Customer Service Worker Earns Great Feedback For Her Natural Phone Manner, But Her New Supervisor Insists She Follow The Script Instead Of Speaking In Her Own Way
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Call center scripts can keep conversations consistent, but reading every line literally can sound ridiculous.
A new supervisor threatened write-ups unless employees followed the wording exactly.
So this young worker dropped her natural style and gave one caller the full robot treatment.
Check out how quickly management changed its tune.
“Stuck to the script” so I did. Word for word.
I (18F) worked at a call center for about 3 months, mostly helping people reset passwords and answer basic questions.
During training, the told us to “sound natural and conversational.“
Cool. I did that and got great feedback from callers.
Then we got a new supervisor who flipped if we didn’t read the script exactly as written. She said, “If you deviate even slightly, you’ll be written up.”
I feel bad for the next caller.
Okay.
Next call, a guy says, “Hey, my account’s locked, can you help me real quick?”
I respond (robot mode): “Hello, thank you for calling. My name is [NAME], and I hope you’re having a wonderful day. How may I assist you with you technical concern today?”
He paused and said, “…Are you serious?”
The supervisor realized her mistake.
I kept going exactly word for word. Even even the weird fake empathy lines like, “I completely understand how frustrating this unique situation must feel.”
Mid call, my supervisor walked by, and actually stopped to listen. She tilted her head, looked confused, and asked after the call, “Why were you talking like that?”
I just said, “You told me to stick to the script.”
She didn’t have a comeback. And funnily enough, the next day, she told our team: “Okay, just make sure you cover the key points. You can be natural again.”
I’m surprised how quickly the supervisor realized sticking to the script wasn’t a good idea.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
These rules don’t seem helpful to the customers.
Here’s the customer’s perspective.
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Another former call center employee shares a story.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who is upset that a coworker always grabs all of the overtime and doesn’t leave any for anyone else.
Make it make sense!
This young woman followed the script word for word, including every awkward greeting and fake empathy line.
Once her supervisor heard the policy in action, the team was quickly allowed to sound natural again.
Nothing exposes bad instructions faster than a live demonstration.
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