4 ms·

There's an important distinction between an "honest" CSR and an oversharing CSR. The response of a CSR to a complaint should be "I'm sorry this happened. Here's

There's an important distinction between an "honest" CSR and an oversharing CSR. The response of a CSR to a complaint should be "I'm sorry this happened. Here's how I will make it right". Occasionally it's OK to say "we made mistake X", but don't try to excuse the issue. Generally, the customer does not care or want to know exactly what went wrong. If I order a burger from a restaurant and it comes out wrong, I expect the establishment to apologize and quickly provide me another burger. I don't need to know that someone called in sick and there is a football team that swamped their lunch hour while they were short-staffed. Those are the restaurants problems, not mine.

ghaff 11y ago
>There's an important distinction between an "honest" CSR and an oversharing CSR. It seems an appropriate response to this (not uncommon in different contexts) situation would have been to say something like: "It turns out that even though the car you purchased was listed as available in our inventory system, it's not." At which point, the CSR should have been empowered to do something along the lines of offering an equivalent or better car for the same price and expediting delivery.
- lotharbot 11y ago
  My best-ever CSR experience: buying an engagement ring online from Blue Nile, which was supposed to arrive in time for my pre-planned out-of-state meeting with her family. There were a handful of delays that had me worried. CSR named Sean (how often do you remember CSR's name? Only when the experience is awesome) reaches out to me and says in essence "we had a supply issue and we can't get you what you ordered, so I'm going to look through our current inventory and see what I can get you that's better." A couple hours later he gives me info on a slightly bigger stone with equal-or-better specs, I OK it, and it shows up overnight. IMO it was the perfect experience. They let me know there was a problem, but didn't overshare or turn their problem into my problem. And then they let me know how they were going to solve the problem of getting me something I'd be happy with given what I thought I had ordered. And then they delivered.

ghaff 11y ago

>There's an important distinction between an "honest" CSR and an oversharing CSR. It seems an appropriate response to this (not uncommon in different contexts) situation would have been to say something like: "It turns out that even though the car you purchased was listed as available in our inventory system, it's not." At which point, the CSR should have been empowered to do something along the lines of offering an equivalent or better car for the same price and expediting delivery.

lotharbot 11y ago
My best-ever CSR experience: buying an engagement ring online from Blue Nile, which was supposed to arrive in time for my pre-planned out-of-state meeting with her family. There were a handful of delays that had me worried. CSR named Sean (how often do you remember CSR's name? Only when the experience is awesome) reaches out to me and says in essence "we had a supply issue and we can't get you what you ordered, so I'm going to look through our current inventory and see what I can get you that's better." A couple hours later he gives me info on a slightly bigger stone with equal-or-better specs, I OK it, and it shows up overnight. IMO it was the perfect experience. They let me know there was a problem, but didn't overshare or turn their problem into my problem. And then they let me know how they were going to solve the problem of getting me something I'd be happy with given what I thought I had ordered. And then they delivered.