Customer success vocabulary

This is why receptionists must never use the word "unfortunately"

There's a reason why a handful of phrases keep coming at us from public-facing workers across many industries. Decades and decades of trial and error have taught brands which words put customers at ease, which expressions to reach for, and which to avoid at all costs — like "unfortunately" or "I don’t know that." Let's explore 10 of the vocabulary tools used by waiters, hosts, receptionists, and customer service reps, and the real reasoning behind each one.

Have you ever been left wondering why your waitress keeps speaking in the first-person plural? That plural "we" has a name: linguists call it "the royal we", or nosism, meaning the substitution of a group pronoun for a singular one. Monarchs used it for centuries to speak as though they embodied an entire nation; King Edward VII was still doing it in official documents as late as 1902.

It’s unclear when restaurant servers picked up the habit, but it works. By including themselves in the sentence, waiters imply that every step of the dining experience is a team activity that they lead gladly.

When you thank your barista, receptionist, or cashier, you are more likely to hear "no problem" than "you’re welcome". This one stems from naturally friendly and gallant behavior that has set in society in recent decades.

Linguist Aaron Dinkin studied the phenomenon in 2017 and confirmed that younger speakers had opted out of "you’re welcome," since it suggests that effort was spent and is being graciously accepted. "No problem" is a humble assurance that the help cost nothing at all, even if it’s a little white lie at least half of the time.

Here’s something a customer never wants to hear: "Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about that." Experts advise never to use that adverb in the face of a customer’s problem, since it suggests the company is powerless or worse, indifferent.

Instead, the magic words to use are these: "Here's what I'm going to do for you." That will instantly please a customer who is looking for possible solutions. The phrase can be traced back to a 1980 policy at the Ritz-Carlton, where co-founder Horst Schulze gave every employee the authority to spend up to $2,000 per guest fixing a problem on the spot.

In 1936, Dale Carnegie wrote in How to Win Friends and Influence People that a person's name is "the sweetest and most important sound in any language," and customer service training is careful to apply that wisdom.

Hearing your own name signals that you're being treated as a person rather than a ticket number. Modern software made the trick easier, since caller ID and account records now hand an agent your name before they've said hello. It can backfire, though; hearing one’s name repeatedly in the middle of a heated conversation can become irritating and sound like mockery.

An alternative to this one is "that would upset me, too." These phrases are a nod to the notion that the client is always right. Companies now admit that the latter is not necessarily true, though, but that often, indulging a customer's complaint, however unreasonable, is cheaper than losing their trust.

"That shouldn't have happened" updates the idea: it validates how a customer feels without declaring them factually correct. Researchers coined the term "service recovery paradox" in 1992 after finding that customers who complain and get an empathetic, competent response often end up more loyal than customers who never had a problem at all.

The two most empathetic words an agent can say are these. The concept behind it is called "active listening." It was so named in a 1957 essay by psychologist Carl Rogers and Richard Farson, and it didn't come from business at all. It came from Rogers's therapy sessions, where he found that people couldn't move toward a solution until they felt genuinely heard first.

Sales trainers later built an entire technique around the same insight, nicknamed "Feel, Felt, Found," which opens with exactly this line before pivoting to a fix. The order matters more than the words, because agents know that offering a solution before acknowledging the feeling can make people argue harder.

This is the go-to sentence to use instead of a dreaded "I can't help you with that." In the industry, this is called a "warm transfer," as opposed to the far more common and far more resented "cold transfer," where you're bounced to a stranger who has no idea why you called and makes you start over. Ideally, a rep will personally explain your problem to another expert and build a bigger team to come up with solutions.

This is the euphemism phrase to use in place of "I don't know." It’s friendly, humble, and a preamble to a brief research that will follow. Technically, saying "That’s a great question" in a conversation is a stalling tactic. It borrows a few seconds through flattery while the brain scrambles for an answer.

In 1963, a Worcester, Massachusetts commercial artist named Harvey Ball was paid $45 to design a simple smiling face for an insurance company, State Mutual Life Assurance, meant only to boost employee morale. Seven years later, two Philadelphia brothers paired the design with the words "Have a Happy Day," soon changed to "Have a Nice Day," trademarked the combination, and sold more than 50 million pins by 1972.

The four words have now become the obligatory send-away greeting that some businesses even write in their windows. It has also become the default sign-off for practically every customer transaction in America; "goodbye" might sound too dramatic.

"Found everything ok?" That question usually greets customers when they reach the cashier in retail stores. It can be traced back to Walmart's national "People Greeter" program in the 1980s, designed to do two things at once: make shoppers feel noticed and discourage theft.

The restaurant version of the same check-in is the "How’s everything?" a few minutes after bringing the food to the table. Waiters are trained to ask this to spot possible complaints early on, and also to remind customers that someone’s paying attention to their experience.

Athletics and vocabulary

Game on! These 10 idioms and terms come from the world of sports!

The world of sports is definitely ripe with unique terms and idioms. Not only that, but some of these words eventually make their way into our wider vocabulary. Have you ever stopped to think about how many sports idioms we use in our daily lives? In any case, we've decided to take some time to analyze 10 sports terms and what they truly mean. Maybe, with a bit of luck, we can finally understand what makes these idioms so unique. What we can guarantee, though, is that we’ll have fun in the process. Enjoy!

We’ll start with one of the most baffling sports terms: have you ever wondered why a score of 0 in tennis is called "love"? This word has been synonymous with zero since the 1800s, and the reason for this is that the English word "love" sounds phonetically similar to "l’oeuf," which in French means "the egg," a common metaphor for the number zero.

The story behind the idiom "to have something in the bag," which means certain victory or success in a specific situation, comes from the world of baseball—more specifically, from the New York Giants, a team that played in the Big Apple during the 1910s. This team had a good luck tradition of taking away their ball bag whenever the Giants were in the lead, as this symbolized that victory was metaphorically "in the bag."

This one is rather self-explanatory: who doesn’t know what a home run is or where it comes from? Regardless, it is perhaps the quintessential sports term. We often describe a particularly successful meeting as "a home run." When you think about it, it makes perfect sense—the feeling of watching a baseball fly out of the stadium is the perfect representation of what great success feels like.

The phrase "off the clock" is commonly used to describe times when we are not working. It can refer to downtime or be used to remind someone that you are now in your personal time. In a similar sense, the world of swimming uses this phrase as well. Swimmers all around the world describe a swim that is not being timed as off the clock, and for the love of the sport.

In the world of tennis, an ace is one of the most difficult and satisfying points you can score. This term describes when a player wins a point with only their serve. As you would expect, "acing" something means doing an extremely good job in a particularly stressful situation. For instance, you can ace a job interview, an assignment, or a difficult exam.

Let’s continue with one of the most adorable sports terms out there. For such a demanding and stressful sport, golf definitely has some of the most rewarding names for a high score. Case in point: whenever you score one stroke under par, that shot is known as a "birdie." Not only that, it’s followed by an "eagle" (two under par) and the even rarer "albatross" (three under par).

In soccer, a "hat-trick" occurs when one player scores three goals in a match. The term actually originated in 1858 cricket, when a bowler was awarded a physical hat for taking three wickets in a row. The accomplishment was seen as a rare, impressive "trick" worth rewarding. Today, this "magical" idiom is a staple of soccer, hockey, and even baseball lore.

While resistance and stamina are also essential, some boxers make their name in this sport thanks to their speed and cat-like reflexes. These boxers usually live by the simple truth of hitting the other fighter before they hit them, living up to the phrase held as a sacred text by boxers everywhere: "You need to beat your opponent to the punch." As you would expect, this idiom is now synonymous with reaching an objective or goal before someone else.

In American football, an audible is an often-improvised call that changes or replaces the previously planned play. As you would expect, the term "to call an audible" comes from this practice. It describes completely improvising a solution on the spur of the moment, without major certainty about whether the decision will be beneficial or not.

Horse racing is definitely a short but exciting sport. There’s a reason why the Kentucky Derby is widely known as "the most exciting two minutes in sports." In that sense, the outcome of this fast-paced sport is often decided at the very last minute. These races are commonly characterized as "down to the wire," in reference to the wire stretched across the finish line. Nowadays, those of us who are not fortunate enough to be involved in horse racing still use this expression to describe everyday situations that are resolved at the last second.