Sometimes when doing customer service training, I’ll have a participant cheerfully describe their “cute” sense of humor and how customers just love it.

Other times, they’ll describe a situation where they thought they were being funny and were puzzled why the customer didn’t.

Do you know the type? The ones who are either “characters” or simply lack the ability to recognize when it’s appropriate to use humor and when it isn’t?

Do you have CSRs who might be doing this?

Here’s an example of this I just experienced….

I waited at the service counter of one of the buying clubs this week, to see if my photos were in. The man waiting on the current customer was a clerk who had caught my attention in the past because of his oddly officious demeanor. His stuffy, stilted formality seemed more like someone pretending to be a maitre de, than someone being a clerk at a retail store.

Sure enough, when the man ahead of me finished, the clerk says in a very grave, formal voice “I will help the next person”. He says this while looking straight ahead, as if the next person – me – is way off in the distance, instead of right in front of him.

I tell him I wanted to check to see if my pictures are in and tell him my name. He flips through the envelopes and finds mine.

“Would you like them?” he asks, in a mock challenging tone.

“Uh yeah” I say with a laugh, thinking: Duh! Of course I want them. What a stupid question!

“Well…”, he says with a twisted smile and a lecturing tone, “You didn’t say you wanted them, you just asked if they were there.” His grin shouted just how proud he was of his cleverness.

Incredulous at his response, I blurt out: “Boy… I bet people love you”

He says “Oh yeah” and then proudly tells me how if people ask him if he knows the time, he demonstrates to me with a flourish how he looks at his watch as he’s telling them this “Yes, I do.”

“But…I tell them, ‘you just asked me if I knew the time. You didn’t ask me to tell you the time.’ I always say it with a smile on my face. It makes people laugh.”

I bet it does. I’m sure they find it immensely amusing.

I found it interesting that despite my initial response which I would think indicated “Not amused or impressed” he persisted in another example of his amazing cleverness.

So impressed was he with his brand of humor, he was blind to the fact that he was the only one impressed.

Ah… But he wasn’t finished yet with his comedy routine. When he gave me my change - $20 – he says, with a sly smile “So you said you’d like this in pennies right?”

“I’ll definitely be writing about you” I cheerfully replied and left, thinking:

“Who thought having this guy wait on the public was a good idea?"

In his excellent book Social Intelligence, Dan Goleman writes about how some people demonstrate sensitivity to social cues, facial expressions, etc. and know how to generate positive relational responses, while others don’t.

A socially astute CSR knows how to put people at ease and that playing “gotcha” humor doesn’t tend to endear yourself to your customers.

Not only do they know the difference between humor that puts people off, they also know when and with whom it’s appropriate to joke around.

It’s one things to play with familiar customers who are more like friends and appreciate that familiarity. It’s quite another thing to joke around with an unfamiliar customer in an overly familiar way.

Do your people know the difference?

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