"Nice Business!" Podcast

Why Good Intentions Don't Fix It - Why Scripts Fall Short

• Richard Train • Season 1 • Episode 21

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0:00 | 14:28

Great customer service is not built on memorized scripts. It is built on structure, consistency, and the ability to genuinely listen.

In this episode of the “Nice Business!” Podcast™, hosts Richard Train and Jim Bob Howard unpack why so many customer service fixes fail, even when businesses invest in scripts, workshops, and training programs. While these solutions may create short-term improvements, most teams eventually fall back into the same inconsistent patterns because the real issue is not motivation or personality. It is the lack of a clear structure.

Through practical examples and real-world insight, Richard explains why scripts often create robotic conversations instead of meaningful ones. Customers can hear when someone is simply reciting lines, and the moment a conversation shifts off script, confidence often disappears. The problem is not that employees do not care. They are simply being asked to improvise without a reliable framework.

This episode also introduces the five-part structure behind successful customer calls: the opening, discovery, reassurance, assumed close, and professional wrap. Together, these steps help create conversations that feel human, helpful, and repeatable without sounding rehearsed.

At its core, this conversation is a reminder that great customer experiences should not depend on finding the “perfect” employee. With the right structure, businesses can create consistency, build trust, and make customers feel truly taken care of.

Topics Covered:

00:00 – Episode Snippet

00:26 – Welcome to the Nice Business Podcast

01:25 – Why scripts fail real conversations

03:17 – Scripts turn employees into performers

05:20 – The “lottery” of inconsistent customer experiences

07:50 – What a real call structure looks like

08:16 – The five parts of a successful call

12:02 – Improvisation is not a strategy

13:15 – Why leadership owns the problem

About Your Hosts: 

Richard Train is a Leadership Coach, Culture Consultant, and the Creator of the “Nice Business!” PodcastTM. He has spent more than 30 years helping leaders uncover the real issues behind performance, often the hidden “drama problems” that do not always show up in the numbers.

Connect with Richard Train:

Jim Bob Howard is a speaker, author, connector, and collaboration expert specializing in SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365. He helps teams and organizations communicate clearly, collaborate effectively, and connect ideas to solve real business challenges. From teaching basic tech skills to leading global events, speaking to large audiences, and coaching teams, Jim Bob is passionate about using technology to bring people and ideas together.

Connect with Jim Bob Howard:

SPEAKER_01

Companies send their CSRs to uh customer service workshop, that's fantastic. But the week after calls, you know, maybe improving noticeably, that's great. But not too much later, they're kind of back where they were. So not because the training was bad, but because your structure is personality driven, not structure. Welcome to the Nice Business Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Train, executive coach, leadership and culture consultant, and I'm joined by my good friend Jim Bob Howard, veteran technical consultant. Together we have more than 60 years combined of business and organizational experience. The purpose of this podcast is to have short but meaningful discussions about the people and culture side of business and how owners and executives can be both kind and successful.

SPEAKER_00

So we've established what's going wrong. Now, what is it that businesses can actually do about it?

SPEAKER_01

Most businesses respond with one of three things. And most people, I guarantee, most people listening to this or watching this have tried at least one of these. You write a script for your people, you run a training, and you tell people to step it up. And they all work briefly, just for a little bit, and then they don't. So it's like the beatings will continue until morale improves, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00

But scripts seem like such the obvious answer. What's wrong with them?

SPEAKER_01

Well, because the issue with scripts, the reason why they fail is that they solve the wrong problem. They control what gets said, not what happens in the actual conversation. You know, we talked a little bit about scripts being fantastic when you're an actor on stage or in a movie script, on a movie set because everybody's working off the same script, right? Right. But in business, scripts are one-sided and it assumes a perfect situation. But calls are not perfect. You've only got one side working off that script. And here's the thing: everybody hates them. Callers can hear memorization, right? It sounds hollow.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So even when I mean, even when the words are technically correct, Jim Bob, technically worn, it still sounds like a script.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and the script's actually getting in the way of what it is that you're trying to accomplish, right?

SPEAKER_01

It really, really does. I mean, it assumes that the conversation will go the way it was exactly written. And it never does.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So the second that a caller goes off script, the whole thing falls apart. Now, I have been with organizations where managers will hand somebody a script and say, memorize this, and once you get really, really good at it, you'll make it your own and you'll know where you can go off and all that stuff. But the gap between when you first try to start learning it and when you actually have mastered it is pretty huge. And what happens to every call that you take along the way. You see the problem with that? So you have no idea how much business you have been driving away until somebody gets up to speed on a script. And the script still never encounters every single thing. Even the most experienced person on a call in a call center will encounter a call that goes so far off script that they're just they're off in the desert.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And they just don't understand. And it turns the problem that here's the subtler issue with scripts is that it turns employees into performers instead of listeners.

SPEAKER_00

And just to have someone memorize a script, that's that is great when you're when you can do the same performance every time and you know that the other actors are going to use the same script. But in this situation where every time they encounter somebody, they're off script, right? And so I'm taking this script and I'm getting it down and they're off script, and then I take and then they're off script, and I've got to adapt it every time. And you've heard the adage we talked about this earlier of the that practice makes perfect. When that's not true, practice makes permanent. And so if I'm just gonna suppose if I'm supposed to just learn the script and memorize it over time, and then I'll know how that I'm supposed to fix it or how I'm supposed to, you know, adapt it to everything, I'm learning how to adapt it from things that have gone wrong from people that have gone off script. So I may be so far from listening to what somebody has to say and actually making them feel like they matter and that I'm easy to do business with, but I've got the script down really well.

SPEAKER_01

You know, to your point, when a caller asks a question that goes off script, CSR tends to go blank or pivots awkwardly back to the script where it doesn't really fit where the conversation went. And so the whole call loses shape or structure. You know, really, in my opinion, a script is what you write when you don't trust your people, and structure is what you build when you want them to be set up to succeed.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that makes sense. So the other thing you mentioned was training. What about that? I think because you know, a lot of businesses invest quite a bit in training their people.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Well, training helps. I mean, training is an event, and events fade over time. You know, people go to training, they come back with all kinds of new ideas, and when they walk back into the same system, you know, you're you're gonna wind up going back to type, back to the way things were. And within days or weeks, you know, the training that they went through is mostly gone. And not because it was necessarily bad, but because nothing in the whole system structure changed.

SPEAKER_00

So the training isn't the problem, it's what they come back to.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. I mean, think about most inbound calls, people who take inbound calls, most businesses have what I like to call a lottery. The caller calls in and gets happens to get your best person that day. Yeah, great experience, everything's fine. Love this company.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Caller gets the new person who is kind of improvising and not really doing what they're supposed to do, and you lost that person. You lost that opportunity. Same company, uh, completely different outcome. Yeah, and the business has no idea that it's even happening. And even to that point, you could have your best person do a great job one day, but they're feeling a little off the next day, and they're not the same person that they were the day before.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Companies send their CSRs to a customer service workshop. That's fantastic. But the week after calls, you know, maybe improving noticeably, that's great. But not too much later, they're kind of back where they were. So not because the training was bad, uh, but because your structure is personality driven, not structured.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and but still that's like you said, the training's not bad, but it still feels like a waste of money, right? And that's that's a really uncomfortable thing for a business owner to sit in. Like, yeah, I spent all this money to send them to training, and like two weeks later, I it's like I gotta start over again.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so if scripts don't work and training alone doesn't hold, what does work?

SPEAKER_01

So I keep referring to a structure, right? And a structure does not necessarily mean a tighter grip, like a vice grip on your people. A way that the conversation progresses, that the CSR understands and can work within, that's a structure.

unknown

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01

It needs to be flexible enough to be human and defined enough to be repeatable. So, for instance, the answer me framework really breaks a call into five parts, five very specific parts, each with the job. And I'm gonna read some notes here just to make sure that I don't want to get this wrong because even though this is my thing that I've written up, it's important to get this right. You have the opening, you have discovery, you have reassurance, you have the assumed close, and you have a professional rap. Those are the five parts of a successful call. All of them, Jim Bob, are important. So let me go over them a little bit. The opening is what sets the tone and makes the caller feel heard and feel received. Okay. So go back when you know the last time we did uh that little role play. Something like that, that's important because I wanted to make you feel like I'm glad that you're there. Discovery, I need to understand. You may be asking me just for a price on something, and I could give you the price, and then you go on your merry way. But if I don't understand, or if you're asking me for a certain kind of widget that my company sells, okay, I want to know a little bit more about why you're asking for that particular widget. What is it that you're using it for? So I get an idea of well, maybe that's not the right thing for you. Instead, we have this other thing that might be able to fit better within your needs. So I'm being more of a service to you. So that's discovery. You have to have a better understanding of what it is that they're that they're looking for. Or it could be something as simple as um, can I ask what prompted you to call uh call my company today? Okay. Yes, I sell a widget. Yes, I can give you the price, but why'd you decide to call me?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Something, anything. Reassurance. Not this is not me being a cheerleader, like, you know, you're so great. You're so smart for calling me. You're so smart for calling me. No, it's not that. It is me making sure that you understand that you are understood, that I'm understanding what you're doing, and you're not just a number, and you call the right place. I can help you. Uh, you're it's you're not somebody just the process through my system. If I did those first three things right: the opening, discovery, and the reassurance, then the natural next step is the assumed close. Most all sales training will discuss things like an assumed close. Basically, it's like you're doing this.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You're paying me for this thing. Uh, we're just going to figure out the details. But an assumed close is not really, at least not in my opinion, a sales tactic. Instead, it is a natural next step. If you are helping somebody through all of their needs, it's simply just the next step in getting them what they need. That's the difference between it's a guide, guiding them through the next step. So that's the assumed close. And then the professional rap is simply okay, well, you know, uh you feel like you've gotten everything that you need. We have taken care of uh getting your payment. So the next question is answering your questions of, you know, these are the logistical things. How am I gonna get it? Are you gonna be sending it to me? When is this gonna come? So it's where you know what the next steps are. So by the time we end, you know exactly what's happening next.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And that's the professional rap. So those are the five parts of a successful call. And like I said, all of them matter.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So what happens when one of those pieces is missing?

SPEAKER_01

When the structure is there, even someone newer to the phone will be able to have a good call. When it's not there, even your best person is going to be improvising, and improvise improvisation is not a strategy.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So a call with a warm opening and a pleasant ending, but no discovery in the middle. The caller says, I'll think about it. And you know, they're genuinely still uncertain because no one really helped them get to where you know they needed to be. So any of those things missing, that's really what you're dealing with.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And so you said you said the newbie with the structure can have a really good call. And the veteran without a structure can have a really bad call. So this is something that a business can actually build, right? It's not about finding the right people.

SPEAKER_01

What it's about is consistency. Gotcha. Because ultimately, as a business owner, I want to make sure that my people who are answering the phone are consistent with making sure that we're helping people more and chasing people away.

SPEAKER_00

Well, this has been great. So, okay, end of this episode. What's coming next? Who actually owns this problem?

SPEAKER_01

So the next episode is going to be the one that is going to hit the hardest. Because, you know, who actually owns the problem? That's that is a big key question. The answer is almost always the person uh at the top.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Not because they caused it, uh at least not intentionally, yeah, but they're the ones who can actually fix it. Yeah. So what leaders are accidentally doing that reinforces the wrong behaviors and what it looks like when somebody finally gets it right. So that's what we'll be talking about in the next episode. Sounds great. Looking forward to it. All right, we'll talk then. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Nice Business Podcast. We hope you got some valuable information and inspiration. We're always looking for great stories that will help your business be more kind and successful. And if you know of one we should hear or someone that would be a great interview, please let us know. To contact me, click the link here to go to my website or use this QR code. I wish you a nice business.