That's the greeting that's now mandated to the employees of the state government of South Carolina by its governor Nikki Haley:
Haley said the change will boost the morale of state workers, remind them they work for the callers on the other end of the line and help her sell the state to employers.
“It’s part of who I am,” Haley said. “As hokey as some people may think it is, I’m selling South Carolina as this great, new, positive state that everybody needs to look at.”
Among the state agencies that are part of Haley’s Cabinet is the state’s prison system. Others include commerce, education, public safety and health.
Will that work to improve the morale of callers and those that answer the phones? Or is it just plain silly? What do YOU think the greetings should be?
http://www.thestate.com/2011/09/28/1988571/its-a-great-day-not-to-be-in-prison.html
"State employees have not received cost of living increases in four years and no merit-based raises since 2001. Layoffs and furloughs have been commonplace in the last few years. The General Assembly is talking now about making cuts to their pension plans."
No, it's not really a great day in SC when you have 11.1% unemployment and that has been rising steadily since Governor Haley took office.
http://www.thestate.com/2011/09/29/1990461/reviews-mixed-on-haley-greeting.html
Plus hearing it is just gonna be disconcerting. Imagine calling up the DMV and hearing "It's a Great Day in South Carolina. How may I help you." Ugh.
Some departments like the tourist department or the parks department or voter registration office could use the "great day" greeting and it would be very cool, both for callers and for the folks answering the phone. But I'm thinking for a lot of the offices a traditional greeting like "Thank you for calling the South Carolina Revenue Department. How can I help you today?" would be more appropriate.
And older callers might especially feel more comfortable with a more traditional greeting,too. I could see the odd new happy statement greeting rather than a plain declaration of whom you've reached and an offer for assistance being a bit confusing for folks used to old-fashioned phone routine. It would waste time to end up clarifying things. A whole lot of calls with the new greeting would end up started out with "Huh? Is this the DMV? I'm trying to get in touch with the DMV? Who is this?" rather than just quickly being able to get right to the meat of the conversation and to work on the customer service.
I once worked at a restaurant where we started a new telephone greeting that wasn't a basic "Thank you for calling X Restaurant, how may I help you?" and it was a nightmare. We abandoned it very quickly. It just frustrated customers and the frustrated customers lead to unhappy employees and everyone dreading answering the phone.
The only downside is that there will be callers with equally bitter responses as the ones shown here. But I would rather talk to an upbeat happy person than a negative "I haven't received a pay raise in 4 years, so I deserve to treat people like crap" person.
There's a difference between having a policy in place to have employees answer the phone professionally and politely, and having them sound like mindless idiots.
Back when I was answering phones for [major telecom], We were REQUIRED to answer the phone with, "Thank you for calling [telecom], how may I provide you with excellent service?" But you have to understand that once a customer has finally gotten to a human being, they have NO patience for a greeting that long. They immediately hate you for it. If they're really irritated they'll cut you off, sometimes they'll even curse at you for saying such a long greeting.
It was even worse when we were ending the call, where we were required to say, "Thank you for calling [telecom], you can call us any time at [telephone number] or find us on the web at [URL]. This one was even more horrible because by that point the customer is DONE talking to you and wants you to SHUT THE EFF UP. And it was especially bad when the customer's internet was down (and we were sending a tech out the next day, or sending them a new router to fix it), because they would angrily say, "Well I can't do that, can I? My internet is down."
Greetings like this seem like a good idea to someone who has never, ever taken calls. To someone who has, they seem like a way to torture both employees and customer.
You want to make those gov't employees happy? Allow them to answer the phones like human being instead of robots.
So stupid and so pointless.
Where's your fiscal responsibility, South Carolina!?
For her next attempt at boosting morale, the governor will be slashing benefits and doing across the board pay cuts. Government workers like that sort of thing, right? The governor is pretty sure they do!
Call them up loads of time and when they finish their long bloated spiel say "what?". Do that three or four times, guaranteed to make them explode.
>> Greetings like this seem like a good idea to someone who has never, ever taken calls. To someone who has, they seem like a way to torture both employees and customer.
Couldn't agree more. Let the gov himself take calls like that for a month or so, let's see how he likes it. :D
"Welcome to South Caroline - we're too small to be a republic, but too big to be an insane asylum."