Say This, Not That
By: Laura Jollay, Global Contact Services (GCS)
How do you feel when someone says the phrase “telemarketing?” Many of my co-workers (including myself) cringe a little inside. Why? Because it sounds negative.
In fact, the word “telemarketing” gives little insight into what it is we actually do at GCS. Our scope of work is much broader than that. We perform customer interactions for several industries, manage business process outsourcing solutions for our clients and receive inbound customer service calls, just to name a few.
The “tele-m” word is just one of many we are enthusiastically phasing out of our vocabulary. At GCS, we want our clients and anyone who hears about us to understand we are a professional company that takes its work and the interactions with our clients’ customers seriously.
By eliminating those dated, negative words and phrases, we are replacing them with more professional-sounding, upbeat terms that more accurately describe what is that we do.
Here is our list of words and phrases to knock out and rejuvenate:
Use Contact Center instead of Call Center:
Because we do so much more than just make phone calls, this term is irrelevant; therefore, we use the term “contact center” to describe where our associates at GCS perform their work.
Use Service Center instead of Call Floor:
This term is much like the one above. We use the phrase “service center” to describe the central point of our locations.
Use Call Guide instead of Script:
Not everything our associates say to customers is written verbatim for them to read. We like to promote positive customer interactions that allow our associates the opportunity to connect to their customers. The term “script” sounds as if our associates have little to no freedom to make those interactions their own; therefore, we use the term “call guide.” For some clients, the call guides are verbatim but for others, they simply imply ways to make the presentation more effective to the customer.
Use Response instead of Rebuttal:
You rebut someone in a debate by essentially offering an argument. We don’t do that at GCS. Instead, we respond to our customers when they have questions or concerns by what it is we are offering for them. This is why we say “response” instead of rebuttal.
Use Associate instead of Rep:
Our employees mean a lot to us. Referring to them as “reps” gives very little value to their importance at GCS; therefore, we refer to our employees in the contact center as “associates.”
What other words and phrases do you like to change or omit to give some lift to your organizational language?
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