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A tip for you: I work in support, and weasel words are the substance of our being. You tell the customer "Do A, B, and C, and that should get you up and running". They don't really hear the 'should', but it needs to be there because computers are fickle and anything can go wrong. In short, I guess I'm saying I'm a bit more practised at recognising weasel words for what they are - and in this situation, it's not really an "anything bad is possible from here"; the worst has happened. This is the point in support where you start giving the client the concrete steps that will be taken to solve their issue. "again telling her" is the weasel words I'm referring to here. You've already told her this, and she claims that after saying this, all help evaporated - it's the cornerstone of her complaint, and you're announcing Round 2 of the same thing. This is a PR disaster for your company: it is not the time to engage in weasel words. Whether or not you plan on following through, you should sound like you absolutely will. Of course, you should follow through - if something like this happened in my company, the CEO would be absolutely roasting us for not following through and taking measures into his own hands, both because he's an honourable bloke, and because it's a giant PR issue. jcunningham above points out other weaselly things. Again, whether or not you're giving her concrete messages about what kind of help you're offering her, you should also be announcing these publicly. "We are reimbursing costs of -foo-", "We are organising temporary accommodation of her own", "We are doing this and this to help the police", "We've assigned John Doe to manage her case and will be in contact this often". Be concrete, not hand-wavy. The guy you're replying to gave five ideas for supporting her, and the response is a wishy-washy "we'll be there for her" - which is the kind of empty promise you hear drunk 20-year-olds tell each other before they sleep with each other's best friends. I don't necessarily think all the things the GP said are right, but using weasel words in this situation is a path to PR failure in my opinion. EDIT: the reason why I wrote all the above is that I read your comment and felt angry because it sounded like another fobbing off, more promises that are not going to be upheld (as the first round was allegedly not). I do not think I'm going to be unusual in this. |
Telling you're contacting her and AirBnb doubled customer staff won't just solve everything.
Always remember you're dealing with people, not just nicknames on internet (it's more than a series of tubes). Stop buzzwords and start acting like real people in real world.