“Happy to Help” and 5 alternatives!

In between Hollywood and your day-to-day social interactions, one thing is common. Cliches are not welcome! While they get the “message across” they hardly do anything more. You could even say that cliches are a barrier to creating a meaningful experience. Customer support is no different. Happy to help is by far one of the worst in the customer support realm.

Now if you’re wondering what’s so wrong with it here’s our take,

Why does “happy to help” sound bad?

It’s all to do with how humans process language in different contexts. The purpose and intent of the conversation play a vital role in it. So what exactly happens when you say happy to help or, happy to support or, happy to assist?

To be fair, there is nothing overtly wrong with the phrases other than questionable grammar. It’s just that they’ve become lines that have lost all power to communicate anything. Mostly because it’s been used over and over and then too many times even after that. A similar case is with “Thank you for your patience“

Hence, when someone uses these in a customer support context it sounds more like a filler episode than an engaging conversation. This is reason enough to avoid using it and maybe even invest in finding more engaging alternatives.

Alternatives for “Happy to Help”

That is exactly what we cover in this article. We picked out alternative phrases that you can use that sound less canned and more authentic. 

“I’m glad we were able to solve your problem today.”

“Reach out to us at any time”

“We appreciate the opportunity to help you today.”

“We’re here whenever you need us.”

“I’m glad to see it worked out.”

“Happy to be of service.”

“We’ve got your back.”

“Feel free to get in touch with us”

“Pleasure is ours.”

Wrapping Up

Customer support is a game of communication. All that you say matters. So if you’re stuck in between cliches, the time to fix that is nigh. It’s understandable that breaking a habit isn’t easy. However, you don’t need to make it happen overnight. As long as you try to do it in your head you’re good to go. 

The support guys on our teams have an easy fix for this and it’s by far the simplest you’ll find. 

Sticky notes to the rescue! 

Try putting up sticky notes around your workstation with phrases you want to use in your customer conversations.

In the case of chat, you can always store saved replies/canned responses to handle this sort of thing. Check if your help desk is up to the challenge. There are a variety of customer support plugins available so be specific.

It might seem counterintuitive at first to read responses off a note, a bit synthetic even. However, if it works a couple of times that’s enough to get you out of the habit of using the same phrase again and again. Keep practicing and the change will come.

Until next time, happy serving!