comment: >
  
  23 years of call center experience.
  Sometimes we really do empathize with you. 
  “I know how you feel” is the /worst/ thing you can say to a customer in my opinion.
  “Waiting on the phone for an hour to reach someone is very frustrating Ms Customer.  As someone who works on a phone line 12 hours per day, I feel I understand the value of time when as a consumer, I call places to get things accomplished.  Let’s get to the bottom of this so we can get your issue resolved.”  
  Wordier? Yes
  Telling you a lie? No
  And @throwawaysecretlove is right.
  Depending on the size of the corporation, they listen for EVERYTHING and will terminate your employment for the stupidest reasons, including not expressing regret or empathizing with customers’ frustrations.
  Edit: phrasing & punctuation on the long sentence in quotes for readability.
context: ~~Cheerful~~ Chatbots Don’t ~~Necessarily~~ Improve Customer Service >
  
  They do piss off customers. Almost as bad as CSRs who say, "I know how you feel".
  Why do CSRs say such useless drivel to already annoyed customers? >
  
  Worked in a call center, and we were told to “empathize” with customers. We would get random calls of ours pulled and graded and we’d listen to them with supervisors each week. If we missed out on saying things like that, we’d get graded down. I hated saying that shit, but I wasn’t trying to get fired either.