Your wait time may be excessive. If consumer sites operated like government sites.
When calling the DMV today for questions about transferring the title of a vehicle, I was greeted with the following message once I navigated through the automated phone tree:
“May I have your attention. We are experiencing a higher than normal volume of calls. Your wait time may be excessive.”
Excessive? Did they really say that? On the heels of a similar post by Yabia, I couldn’t help but post my own reminder that viewing your business through the eyes of your customer or a consumer is critical to providing satisfying service.
“Excessive” implies an amount or degree too great to be reasonable or acceptable
My beef with the above recorded message is the use of the word “excessive.” Excessive is so often used in conjunction with something overly negative (excessive speeding, excessive drinking, etc.), why on earth would you use this language with your customers?
Now, granted, this is local government — generally an area where I rarely find customer service going above and beyond the call of duty. This automated message is either a complete stroke of genius by realistically acknowledging that the wait time is totally unacceptable…or a sobering realization of the lack of awareness. My vote is for the latter.
Soften the blow
If your phone system doesn’t support the ability to tell a caller how long they will wait, then don’t mention anything about the wait time being excessive. At the very least, choose different wording if transparency is your objective.
It makes me wonder: what would life be like if we lived in a world where there was only one supplier for each product we used in our day-to-day lives? Would you also have “excessive” wait times?
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