the show on stage before an audience. The performance we will be interpreting will be the theater company’s second-to-last performance of this production. If anyone is interested in going, I have a limited number of free tickets.

  • I break for descenders

    Notice anything interesting about the sentence in this screenshot? Yes, it contains every letter in the English latin alphabet. Incidentally, it is set in Lucida Grande regular typeface. But what’s interesting about it, to me, is how the underlining breaks around the descenders— those tails of the letters q, j, p, y, and g that "descend" below the baseline.

    I learned a long time ago that professional typography calls for minimal use of underlining, and when you must underline, you should place the underlines by hand so that they break before and after descenders. That way, you don’t get aesthetically displeasing line crossings on the letters.

    What I didn’t know was that Mac OS X’s TextEdit program automatically breaks underlines before and after descenders. I don’t know when this feature was added, but I never noticed it before now. It’s great that there’s a program that automates the breaking of underlines so that they don’t cross descenders. It’s interesting to me that TextEdit — a program that comes with the Mac OS — does this, but Pages, a more advanced text editing and layout application, does not. I think it would be a good thing if Pages would offer all the features that TextEdit offers. Perhaps they will integrate Pages more with the Mac OS X font panel in the next version. I notice you can use the font panel to choose fonts and styles in Pages, but the underlining does not break around descenders in Pages the way it does in TextEdit— or MacJournal, for that matter, which integrates with the Font Panel as well as TextEdit does.

    Am I missing something? Does Pages ’09 automatically break underlines around descenders? Are there other word processing programs that do? I would love to hear more about this from your experience.

  • Ah, the splendor of chocolate!

    I baked this confection using this flourless chocolate cake recipe. Is it delicious? Oh. My. God is it delicious! I had originally bought these eight mini Hershey’s Special Dark bars to eat as little desserts, but today I decided I wanted to bake a flourless chocolate cake for the first time. I found the recipe above which called for four ounces of bittersweet chocolate, so these “8-.49 oz bars” filled the bill perfectly! We also happened to have Hershey’s cocoa (natural unsweetened) in the house as well as sugar, unsweetened butter, and eggs (we’re a baking household). Oh, boy is it good! I’m so glad I decided to bake it.

    One thing I would recommend, though, is to follow the recipe and use an “eight-inch” cake pan as opposed to this 9″ cake pan, because the smaller the pan, the taller the cake. And this one could stand to be a smidge taller. Other than that, «magnifique»!

  • Singing “Music Music Music!”

    This song, which I remember from a record my mom gave me when I was a little kid, is called Music! Music! Music! It was written in 1949 by Stephen Brewer and Bernie Baum, and it was popularized in the same year by singer Teresa Brewer.