Comments on: Expert’s Corner: Kevin Stirtz on Real People Rock!

By: Mike Brewer

Mike Brewer — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:17:06 +0000

Amen –

In my head, the chief aim of an on of offline conversation is to create a friend first. And, you can’t do that with a canned response.

By: lady a.

lady a. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:24:21 +0000

“Real people rock. If anything, I would always rather meet an imperfect human being than a fake robot. Be proud to be you, mistakes and all.”

I love this affirmation. Congrats Chris Garret, not many people can say such important things in such simple way.

By: Builders Glasgow

Builders Glasgow — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:21:57 +0000

Excellent article. Human beings are imperfect and nothing can change that simple fact. Scripting will always fail in the end as it is always limited to the number of factors chosen by the programmer, but also because every person will act a little different in the same situation (and you cannot sometimes judge whether one is better than the second one).

The main problem is that scripts are to replace human resources and time spent on something that (although far from perfection) is CHEAPER (read: inevitable in today’s world).

By: Chris Reaburn

Chris Reaburn — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 04:14:53 +0000

Unfortunately, scripts seem to proliferate in environments where real human service isn’t enabled. One of the aspects that distinguish the service organizations we consistently point to as being world-class is that their service is personalized, delivered by humans with the ability to adapt to the customer environment they are serving and make actual customer-impacting decisions.

That this type of service is much stronger than the script-based service mentioned in the post is obviously understated, but it also takes a huge corporate commitment to make it possible.

Everything from the service ethos displayed by management and staff to how they use central processes to hire for service orientation and give front line providers the tools – usually process and technology – goes into making human service possible on a grand scale.

Scripts, on the other hand, require very little in terms of investment. They require a rule book, a communication & control mechanism, and supporting metrics. Scripts are easier and cheaper, which is precisely why they’re used, even though they’re usually inneffective.