Deviating from the script can get you fired
"The suggestion of "Sir, I understand that you may have already tried this, but our policy requires me to try it anyway" is insulting to the customer. If the technician knows the script that well, s/he can say something like "we may be able to get there quicker if I can just ask you a few questions to confirm what you found" and pick out some checkpoints along the way."
Sometimes you can do this, but too often, taking detours or even reasonable shortcuts can get you fired... I know, I was really close to losing my job on a help desk (basically, if another group in the same company didn't want me, I was going to be let go) because on *one call* I went around the script to get to the end... oh, and if I followed the script, I'd blow the SLA on a priority 1 item, but my shortcut let us beat SLA. So even though I saved them thousands in penalties, I was on the chopping block!
So yes, while the customer made hate it, my approach is the safe one for the technician. They shouldn't be in this position in my opinion, but since so many of them are, customers just need to roll with it and put up with it, I'm not going to demand that someone lose their job over helping me with my issue.
J.Ja
Contributr 
