Questions are a double-edged sword for customer service professionals. We have to ask questions to get to the root of the problem, completely log issues, and in general, to serve customers.

But often a series of questions can sound like an interview. If we’re not careful, a series of questions can come across as an interrogation.

Years ago, when I managed a small contact center, I realized that my team had to ask our customers 7 questions to completely log issues in our system. Seven questions is a lot.

Through call monitoring, I discovered that our customers were annoyed with our questioning. And it honestly sounded to me like we were interrogating our customers with our line of questioning!

So I began instructing my team to bridge to questioning and not just jump into our litany of questions. Here’s what I taught them.