{"id":1031640,"date":"2023-02-02T23:55:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T07:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zeislerconsulting.com\/?p=2873"},"modified":"2023-02-02T23:56:38","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T07:56:38","slug":"i-told-the-agent-i-was-sorry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/i-told-the-agent-i-was-sorry\/","title":{"rendered":"I told the agent I was sorry"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was on the phone with an agent on a support line the other day and I told her that I was sorry.<\/p>\r\n

No, I didn\u2019t apologize\u2026<\/p>\r\n

I\u2019d<\/em> done nothing wrong\u2026 Yes, I was upset, I was disappointed, I was frustrated.<\/p>\r\n

But I\u2019d treated the agent with the utmost respect and courtesy and didn\u2019t take it out on her.  Such is the subtle difference between saying \u2018Sorry,\u2019<\/em> and apologizing<\/em>.  You can be sorry for someone\u2019s circumstances for which you have no responsibility.  On the other hand, you should apologize if you<\/em> do something wrong.  In this case, it was the former, not the latter.<\/p>\r\n

So I did<\/em> tell her that I was sorry\u2026<\/p>\r\n

I was sorry that she had to work for a brand and leadership that so distrusted and disrespected their own agents that they refused to allow her to address my issue\u2026 leaving her unarmed and unauthorized to do what, from the Customer\u2019s perspective (and hers as well, based on her guarded words) seemed the most obvious and clear thing to do to make things right.<\/p>\r\n

What a truly horrible employer this was, to not only do its Customers so badly, but also to make making it right so incredibly impossible for their own employees<\/em>.  Tell us\u2014your customers<\/em>\u2014to go to hell, sure\u2026but what about those poor people you cynically call your \u201cteam\u201d?  You invested in them\u2026told them they\u2019re terribly important to you, spent time and effort teaching them about your policies and your procedures and tools.  Heck, you pay<\/em> them to disappoint your Customers.<\/p>\r\n

So I\u2019m sorry\u2026 I\u2019m sorry I have to deal with your terrible brand, yes.  But I\u2019m also sorry\u2014more so, in a way\u2014that your boss would put you in the position to make you enforce your company\u2019s terrible policies, offer no way out for your Customers, then on top of it put you<\/em> in the position to have to suffer the abuse you likely encounter from less magnanimous Customers who likely do<\/em> take it out on you.  Oh sure\u2026I imagine this poor agent spends most of the day simultaneously defending a policy she disagrees with while enduring the slings and arrows of Customers who just want the same thing that she\u2019d<\/em> want if in her Customers\u2019 position.<\/p>\r\n

Human empathy is a tremendous quality to have, and as I\u2019ve mentioned before<\/a>, part of being both the best<\/em> and worst<\/em> Customers, as CX professionals, is that we\u2019re expected to be gracious and not take it out on the support team members who happen to take our calls.  It\u2019s tough that we, as CXers, may have higher expectations, but it\u2019s vital we constantly keep things in perspective and not take it out on the Customer-facing folks we encounter when we\u2019re Customers ourselves.  In fact, that\u2019s part of it\u2026recognizing that, by and large (of course, there are always exceptions, and for that matter, from time to time, an agent genuinely is having a bad day or maybe even is<\/em> a bad agent), anybody you encounter on a help line wants<\/em> to help.  Not only is that sense of empathy and personability one of the things that even bad CX brands hire for to fill these roles, but the job itself is unlikely to attract people who don\u2019t at least have some<\/em> disposition toward wanting to help people.<\/p>\r\n

So, no.  Don\u2019t take it out on them\u2026take pity<\/em> on them.  You\u2019ll maybe get what you need (after an escalation perhaps, or even if not, it\u2019s not usually the end of the world).  But those poor souls are at the mercy of playing a nearly impossible role for a brand that clearly doesn\u2019t care about them any more than they do about their Customers.  But by the way, shame on the brand.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was on the phone with an agent on a support line the other day and I told her that I was sorry.
\nNo, I didn\u2019t apologize\u2026
\nI\u2019d done nothing wrong\u2026 Yes, I was upset, I was disappointed, I was frustrated.
\nBut I\u2019d treated the agent with the utmost respect …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16767,"featured_media":1017174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128,92,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16767"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031640"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1031807,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031640\/revisions\/1031807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1017174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1031640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1031640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}