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Comment by joshaidan | Hacker News Reader

I encountered "process as proxy" today dealing with Cisco. We were requesting a replacement for a defective part, they asked us for our serial number, which we provided, but then responded to us that our serial number was invalid. Likely because it wasn't registered. We were told that we had to contact our sales manager, or open a TAC with a different department because they department only deals with technical issues.

Could they not have done something to help us, maybe forwarding the ticket to the department that could register the serial number, to help us rather than just leaving us stranded? It's as though they want to follow process rather than helping the customer.

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One of my most memorable customer service examples was memorable merely because it didn't go poorly.

The vibrate function on my Ericsson T39 cell phone failed. I was dreading calling support, because I knew they'd tell me to piss off. It was a grey-market phone. I bought it on eBay unlocked, shipped to my home in the US. I wasn't the first owner, for that reason. It came with a UK charger. They didn't even sell the phone in the US.

When I called support, they asked me for the serial #, plus a code next to the serial (turns out to be the production date.. Week/year).. and my address. Almost immediately shipped me a replacement with a box to RMA the old phone.

They didn't care how I obtained it. They didn't care that it wasn't sold in my country. They didn't care that I didn't have a receipt. They CARED because I was a customer who paid money for their product, it failed, and they wanted to make it right. It was so refreshing.

iirc Nintendo has many stories like this from the 90's.

Hope their culture is still in tact after these years of mediocre to bad fiscal results.

I had a similar experience with Sony back when I was younger. Although, I did purchase the PS2 legitimately.

Something went wrong with the disc reader after a year or so. Sony told me to send it in. Then they sent me a replacement PS2 to keep... and a couple weeks later I received my old PS2, with the disc reader fixed. All free of charge.

I've been loyal to Sony ever since that fantastic experience.

Blame Cisco for wanting to squeeze out every penny from their support costs at the expense of their customers. Most of this stuff is outsourced or structured in such a way that they try to reduce ticket time and increase tickets worked (because time = labor = money). But guess what's free in this equation? Your time.

The vast majority of cost savings I see in the corporate world is like this; they're not saving money by doing a better, more clever job, they're just externalizing their costs elsewhere, whether it's another industry, another company, or another team in the same company.

I had a similar experience with digital ocean. I reported malicious traffic coming from another customer's VM via a ticket, provided logs, etc and their response was that I needed to submit all that information via email at their abuse email address instead.

I responded that perhaps as a customer they shouldn't make me waste more of my time and instead forward the information that I had provided to their abuse department. Of course, they never responded after that. I'll never bother to report a security incident to them again. All because of "process". :-/

I used to work in call centers. The job has almost nothing to do with helping customers.

Your manager will tell you the customer is the top priority, you will be told that the only person more important is you: the direct contact with the valuable customers.

Then he will publicly berate you for 15 minutes if your average handle time deviates from the last hour.

Your type of call is a golden goose. I get to "resolve" it and end it in 25 seconds which means I can take a 4 minute bathroom break instead of a 3 minute one.

By definition, that person is not a manager. He's a boss. Managers manage, and Boss's react.

This is one of those times where you line up another job, wait until he goes off on you and for every "point" he tries to make, you counter with the policy. Shut him down. Won't be permanent, but oh well.

Its time to come back to down to reality. Your manager would be laughing at your little outburst all week. It would actually make him happier.

That's not a manager. That's a boss. And so what? Everyone else who watched it would get a kick out of it and mr manager would be even deeper in respect debt.

Maybe it would inspire others to leave such a crappy job too. Let the miserables commiserate with the miserables.

My recent experience in this was in negotiating my internet/TV bill with Time Warner. I get TV via their app on a Roku. TW rebranded their TV delivery as Spectrum. Fine, I want to give up my old plan, and sign up for a new plan that is cheaper and delivers what I want - I'm not very interested in what it's called.

Operator: "Spectrum requires you to have a set top box"

Me: "I don't want a box under my TV, or a new remote, or a new clock to set. I want to keep watching TV via my Roku"

Op: "Spectrum requires you to have a set top box"

Me: "Are you saying that the app on my Roku that JUST updated to be called the 'Spectrum' app won't work?"

Op: "No, sir, I am saying that you are required to have a set top box"

Me: "I don't want that - I want to use the Roku. Otherwise, I'd rather just go back to not having TV, so you should cancel my service"

Op: "Sir, the Roku app will still work, but I have to send you a box... (whispering) you can just put it in the closet"

Me: "You're going to ship me a box to store, and that's on the requirements list to save $40 per month"

Op: "Yes, sir"

Me: "That's absurd, but deal"

Devil's advocate -- there's a big grey market in Cisco parts, and so they are probably under strict instruction to refuse support service to anyone who isn't verified as a paying customer.

No, each microservice does one thing.

Yes, they could have provided an orchestrating microservice.

But they did a good job. Tech issues microservice should not have knowledge of other departments.

This comment is either incredibly witty and very insightful or it is completely the opposite, and I can't quite tell from just reading it.

It's the best kind of comment. Haha

What was the part? They've moved to putting SN on everything, main board, chassis, etc. Make sure you have the correct SN. That being said Cisco TAC is atrocious.

Exactly. A 3XX Redirection instead of shutting you down with a 417 Expectation Failed.

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