The Language of Comfort

Watercooler
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Customer service has its own language of comfort. Empathy, mostly.

Has customer service empathy ever made you feel better?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Has it ever made you feel worse?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
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Post examples in comments as you come across them. Particularly those from Wyze.

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I got yer example right here, pal!

First and foremost, I want to sincerely apologize for the delay in addressing your ticket and for the inconvenience of having multiple agents involved without fully resolving your issue. The previous representatives who initially assisted you may not have been available to provide updates, which is why your ticket was reassigned to ensure that your concerns are addressed promptly.

This is a quote from a recent Wyze Ticket. This was the sixth Wyze Wizard updating that ticket, and

  • there was no meaningful “delay” (I think Wyze Support is actually pretty prompt with most ticket responses)
  • there was also no resolution to the issue (which I didn’t actually expect from Support, because I think its root is in a new app bug)
  • previous Wyze Wizards had insisted upon a screenshot even after I had directed them to a video that demonstrated a walk-through of the issue as it happens (so I just took a screenshot from the video and drew a red box around the error message)

The experience (and many like it) left me feeling like I’m just getting the runaround (which is not the same thing as the mess around).

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Whether by design or not, it seems like we are being trained to accept incoherence in communication on all fronts.

‘Oh, I wasn’t responsive to your particular situation, as opposed to your general type of situation, from which category I chose this canned response?’

I doubt the agents are any more thrilled with this technique than the customers, which prompts the question: who exactly is this satisfying?

The data boys I guess, serving the interest of the finance boys, by teasing out of raw incoherence some dim but profitable ‘truth.’

Good music :musical_note:

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I like that question, and when I think about specific instances of human behavior in general—not just customer service interactions—I often find myself asking this very similar question: Who are you helping?[1] Often, I believe the answer is that it isn’t really helping anyone in any meaningful way.

  1. Sometimes it’s this: How is this helping? ↩︎

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Who are you helping?

Take Zuckerboy. Please. Also Gates. Please. It’s a long list.

Their ilk wouldn’t know genuine empathy if it bit them in the ass. But feigned empathy, pseudo empathy, genetically modified empathy, these they know, and thus somehow feel qualified to guide the world’s social structure with their powerful ‘tools.’

Genuine empathy is stupid powerful. Crazy powerful. You really do have to be careful who you point it at. :slight_smile:

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I have said for literally years that Mark Zuckerberg can zuck my :mirror_ball::mirror_ball:.[1]

This reminds me of a psychiatrist I once heard talking about how important it is to have genuine empathy (and I believe that’s the actual phrase he used) for patients. There’s real value to that for a number of different reasons.

  1. Not literally, though. ↩︎

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She’s lived a life like ours. She knows us.

She gets us. She sees us. She is us.

As a speechwriter, would you hesitate to make this leap?

Simile: She’s like us.
Metaphor: She is us.

Even stupid powerful empathy does not effect a ‘merge.’

What happens to the displaced person?

Embodied, I guess.

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I must say, that in the heat of indignation, the agents’ responses seemed more objectional than they do to me now.

A lesson in that, I suppose. :slight_smile:

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If you’re asking me this question, then I suppose my answer is that I don’t expect—nor do I generally find—genuine empathy in political speech. It’s often impassioned (even if the emotion is feigned[1]) and designed to elicit a particular response from the listener, so I think that’s what a speechwriter would try to do, and that’s the kind of behavior I would expect. Scruples be damned!

I don’t think anyone would ever accuse me of being a political speechwriter. At least, I hope not. :grimacing:

  1. As was my fauxlidarity with @habib. :canada::wink: ↩︎

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More languages of comfort:

  • Humor
  • Listening well
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:point_up:[1] This post just makes me smile. :smiling_face:

Incidentally, I failed to acknowledge this earlier:

Obviously, I can’t take any credit for that, but I’m glad you appreciate the selections and taste.

  1. Yes, I’m pointing again. I’m so rude! ↩︎

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