“Can I Help?”

Can I Help?

It seems these days that the Americanised approach to customer service is inescapable. Once upon a not so long ago, when people were standing in a queue at the post office, a shop or even a sports venue, on completion of a transaction with their current customer the service desk employee would simply say “Next please”.

This simple an efficient phrases simply prompts the whole queue to move up one, the next victim customer now being fully attended to.

Where did the phrase “Can I help?” come from and why is it being used?

What ‘help’ is being offered?

This is the strangest of things. As a customer I’d like to know what the scope of this ‘help’ is.

For example, am I being helped to spend money on some service, is someone helping me by providing me with reasons as to why their previously donated ‘help’ was in fact no help at all?

Its all about perception

I rather fancy that this is a psychological play, a way in which the customer’s anger and frustration can immediately be diminished by someone standing in front of the offering help rather than asking what the problem is.

However annoying the phrase “Can I help?”, we are with it as it disarms the customer and helps protect the service desk staff which in this ever increasingly violent world (due to drop in standards and lack of moral fibre – another story) has become necessary.