Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane
washingtonpost.com
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Then you get the salt in the wound customer satisfaction survey of "Did X resolve your issue today?", "Was X polite to you?", etc. If you score the person low you can cost them the job. If you score the high, the company celebrates high customer satisfaction.
You almost never see the question "Did the company put our support person in a position to help you successfully?"
The most blatant offender I ran into recently was Verizon has made a number of things like updating your autopay method app/website only. You can call Verizon customer support and talk to a human and all they can do is tell you they literally cannot take your credit card and you need the app. Because someone at Verizon decided their humans can take one time payments but not update autopay.
Verizon on the Wireless side has so little bloat compared to AT&T from what I saw.
The current model makes money due to lack of options and attrition where fewer people are willing to threaten to switch the 4th time or jump ship every year. Some pay more than reasonable others jump through hoops like trained seals. It's not the best model for anyone.
Support dollars are better spent on actual problems instead of such self inflicted wounds as billing complexity.
Lawyers are the only people that are still allowed to make decisions in modern corporations.
Also Rescheduling a package is is a nightmare. Its like they intentionally tried to make the delivery estimates and updates as unhelpful and bad as possible to mess with you.
Many special-case requests have to be handled locally, and it's often spitting into a hurricane trying to get someone there to pickup the phone.
The whole system builds on trust and humans are pretty trustworthy. Bots are much less trustworthy, since untrustworthy humans can leverage bots or spam to contact millions of people each.
But why would you let your card leave your sight? I don’t understand.
The waiter brings over a payment terminal or you go over to it, then you tap or insert your card. When could they take a picture? How would they even use the details without your PIN number? The whole system isn’t built on trust because that would be stupid when it comes to money.
Or are you saying the trust element is that they are not using a terminal that somehow clones your card and pin?
That's the status quo for how those transactions work in the US.
> When could they take a picture, how could they even use the details without our PIN, the whole system isn't buit with trust because that woudl be stupid when it comes to money
The average person with no training can remember 8 uniformly random digits, and an hour of training bumps that up to 20 -- more than enough to recall a credit card and its PIN, even ignoring the immense amount of redundant information in how those are constructed. Plus nearly invisible video feeds are a reality. Plus pass-through broken credit card capture systems are a cheap reality, and one that claims untold billions of dollars at US gas stations, and many multiples of that amount at european ATMs. Any system that depends on the secrecy of those digits is fundamentally broken, and our payment system does, so it's fundamentally broken. The only reason it doesn't appear that way is that most people don't try to exploit it, and most of the rest leave enough breadcrumbs that after enough 10s of millions of fraud they can be arrested. The remaining few percent of fraud is baked into the prices you see and the taxes you pay.
> and one that claims untold billions of dollars at US gas stations, and many multiples of that amount at european ATMs
I’m interested in why you think this - from everything I can find US card fraud rates are at a minimum 10x compared to the EU.
The way the US makes payments seems very insecure/backwards, with a lack of chip and pin, relying on signatures and even using cheques still.
A 10x reduction in fraud by using basic measures other countries have adopted seems sensible.
Decrying them because there is no perfect system and “anyone can remember a pin” is a call to keep the status quo and the fraud that comes with it.
I wish email support was more of a thing in the US. Not chat, not a web-only form or ticketing system, just plain old email (on the frontend):
It leaves a paper trail (persisted within my control), it has minimal overhead (the forced superficial friendliness or attempts of small talk in support chats are deeply disturbing to me), it works on a bad internet connection, it works asynchronously.
In the EU, having a human-attended support email address has recently been made a legal requirement, and I‘ve had great experiences with it (if only because in some companies it seems to immediately get you to a second level support due to the relatively low volume compared to the "official"/advertised means of contact).
Do you have a link to the regulation? I've not been able to find anything.
This used to be the only way of reaching my phone operator for a while (they had chat support, as well as a phone number, but ironically that one would only text-to-speech read out "helpful" FAQ articles and then hang up, only forwarding callers to a support agent if they know the secret incantation producing zero FAQ hits).
This one is frustrating to me as well. After telling the chatbot about your problem and waiting 20 minutes to be connected with a real person, only to have them open with "Hi! How are you today?" and then pause the script for a response is incredibly grating.
They also don't seem to be using any sort of functioning ticketing system or even hot-transfer, because being forced to re-explain the issue 3+ times to different reps on the same chat seems just as common as it was in the phone days.
It shouldn’t take 5+ minutes to reply with “let me look into that for you”.
I worked at a call center with a T-Mobile LOB, at which I had several friends working in their online chat dept.
Support reps and sales reps alike were both required to be on at least 7 open chat windows or face termination.
They could be shadowed at any time by an ops agent, who would ding them for not pasting proper replies (they frowned heavily upon real interactions- going 'off-script'), or having less than the 7 required chat windows.
If these companies could they would nix phone agents entirely, and this is why- one agent becomes 7.
Customer satisfaction? What even is that?
I think what this says is that most customer support is just awful all around.
Really! I tried several companies to fill taxes for LLC (foreign owned)(https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/11kkkn2/best...) and good luck finding a way to use email.
Chat is so bad for support of first issues!
I've literally resorted to sending paper mail multiple times.
>It leaves a paper trail
I suspect many companies consider that a bug, not a feature.
I personally can't stand phone support. It always takes way longer than it needs to, and I can't do anything else during it. Just firing off an email is far more efficient. Easier to do after office hours too.
I purchased a used ipad and the only way to get the thing turned on was to talk to a customer support agent, who had to basically manually flip a database column for me.
Besides these days you can either set a callback, or, just plain do work while you're on hold.
Physical pharmacies in general have also gone way down hill in terms of customer service. I’ve literally gone into the store and stood at the counter for like 10 minutes waiting for someone to even acknowledge my existence. It’s not that they don’t see me, they just don’t care. They are overworked, so I kind of understand not being responsive, but a simple, “We’ll be with you in a few minutes,” would be nice. It’s pretty dehumanizing to stand there being ignored. And if you speak up, they usually snap at you, and then are rude when they do get around to helping you.
Lo and behold, a few months later, I get an apologetic email with a $300 credit. It was obvious they didn't even read my complaint, and therefore won't fix it, but I'll take the $300.
And no, they didn't cause me anywhere near $300 in harm by any measure.
A lot of companies basically deny you service unless you call.
It would cost a fortune to pay support and developers to launch a full investigation every time something funny happens. So having slow support encourages users to only call if it’s reproducible and a real problem.
People's initial problem statement may be insufficient to even establish identity let alone nature of problem and solution. This is usually established by repeated follow up questions sometimes repeating questions to get the actual answer because it turns out they had no idea about the actual answer or indeed don't know what words mean.
Due to both of the above even simple issues are likely to become 12 step marathons with the associated cost of context switching to their problem 12 times. Worse due to the low cost of initiating an exchange they are likely to do so even when they could have resolved the issue in 10 seconds with google or even turning their head into the on position.
Your suggestion would turn a well funded support center into a team of professional shit shovelers trying to clean the Aegean stables with teaspoons.
An actual call queue intentionally and constantly drops matters too unimportant to invest 5-10 minutes in resolving and makes people do the whole shebang in one go by having them answer the follow up questions now.
I recently had a company email me saying:
> In this case, your review of___ has been flagged because we couldn’t verify its authenticity, and on that basis we’ve removed your review from our platform.
> While we’re confident that this is the right call, we appreciate that sometimes we get it wrong. If you think there’s been a mistake here, please do let us know by replying to this email and a member of our Content Integrity Team will review this decision with you.
What happens when you reply to that email as instructed?
> Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, this email address is not monitored and this is an automated reply.
Instead they direct you to some long ass form on their website asking about the URL of the review I'm contacting them about, which I have no idea (it was a response to a "how was your customer service experience, please rate us), and I'm not going to spend my time trying to find where it was. The whole experience was by email, I don't know if it even has a URL, but it's a required field on the form.
The original email thread that they told me to reply to should have all the information they need, but instead of even generating a link that pre-fills it into the contact form, they just throw all the context away and say "go to our website and fill out the form" because my time is worth nothing to them.
The extra irony is that I would complain to them about their service doing this, but there's no way to contact anyone useful with feedback.
Honestly I assume it's all on purpose because if I bothered to fill out the form it would cost them 5 minutes of someone's time to have them review it.
I take customer phone calls at my job so not a lot of sympathy for the companies trying to optimize helpfulness out of existence.
I think they've entirely outsourced their first line support to taxpayers via the CFPB and have no process to fix anything without you filing a complaint against them to get the ball rolling.
I call up the call centre - agent says he can see the same problem but he doesn’t have access to do anything about it. He told me to print out a paper change of address form to change my address from my current address to my current address, sign it, scan it (he emphasised it had to be signed pen to paper, and the form even says that), and email it in. I’m hoping that fixes it.
Part of the problem seems to be - I have multiple accounts with the one broker (my domestic stock account, trust accounts for my kids, a separate account for foreign stock), and they maintain separate addresses for each account, and they can get out of synch. And the broker is owned by a bank, and I have products with the bank, and the bank also has separate addresses for each product, plus the bank and the broker’s systems are kind of half-integrated/half-not in an opaque way which contributes to this kind of problem. And the bank also owns an insurance company, and I have a policy with that insurance company, and they’ve got the same half-integrated/half-not thing going on with their insurance company too.
(Of course, I'd hate it if this was by force)
the only reason those jokes are not current is that either the phone line is now gone, or because you don't call it, knowing in advance that it's torture. The phone menu and tiered human support is worse now than it's ever been. ime the foreign accent problem is a little better, but i also rarely call so ymmv
You might not. Most of my relatives over 40 will though. At my company it is incredibly common for a support ticket to be answered in the FAQ.
I've seen mailed letters from companies that say nothing more than: "Thank you for writing to us about issue ABC, issue ABC has been assigned case number XYZ, we will reach out again within XX days, please refer to ticket number XYZ when contacting the company." Then when you visit the physical bank or government DMV they tell you to go back home and wait to receive your driver's license or debit/credit card replacement.
The local plumber that supports my neighbor has an office about a block from my home yet if you call the number it's routed to some answering service three states away and the plumber never answers any phone calls. Then after work is performed, the plumbing company expects you to pay online and never accepts cash. Good luck if you have a customer service issue with the plumbing job or billing because it takes forever to get a hold anyone that can resolve anything.
Just one of many many many things I find are just "missing" nowadays.
I truly believe that most major companies do not want their customers to talk to an individual, and use tactics to dissuade customers from calling and frustrate those who do.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211008130458im_/https://assets...
Not in every country. In Japan, most companies have a responsive help line.
Some of the weeks where she was at her worst and the most vulnerable, she spent entire days just trying to reach to customer support. We’ve spent more hours than what the money was worth. It is appalling that corporations can get away with this.
Having seen said law firms in action, I have never seen such an expedient processing of disability claims by private insurers and Social Security.
Rising wages for more productive forms of work both pulls away workers from working in phone support - and increases its demand by giving everyone else more money to spend.
I would say a high amount of increased productivity in phone support is by using cheaper labor in developing countries.
Productivity was the percentage of your work day that you were busy on an inbound call. The problem with this was that when you call a client back, that call wouldn't be counted towards you productivity. The other problem which is relevant to this is that when you do a large number of calls (keeping your calls short and concise) the time gaps between the one call ending and the next one starting added up quicker for fast workers translating to a lower productivity. (I should mention that a large part of your bonus was calculated from this "productivity").
So if you answer a call and you can keep that call going for as long as possible, your productivity would skyrocket. On average the number of calls per person dropped on average from roughly 150 calls per day to 90-100. (anecdotal, but I observed my teammates)
This is how I got fired. (greatest thing to ever happen to me btw) I didn't like talking to people, but I was a dumb 20 something and had no other options, so I would answer the call, with a double tap, that would put the caller on hold immediately and I would just hang on to the call for as long as they stayed on the line. The other way was to start the call, get the info of the client and then tell then you will check with whoever and then just leave them on hold. For the case that got me fired the guy was sitting and holding for more than 7 hours.
I also find the obnoxious and relentlessly bad voice recognition that companies are introducing ("say the reason you are calling", "say your account number") to be awful. I have never had an experience where I felt like slowly and clearly enunciating something was superior to simply typing it on the keypad.
But the core issue I have with this article is wanting a voice phone calls at all. The vast majority of times I need to communicate with a company text messaging or email is clearly superior to voice. It doesn't require me committing to an half hour extended call, it doesn't get impacted by my accent, it's more accessible across the board, and when the person at the other end inevitably changes I don't have to repeat everything I have already said.
It's glorious!
For security, I'd rather not say.
That way you're likely to get you access to a human or phone number. It worked for me recently contacting Apple.
"I know it's not your job, but can you please make sure the person you'll transfer me to can help, uwu? I'm just a poor helpless customer, owo!"
It might have turned a 10 minute job into a 2 minute one, but I appreciate that a lot, mostly because of how much I despise wasting time and mental energy on navigating labyrinthine and sometimes ambiguous customer support channels.
I tried to reach out to Kia recently. In my case, I don’t want to call. I explained, in writing, using their online portal. They didn’t even respond. Strait-up ghosted me. Damn.
This led to a fun AI call when I insisted on getting a technician. Hearing "Let's try that again." over and over in an angry AI voice, was just the best.
She asks me to reboot, and I say technician. *Let's try that again. Please let me know when you've rebooted your Gateway.*
One of my employers basically determined that clients below ~5000 ARR are not worth serving. Their issues cannot be forwarded to anything above front line support. Doesn't matter how stuck they are or what sales promised.
Just skim off the cream that don't need help and dump the rest.
It's sad. But it could be a rational behaviour for the companies.
Just skim off the cream that don't need help and dump the rest.
The alternative is taking losses on some clients.
I recently had my first bad experience with AWS support, where the agent immediately wanted to jump on a call to have me explain the problem I’d just written down to them.
It’s not that hard to understand “Can you explain to me how to get your provisioned concurrency lambdas to keep track of system time correctly.”
couldn't
Bad for those who have trouble navigating things online, often the elderly.
I avoid all companies which make me call up or otherwise engage in slow communication to get things done.
Larger companies can afford the challenge and actually benefit on both ends: quick customer service via digital interface and decreased pressure on their employed humans (so they start spending less on them…).
But many businesses really aren’t at that scale. And you bet someone has built the SaaS platform for them that 1) insists they actually are that big and here’s the solution they need and 2) actually sucks more as time goes on and requirements are glommed onto it.
Having minimal support forces the company to ensure the app is fully capable.
Still rooting for fax support though.
It felt like that one xkcd about the customer support backdoor[0] made true, and I'm surprised I've not seen any similar offerings for anything else.
A. Steam
B. AliExpress
C. All of the above
Remember capitalism's job is to provide zero value for nonzero cost. Therefore, we must work to end capitalism at any cost! <3
However some companies do it well - recently had to do a warranty exchange with Apple - after I couldn’t find anything useful in their warranty webpage, I hit their Support app with the question (which essentially initiates a chat via Messages)
Within minutes I had a response, where a voice callback was scheduled (within about 10 mins since I was available), then onto an immediate escalation (by them, not me) to further verify/qualify the defect, to eventual resolution, all within 30 mins (which included me fumbling a bit to get pictures while the agent waited).
Overall I was very satisfied with the overall process, as I didn’t have to sit and wait on hold at all to start addressing my issue.
Hopefully it will bring low wait times, knowledgeable "representatives", and fast escalation.