Customer Service

“No Problem:” The Vuvuzela Of Customer Service

“No hassle at all.” That’s exactly what the younger guy on the telephone at the bank said to me once. I thanked him for not being capable of answering my query. He didn’t say, “I’m sorry I wasn’t capable of being of more help,” or “I’ll be glad to take a message.” Instead, he slumped into the verbal scourge of the 21st-century market: when an employee serving a client says, “No trouble.” In addition to the sound being harmonically dissonant to a patron’s ear, “No Hassle” is also cognitively dissonant to the Universe due to its misuse inside the following carrier situations, both of which can be irrelevant and unprofessional: 1.

While conducting a business transaction with a customer, any employee introduces the word “hassle” into the conversation when, till that second, there wasn’t one! Should clients be worried that their presence at a $$$$, tablecloth eating place creates some issue, concern, or hassle? Has this waiter, whose tip on my own could be as much as a week’s groceries, been rudely inconvenienced in some manner? “No trouble” spoils the most lovely market moment when each client and enterprise are "No Problem:" The Vuvuzela Of Customer Service 1happiest: consummating a successful enterprise transaction. 2. In the remediation of a purchaser subject, like returning a defective product, inquiring about an incorrect invoice, or the Vichyssoise is served piping hot, an employee says, noticeably, “No problem.” Of path, through definition, this is technically erroneous and professionally incompetent because there is trouble!

If you ask a pal to help you circulate on Saturday and they refuse with a heartfelt apology and reasonable excuse, your “No worries” is appropriate. But when you display up at an enterprise with a fist full of tough-earned cash, do you experience relief at being absolved and forgiven for some apparent behavioral breach of consumer crime? At the same time, a worker anoints you with, “No trouble?”  How did being served transmogrify into what sounds like the customer needs to offer an apology? “No hassle” is fingernails across a chalkboard or that silly horn they blow at South African football games.

So, how did the professionally chic “It’s my pleasure” devolve into “No trouble,” the vuvuzela of customer service? One phrase: laziness. And it manifests as push aside at first class and disregard at worst. There are 228,132 phrases within the English language (I counted). Armed with this accessible and huge linguistic toolbox, if a worker can’t know a purchaser’s words nicely enough to form the perfect reaction, that’s laziness. But as virtually because the deliverer of an inappropriate “No problem” needs to be indicted for not announcing, “Please permit me to assist you with this real problem of a broken product in an unopened container,” or “Thank you on your business,” the laziness larceny isn’t all theirs. “No trouble” first offenders end up recidivists because they have no longer been educated on how to speak as experts, which begs our departure from the aural offense to comply with the money.

Duane Simpson

Internet fan. Zombie aficionado. Infuriatingly humble problem solver. Alcohol enthusiast. Spent several months exporting UFOs in Jacksonville, FL. A real dynamo when it comes to exporting gravy in Tampa, FL. Spent 2001-2004 implementing saliva in Edison, NJ. Had moderate success getting my feet wet with junk food on Wall Street. Practiced in the art of building Virgin Mary figurines in Tampa, FL. Practiced in the art of marketing Roombas in Phoenix, AZ.

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