What this episode is about
False hustle is the kid on the soccer team sprinting and diving and doing everything wrong, and everyone yelling "good hustle." It looks like effort. In contact centers it shows up as checkbox QA: questions that reward behaviors that look good on a form but don't solve anything for the customer.
Some examples I still see: engagement scored as using the customer's name three times in the first 60 seconds. An artificial thank-you after every piece of verification. Empathy scored as "I'm really sorry to hear that." Troubleshooting scored as following the script in the exact order, even when the customer already tried the first three steps.
A lot of this exists because humans could only score a few calls per agent per week, so forms had to be simple and fast. It became teaching to the test, and the test was superficial. Disclosures that must be read verbatim are different. Keep those. But for the rest, start scoring whether the agent understood the core issue and took the right action.
The scorecard shift is from process to intent and outcome. Call control stops meaning hitting a target handle time and starts meaning addressing the concern while keeping a natural conversation. The difference in the actual words is small, maybe eight to ten seconds on a call, but the difference in outcome is big.
Key takeaways
- Checkbox questions reward behavior that looks like effort, not results.
- Name-repetition, scripted thank-yous and canned apologies are common false-hustle items.
- Keep verbatim scoring for real compliance disclosures only.
- Rewrite questions around intent and outcome: was the core issue understood and addressed?
- Score problem resolution, not just whether steps were followed.
In Tom's words
“We're not looking at process-based scoring, right?”Tom Laird · 21:08
“I understand how you feel. I apologize for the inconvenience.”Tom Laird · 24:12
“Did the agent follow the troubleshooting script in the correct order, right?”Tom Laird · 26:39
Transcript excerpt
These excerpts come from an automatic transcript and are lightly edited for readability (filler and obvious transcription errors removed). For exact wording, listen at the timestamp.
[06:33]I still see companies that call engagement using the customer's name three times in the first 60 seconds of the call. Is that engagement? Saying artificial thank-yous after every piece of qualifying or verification information a customer gives. Saying that empathy is, I'm really sorry to hear that. These monotone things we've said 400 times on every single call, and then checking the box and saying that's what we should do.
[16:37]For the last 20 or 30 years we've QA'd calls with human beings who, depending on call length, could only handle maybe two or three calls per agent per week. We had to make our scorecards as simple as possible so there's not a lot of thinking, so we could get through them and move on to the next call. That's a huge reason we have such superficial scoring. It's kind of like teaching to the test, and our test is our QA forms.
[23:45]So a false hustle interaction: the customer says, I've been without the internet for three days, this is absolutely ridiculous. And the agent says, I understand how you feel, I apologize for the inconvenience. That's what we hear all the time. No customer really believes that. What if it was: I do understand that's frustrating. Let's try to figure this out. Walk me through what's happening. Not that much different, maybe eight to 10 seconds, but it's a big difference in the outcome.