It's a Great Day in South Carolina

We are ranked 40th in education because we made teachers' unions illegal, but It's a Great Day in South Carolina. And those awful states with their awful unions? Well, they hold down the top 10. New Jersey, with their really, really, awful union is ranked #3. America could use a little more 'awfulness'.

This snippet from the State newspaper sums up the feeling very well;

"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

Reminds me of what Craig Ferguson says on his show every day: "It's a great day for America!"

Ugh. Nothing against SC. but I'm not feeling this. Do something constructive, dont' just say things are great.

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.

Not everyone is in a happy mood when they call a government department. If you're calling with a complaint, or maybe even to report a personal tragedy of some kind, being told that 'it's a great day' is the last thing you want to hear.

Just when I think a week (a week is all I ask) has passed without my state embarassing itself, something like this happens. I'm hoping this state employee thing doesn't apply to me, but I feel like it might...I think I'll stop answering the phone.

Clearly this governor doesn't have enough to do.

I love the positivity. It's awesome. But I think Nick's right, with the formal and often less than pleasant nature of a lot of government interactions, something upbeat but just simple and polite and to the point might be better.

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.

I think "It's a great day in south carolina where troubles melt like lemon drops, and deer and unicorns frolic in the fields, how can I prostrate myself to humbly be at your service??" sounds MUCH better! *roll-eyes*

Sorry That comment was too sarcastic. I think it's a great positive greeting, I think it's good to be positive in a world where there's not a whole lot of good news, but like the others I don't think it's for government offices, nor do I think it will boost the morale of office workers, when I worked in retail I hated always having to answer to phone in a peppy happy-go-lucky manner all the time. It sounds as though she's been reading to many motivational posters

I love it.

Well, I'd rather hear that then a rude or abrupt greeting.

I would gladly take Sanford back as South Carolina’s governor just to get rid of Nikki Haley!!!

Sounds peachy keen to me. People need to lighten up a little. Of course, maybe it wouldn't be good for the answering machine at a morgue, but hey, that's pretty obvious.

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.

I work for a govt agency and a few years back we were instructed by HQ to answer the phone with a "How may I serve you today?" The reasoning we were given was that they wanted the public to know that we're a "service organization". I was one of the few who complied, but my boss told me I could stop when she heard me asking the applicants (in the chirpiest voice I could muster) if they wanted me to supersize their permits.

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.

Muzition beat me to it, but i think it just means Haley is a Craig Ferguson fan and had one of those midnight great ideas.

Oh lord, if you've never been part of a call center, you can't imagine the level of hell that this governor just mandated for government employees. I mean really, really no idea.

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.

Hmmm, wonder if my husband will have to start answering his phone like that at work now.
So stupid and so pointless.

I don't need big government telling me how to answer the phone especially with the attendant waste on memos, training and the announcement itself.

Where's your fiscal responsibility, South Carolina!?

It's especially funny to think that this awful mandate was intended to 'boost morale' of state workers.

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!

I'm a South Carolinian and I say this might actually work to some degree but only if the employees answering the phones actually sounded as though they believed it. As has been mentioned, us natives don't see things as going to great here right now, so this greeting is going to end up being spoken ironically, most of the time.

@Kev: When you have to say the same scripted sentence 300 times a day, 40 hours a week, for months or years, it becomes impossible for you to say it in any way that is not robotic. You could be saying something outrageous like, "Let me see your naked body, you studmuffin", and you would still sound like robot after thousands upon thousands of repetitions. Forcing someone to repeat a single phrase forever is not a way to boost morale. It's a form of torture.

I love places like that answer the phone like that.

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.

I think it's pretty gimmicky; I believe this is how Marriott employees are trained to answer to phones too so that makes it even more odd.

Huh. Well only someone from S.C. can say how they think things are there,so maybe my first thought doesn't apply, but the first thing that came to my mind was something I saw on Mythbuster's website the other day. Apparently you can polish a t.urd, but it still smells bad. :)

OMG! I hope this does not become a corporate fad!

Incomplete. It should read: "It's a Great Day in South Carolina and I'm a brain dead zombie. How can I help you?"

>> 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

How about this instead:

"Welcome to South Caroline - we're too small to be a republic, but too big to be an insane asylum."

Hey, I live in SC and what Ms. Haley is doing is a joke. Our actual unemployment rate is closer to 20%, most people have simply stopped looking because they know there is nothing to be found. If Ms. Haley wants to help her people, she can start by paying attention to our actual needs and not our perceived "lack of morale". Telling someone calling an unemployment office that it's a great day is stupid. If they were having a great day they sure wouldn't be calling!