What are your customers hearing when your agents use a script? A major complaint that many customers have when they call a contact center is that they feel as if they are not really communicating with agents. This is often because customer service representatives are required to stick to a script and not divert from it. Many companies use scripts when their agents are non-native English speakers or because their product or service is somewhat complicated. While there may be some benefits to using a script, customers often don’t see the purpose in them. Here’s what they hear: Answers that are questions – At many call centers — especially those based outside of the United States — agents are trained to answer questions that they can’t or don’ t want to answer with another question. This often occurs when a customer inquires about the geographic location of an agent. If your company uses the service of a domestic call center, however, this back-and-forth can be avoided. Repeated statements – Callers quickly get annoyed when an agent simply repeats everything that they have said back to them. They expect agents to quickly understand their needs and work at the same pace to resolve their problems. Trivialized concerns – Intentional or not, when call center representatives refuse to say anything other than what is written in a script, it comes off as if they don’t care about what the customer wants. It may even seem as if what the caller wants isn’t actually important. In order to provide customers with a quality experience over the phone, consider outsourcing call center services to a virtual provider based in the United States.