The known is not infrequently the unknown

Training customer service representatives (CSR) to assuage customer concerns while addressing specific problems and at the same time optimizing sales is already a difficult challenge for most large organizations with vast amounts spent on training with constant and subtle modifications to the standard CSR scripts.

Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps Into Therapists by Kristen V Brown explores how the CSR role becomes exponentially more difficult when existential matters of self-identity are woven into the equation.

It was a one-line chat reply from an AncestryDNA customer-service rep that ripped Catherine St Clair’s life apart.

St Clair, 57, is her family’s resident genealogist and had sent her saliva to Ancestry for testing. So when her brother Mike showed up as a “first cousin or close relative,” she assumed it must be a glitch. Even stranger: The test showed that someone she had never heard of was a much closer genetic match than Mike.

She contacted Ancestry customer service through the website’s chat feature. Calmly, a representative named Pam explained centimorgans, a unit for measuring genetic linkage. Siblings, Pam said, normally share about 2,600 centimorgans of DNA, while half-siblings share 1,800.

“She said, ‘Go click on the little icon by his name. It will tell you how much you share with him,’” recalled St Clair. “And when I clicked on it, that’s when the floor fell out from under me.’’

Mike wasn't her full brother. They didn’t share the same father.

In the business of consumer DNA testing, customer service is sometimes a lot more like emotional support. Though genetic tests are frequently marketed as family-friendly entertainment, they sometimes wind up surfacing life-altering surprises. And when those surprises show up in someone’s test results, the first move is often a call to customer service.