“We're 30% over volume on this queue.”
“What's driving it?”
“General inquiries.”
I've heard that exchange more times across my career than I can count, in escalations, in leadership updates, in conversations with clients asking what's happening on their line. “General inquiries” sounds like an answer, but it’s not. Instead, it’s vague enough to end the question without anyone having to admit they haven't pulled the data yet.
Most of us were taught that not knowing is a weakness to hide rather than a gap to close. So, instead of saying it plainly, people reach for something that sounds true enough to move on. It's rarely dishonesty. It's the instinct to protect how competent we look in the moment, at the cost of what gets fixed.
I still use a trick I picked up from a C-level leader early in my career: In interviews, I'll ask something like, “How many gas stations are there in the U.S.?” or “How many candies are in this jar?” There's no right answer. What I'm testing isn't whether they say the exact words, “I don't know,” but whether they're willing to admit the gap at all, instead of guessing a number just to avoid the silence.
In an interview, a bluffed guess costs nothing. In real-time reporting, it can cost a lot more. “General inquiries” as an answer means nobody pulled the actual top drivers behind a volume spike, which means nobody caught what was really happening underneath it.
I've seen this play out with something as specific as a gift card issue. Customers were calling in over an unusual spike, and “general inquiries” was the first answer offered. Had someone pulled the real breakdown, the top query would have pointed straight at gift cards, a signal worth escalating immediately: update the IVR to acknowledge the issue, alert the team that could fix it and get ahead of a bad customer experience instead of absorbing it call-by-call. Instead, the vague answer bought a few minutes of looking on top of things, at the cost of the response that mattered.
The fix for real-time reporting needs to be specific because a narrative can still be vague even when someone's trying to be honest. “Walk me through it” leaves room to talk around a gap. A percentage doesn't.
I ask for the number. “What percentage of that volume is gift cards?” forces someone to either produce a number or admit they haven't pulled it yet. It's a small shift in the question, but it changes what's possible to get away with in the answer.
Internally, “I don't know” can be said plainly. In front of a client, try, “Let me confirm that and circle back to you within the hour” or “I want to pull the exact number before I answer that, give me a few minutes.” To me, this sounds like ownership instead of uncertainty.