Be careful that when you piece together your customer service scripts, they don’t contradict each other.
I recently used Turbotax to file my taxes. I signed up for the Audit Defense because I fell for their fear marketing.
Everything was working smoothly until I was forced to pay twice before I could submit my taxes for filing.
I emailed Intuit’s customer service requesting a refund for the second payment.
The response was:
I understand that you need a refund for the Turbo Tax Audit Defense for 2008 since you have been double charged. Please do not worry; I will help you to resolve your issue.
I would like to inform you that we are unable to process the refund for the Audit Defense since it is a separate department. I will go ahead and provide you the contact number of the Audit defense customer service so that they will assist you better in this regard.
This email starts out good, since she accurately confirmed my problem. She even promised to help me resolve my issue. Unfortunately, she fails to do so just one sentence later. Ouch.
I guess that, technically, she did help resolve my issue by getting me another step closer to resolution. However, this email didn’t solve my problem nor was it worth the 2 business day wait.
Your first response to a customer should get them as close to resolution as possible. Hand off the email in-house to other departments before responding to the customer if necessary.
If you cut and paste a response to a customer, always read it through before hitting “send”. Does it make sense all together? Does it flow nicely?