“I’m sorry, I’m new here.”
I was loitering at reception towards the end of the day, waiting for a rather heavy rainstorm to dissipate before I ran to my car. We had a new person up at the front-desk who was very pleasant, so I got to shoot the breeze with her while I waited.
At one point the phone rang and she started trying to solve a technical problem for the individual on the other end of the line. She was clearly struggling and apologized to the person, stating she was new on the job. Eventually the issue was solved and the world did not end.
Most people would not think anything of this interaction. However, some people would have had a real problem with it. In fact, some may have disciplined the employee over this.
Back in 2015 I was fortunate enough to get to see the inner workings of an IT call center for 6 months. I got to see a number of things that would raise a few eyebrows of those who are inclined towards Customer Experience best practices. Bonuses for number of tickets closed was one such item, as well as the CEO telling the entire support team to “fake being nice to customers”.
The company in question sent a rather patronizing e-mail out to its support staff one day of things that should not be said during a support call. Some made sense. For example, “I’ve never seen this before” was a good item. No client wants to think they have run into a special error that is so rare that the support team have no idea what it is. It drills into their anxiety that the problem may not be fixable in a timely manner.
However I wholeheartedly disagreed with the fact that “I’m new here” was one of the blacklisted items, and I will tell you why. This particular business was the worst I’ve ever seen when it came to training their staff. To make matters worse, their product was incredibly complex and buggy. Everything was learned on the job. Year after year, employees tried to explain to management that the training was insufficient. I do remember one amusing Glassdoor review by an employee stating that the training consisted of “throwing the employees into the fire, and the ones who managed to crawl out, survived.”
When an employee says “I’m new here,” this is what is happening:
- They struggle to solve a problem that they know they should have been trained to solve
- They know the level of customer support is not on par with the expectations of the caller – i.e. "I don't have an answer, but I sense that I probably should."
- They try to reset the expectations
As we know, the Customer Experience is simply the experience divided by the expectations. By trying to reset the expectations while remaining professional, the associate is simply trying to maximize the customer's experience. Trying to BS your way through a call like this is only going to annoy the person experiencing the issue, resulting in a worse customer experience. Other workarounds, such as calling them back or finding an experienced person to help may not be an option.
If an associate finds themselves with no other alternative, there is nothing wrong with resetting the expectations in this manner. If the business is marketing itself as having an all-star support team and creating a false brand promise, then that is their mistake, not the employee’s. If your business does not set an authentic brand promise that matches the customer experience, then please don’t blame the staff when they try to do it for you. In-fact, you should be thanking them.