This comment is so wrong it hurts.
> But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. It's a strategy to try to get you to go online, use an automated system, or annoy you until you give up. Trust me, if I'm calling into a business something has already gone horribly wrong. The automated line lying about "higher than normal call volume" (bullshit, hire more people) or "You can find the answers you need on our website" (nope, that's why I'm calling in) only pisses me off. It has never in my life provided information that I found useful.
> If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all!
What does this even mean? Of course understaffing saves the company money.
> Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.
Yes, because I have a real choice on what electric, gas, water, internet company I use /s. For non-monopoly companies (growing increasingly rare) I often can't help that I currently have their product, I might buy an alternative (if one exists) next time around but "vote with your dollars" doesn't really work here well.
> Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible time is the metric, and if humans were better at it - you could still hire less humans and "save labor costs".
No, it's not. It might be a metric for human workers but they literally don't care if it takes you 10x longer to find the answer as long as they don't have to pay a human it's a win. I've worked for companies with call centers and I assure you the only thing they care about is reducing that headcount, the outcome for the customer doesn't even rank.