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Comment by nicolas_t | Hacker News Reader

Wow, that's one of the books in term of double-speak: "the webcam system was intended “to respond to the overwhelming concerns of isolation, lack of team engagement and support, not seeing anyone from one day to the next, raised by those who are at home”."

Sometimes, I'm really impressed at PR firms ability to think that the rest of the world is idiotic and will take their statement at face value.

It's a pity that call centers are treated as dead end job and that we have companies pushing for those conditions because a good CS experience does completely change customer satisfaction and is worth cultivating. The race to the bottom with call centers is a very myopic way of treating one's customers.

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I don't believe that they think the rest of the world is idiotic. They just know that once they apply their thin veneer of spin, no-one is able to call them on their bullshit, and there'll be no consequences for their lies.

What other reasons would nobody be able to "call them on their bullshit"? Is it because they are the ones with a platform?

What reason does applying a thin veneer of spin work, except for that people are mostly suckers for it?

Most times "calling out" someone in a way that's effective takes effort. I think they're just giving the majority of people an excuse not to bother engaging in any activism that might actually work.

Right. Your choices are to say the truth, say nothing, or say some complete BS, or some gradient between these. There's no reason not to go for the BS. If you say nothing, that's slightly suspicious, or leaves a gap for someone to say something in your place. Obviously being bald-faced about your practices has no or almost no advantage. If you go fullBS, people at minimum have to knock down your statement, which takes energy, and then there is at least the appearance of a two sides dynamic. Journalists tend to like to cover stories holding up any two sides dynamics (these guys said this, the other guys said this), as it's safer to them, so there's even a good chance your BS will get parroted. Finally, saying some party line BS makes it easier to determine who's with you and against you. Allies can coordinate around your BS and repeat it, and the more BS your BS is, the more signaling value that has. You always need a party line, even and perhaps especially if you're up to no good and it's transparently false.

A customer reaching a call centre is basically a "everything else failed" moment, a moment that is very expensive as 1 on 1 human help costs a lot of money. If you are going to invest, you invest in making sure people don't need to call.

> making sure people don't need to call.

Almost every IVR I have ever used makes me believe business invest in making sure people can't call or at least have a very hard time reaching a human.

Amazon makes it so easy to get help from a human that they call you...

I'm reminded of a policy of the southeastern US grocery store chain Publix: if there's a pricing error, the item is free. It will probably come as no surprise that pricing errors are extremely rare there.

When a company creates a significant incentive for itself to get an aspect of its business right, it will probably get that aspect right. I don't think I've ever wanted to call Amazon on the phone, and nearly every issue I can recall has had a satisfactory solution within their UI.

This rule is basically standard in supermarkets in Australia even though not legally required. In my life I have only once noticed a pricing error.

> nearly every issue I can recall has had a satisfactory solution within their UI.

They started shipping me books bound tightly in bubble-padded manila envelopes. The binding was so tight that the books arrived with damage caused by Amazon's own stupid packaging choice. I repeatedly returned these books with the explicit note "book was damaged due to bad packaging; please use different packaging". They were not capable of fixing their problem.

You assume enough customers complain to make it worth changing.

One is enough, if your definition of "worth changing" refers to profit margins.

> I'm reminded of a policy of the southeastern US grocery store chain Publix: if there's a pricing error, the item is free. It will probably come as no surprise that pricing errors are extremely rare there.

I have never shopped at Publix, but I can't even recall being a victim of a pricing error in another grocery.

I think you may find that pricing errors in grocery chains are extremely rare, period.

I've experienced numerous pricing errors at Walmart. You could argue that Walmart belongs in a different category, but a large part of their business is groceries.

I've experienced one pricing error at Publix having shopped at them for the better part of two decades. My item was, indeed free and the cashier sounded excited to be able to use the policy.

> if there's a pricing error, the item is free.

I love Publix, but I think this is marketing blargh. They once had a cuisinart dish marked with a $9.99 price tag so I bought it. The cashier rang it up as $199.99 and I brought it to her attention. She brought over a manager who said it was an error in labeling and should have been marked down to $99.99 and they would honor the intended sale price.

I mentioned the policy and she shrugged and asked if I want it or not. I declined and she put a new price tag on it at $99.99.

There was only one item and it was in the deal section. This is my only experience of Publix being lame in decades of use. Really surprising. This was also the only pricing error I’ve ever encountered.

It's more than that. The bulk of your support time for a typical consumer business, if you allow it, will be taken up by people who are lonely, mentally ill or extremely upset and want to express themselves to someone face-to-face.

These people are much easier to ignore via email, and almost no consumer problem actually requires an immediate verbal response.

Outside of certain niche applications like banking or B2B, I have no idea why most businesses offer call centres at all.

He he, except for the Italian incumbent energy company, where the only avenue is a Call Centre, even for complex cases... but it’s obviously a strategy to wear you down and give up on your complaint.

Despicable

I once worked with a national Telco company on their support system, their ideal situation was to have nobody calling in, so they did everything they could to try and stop that.

Self help guides for everything, step by step guided assistance pages, report nearly everything online, push out updates before people start to call in etc

Having people answer the phone gets expensive very quickly

I agree but I think the race to the bottom issue is more an expression of the outsourcing business model.

Companies that can afford to operate their own CS portals will outsource because they know they can squeeze these providers for cheaper services and in turn the employees ultimately are the ones that suffer.

How employees are treated are how customers will be treated.

How employees are treated are how customers will be treated.

I don’t think there is evidence for this, there are plenty of counter examples of businesses that treat customers well and workers badly. Any luxury goods business will fawn over its wealthy clientele while literally having slaves in sweatshops doing the work for example.

“Customer is king. Employees are serfs”

That's the kind of thing businesses tell customers, so they don't realize they're being conned. Employees may be serfs, but the customer is not their lord.

> Sometimes, I'm really impressed at PR firms ability to think that the rest of the world is idiotic and will take their statement at face value.

Yep. Trouble is, it works. Most of the time for most of the people.

... you probably don’t realise how much “news” you consume daily was actually fed to you via a PR department

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