My naive bubble was burst this past week when I learned that many business, customer-service phone representatives are not actual employees of the concerns they 'represent', but, rather employees of outside call-type centers, trained specifically to speak 'empathetically' with customers. Like most individuals, I was already aware that customer-service call centers are often located outside the soil of the United States, staffed by people who can be difficult, if not downright impossible to understand. But when I heard about the empathy training this one company, in particular, specializes in, I realized that many of the statements I've heard recently, by call-center staffers, are staged, scripted, insincere, and phony.
If a customer-service center message says, "Phone calls MAY be monitored for quality control purposes.", chances are that EVERY phone call is recorded. There are empathy-assessment supervisors who then listen to all the phone conversations, and the call-center employees are judged, rated, and assessed on the quality of their empathetic responses. When you or I receive a customer-service representative's response of "I understand that would make you frustrated.", or something similar, it's a good bet that line is on a cheat-sheet card of responses and the person with whom you are speaking is probably doing eye-rolling at the same time.
There is one, large call-center company that does most of the customer-service-response business for the insurance and credit card industries. Why am I not surprised that this company is the industry leader in empathy training?
My SO says I need to be careful about what I wish for. I know, in theory, that he is correct, but somewhere in my reptilian brain center, I really did wish that when the person on the other end of my phone or online live-chat conversation says to me, in a very caring tone, "I can understand", that it was sincere. These call-center employees are even coached on 'empathy inflection' in their voices.
Perhaps there is an antidote available. We consumers need to have BS-meter software installed on our phones. This meter would begin to loudly chime whenever the level of insincerity reaches the BS level. For some of these conversations, the chime would begin immediately and become deafening shortly into the call.
I sincerely believe this.
Ancora imparo
