For Better Customer Service and Employee Engagement, Ditch the Script

In the earliest days of the contact center, the script was born. There was (ostensibly) a good reason for it: It ensured that agents, particularly new ones, were hitting all the necessary call elements, and using the right language with customers. If they weren’t skilled sellers, scripts helped them greet properly, explain all the pertinent points, ask for the sale and thank the customer. The call center script, however, has outlived its usefulness.

Customers today are busy and want to spend the least amount of time possible on the phone. Scripts tend to lengthen calls, and this, in turn, makes for a lesser customer experience, according to customer service consultant Denise Graziano writing for Business2Community.

“Scripts don’t solve customer complaints and help retain clients, people do — if they are properly trained and granted authority to respond as needed to satisfy customers,” she wrote. “Customer service scripts create bad customer experiences. Companies that believe they can better control customer service outcomes for clients by scripting their employees are naive. Savvy consumers have choices and voices.”

And today, more than ever, customers use those voices to share their experiences with peers, family and friends, which influences potential new customers. Nobody has ever – EVER – raved about an experience with a company that was based on a call center script (except, perhaps, in an angry way). To ensure that the customer experience remains positive and customers can get off the phone with their issue solved as fast as possible, toss out the script and ensure the agents are properly trained, able to answer questions (or find answers for unusual questions) and scheduled properly so that enough customer support personnel are available when the phone rings.

Hiring capable, intelligent agents and training them properly to the company’s products and services can go a long way toward ensuring that all call elements are properly handled without a script, according to Graziano.

“Properly train your CS phone team on the company products, corporate beliefs on satisfying customers, and make them feel invested in the company,” she wrote. “Armed with the proper training, they will be able to genuinely interact with and calm your customers down quickly. Investing in this employee training is much better than creating scripts with obviously rote responses, and more formal language than how people naturally speak.”

Another upside to replacing scripts with better trained, better scheduled agents armed with knowledge bases is that these works will feel they have more control over their jobs and are accomplishing more. This, in turn, leads to better employee engagement. Workers will align their own success with the success of the organization, and gain a feeling of shared prosperity when the company does well.

Still worried workers won’t engage customers properly without a script? Considering using guidelines instead, according to Graziano.

“Trust your well-trained employees to talk freely and resolve the issue for your client following the procedures you have put in place,” she wrote. “When crafting your guidelines, keep in mind that 47 percent of those surveyed said their most frustrating aspects of a poor customer service experience was having to contact a company multiple times for the same reason. Forty-three percent were frustrated when they were passed from agent to agent, while 35 percent disliked being put on hold for a long period. Make your guidelines simple and responsive, with procedures for client follow up and resolution.”

Edited by Stefania Viscusi