How did customer service get so bad? | Hacker News Reader

How did customer service get so bad?

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37 pointsbishopsmother54 comments

In the earliest days at amazon, we had a customer who had placed an order for several books. One of the books was no longer available, and when we notified the customer, they wanted to replace it with a different book that cost more than the original. They had paid by check (!) for the original order, but wanted to use a credit card to pay the difference.

Myself and the other founding programmer groaned - our system was not designed to have multiple payments via different payment systems for a single order, nor to handle cases of a partial payment that did not correspond to the value of an entire order.

Bezos said "this just has to work for the customer, we have to tell them "sure, no problem", today, tomorrow and forever".

I'm not proud of what Amazon has done or become, and there is much to criticize or even protest about. But this level of committment to customer service, to whatever extent it has actually survived the last 30 years - that's something that was both eye opening to me and something to be just a tiny bit proud of.

What Amazon has become is not your fault. It's a systemic inevitability. Don't be hard on yourself.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_prof...

> Bezos said "this just has to work for the customer, we have to tell them "sure, no problem", today, tomorrow and forever".

What is interesting to me is

Jeff Bezos has $200b or whatever and made one of the most successful companies of all time, so we have to listen to that and think it is true.

But... on the flip side... We know why Amazon makes money. AWS, and world-class logistics/marketplace offering.

That has (in my opinion) next to nothing to do with "let's bend over backwards for customer service/edge case customer experience"

I was shocked at how good AWS customer support was when I had to use it a few years ago, at least compared to what I was expecting (phone support with an hour of holding and menus that can do nothing + "help" forum thats all copy pasted)

One of the reasons that AWS makes money is the same level of customer commitment today. Even a small customer is handled with an account manager and can access same level of resources. AWS also proud itself that almost all the new services it launches are born from requests of customers. I truly believe that this is true. I also think that in the first decade of Amazon, the website was also customer obsessed. What happened afterwards is a different story.

> “…this just has to work for the customer…”

Obviously this story is about a technical problem, but this attitude (about money) has been alive and well in small businesses forever. It’s called, “take the money” and work out the details later. Haha.

Part of it, for me, also seems to be an increasing desire to prevent customers from solving their own problems or even admitting fault. In a discussion regarding using AI chat bots to handle the easier customer service requests, someone pointed that if the questions are simple enough that the bot can do it, then it could just have been an online form. Many companies don't even want to do that, they'll refer to self service, but not actually provide it for anything that might be an expense.

About a year ago I had to contact customer service, because my internet was out, so was the internet for 400 of other homes in the area. The ISP did nothing to provide any information, no status page, nor did they in fact know that there was an issue, to customer service these where 400 separate calls. Every single person could sit in a 3 hour queue to inform customer service about the exact same issue. This could easily have been a button on their website saying: "Hey my fiber is down" or an update status page.

If you can't do customer service correctly, then you either have to many customers, or to many products (complex products). Funny enough, there always seems to be time to attempt an up-sell. "Would you like to hear about our streaming package" .... Dude, I just told you, my fiber connection has been down for two weeks, I'm calling because your status page is giving me no information, right now might not be the best time.

>unny enough, there always seems to be time to attempt an up-sell. "Would you like to hear about our streaming package"

I worked for a cable company around 25 years ago when they tried to implement this bullshit. At the time we had a highly technical support staff and management and we revolted. We successfully pushed off the sales pitches for another 3 years or so. Of course those that pushed this quickly got the fuck out of there because we saw the writing on the wall.

Customers want stuff to work, not be sold shit. But the company selling the product, especially a monopoly product doesn't give two shits, they just want ever increasing growth.

I think it ties into human psychology.

Put up a faq for your project, what do people do? Email, create issues, go on slack/discord and ask.

People will create new questions constantly on SO, even if it's exact duplicates.

People will ask for help from front desk people rather than searching on their own, or reading signs directly in front of them.

"data shows that over 30 per cent of people would pay more for a product or service if they received exceptional customer care."

The solid majority wins.

Airlines take a lot of heat for poor customer service, but most customers will purchase the cheapest possible ticket no matter what.

Be the change you want to see in the world...if all customers collectively decided to do business only with companies that provided excellent customer service...then excellent customer service would become ubiquitous outside of large monopolies and government agencies.

In other words...it's only a problem if you consider it a problem that people in general want the best of everything, but for cheap or free. I don't.

And that's why you need government intervention: enforce a minimum standard of quality, so that all companies have to invest at least a common baseload of money and can't undercut each other by "saving" on support.

Do we actually need that? As parent commenter said, you can buy something cheap or you can pay more get good support. Your choice. If the government intervened, nobody would have the option anymore, the "expensive with good support" would be chosen for you (and that's a best-case scenario).

The government can just as easily rate the service instead of shutting anything down.

If your country has any consumer protection body, it already has all the data it need to rate them.

"Paying more for exceptional customer care," translates to, "Higher pay and better training for customer care workers." Ask if people support a higher minimum wage, or a higher wage for customer service workers, watch that 30% plummet. People are more spiteful of "unskilled workers" being paid well than they are desirous of better service.

Complain to your city manager, state legislator, or representative when you get bad customer service from a government agency. They work for you. You don't have to put up with it.

What are you going to do, take your business to a competing agency? “We don’t care, we don’t have to.”

Vote in a replacement to the person you complained to, and tell the newspaper that this person is not doing their job. These people are highly motivated to resolve complaints and have people in their offices dedicated to handling them. How do I know? I've dealt with them. If everyone else also knew how to use their government, I wouldn't have had to be the one making the complaints because the problems would have already been resolved.

The funny thing is that these days, people are paying more (thanks to inflation) for products and services while customer care is getting worse.

> data shows that over 30 per cent of people would pay more for a product or service if …

« Would » or « do » ? Lot’s of people say they would pay for lot of thing « if only … », but ultimately act differently when it’s time to pull out the credit card.

This is similar to the problem of security: you don't know you're not getting good customer service until it's too late.

> Airlines take a lot of heat for poor customer service, but most customers will purchase the cheapest possible ticket no matter what.

When I fly these days, all of biz/first class is full. I'm starting to think they need more higher end seats.

Airlines fill those seats by upgrading people with status or miles.

Airlines have long realized that there are generally two groups of customers: the occasional flyer that will always choose the cheapest flight, regardless of customer service; and the regular flyer that takes service, comfort, reliability, and other things into account. That's why they have frequent flyer programs where the service level goes up as you fly more with the same airlines, from expedited checkin, free food and drinks, free upgrades, and free flights.

Customer service costs money - why bother spending it on a customer who doesn't care about the difference?

Tangentially related: My wife worked in customer service for a few years remotely and would regularly vent to me about it. One of the interesting things that she said is that we are training an annoyingly large subset of customers that if they just make themselves annoying enough they get free stuff. Eventually the company decides to reward their craziness by caving to their demands and creating a weird incentive dynamic which repeats. Obviously I can’t give specifics but she said the % of her day spent on people in that category grew steadily over the years she was in that line of work. Anyone else in that area experience similar?

I thought of an example of my own so I don’t accidentally throw my wife under the bus accidentally. I was on a flight and it was cancelled for some reason after we had boarded. We all had to go to the customer service desk to make new arrangements and whatnot. The dude in front of me didn’t like the solution they provided (if I recall it was a night in an airport hotel and a flight out next day). He started yelling, berating the customer service person, generally being an ass, and they ended up giving him airline miles and an upgrade in the future in addition to he initial offer. Being next in line and having overhead everything I said “I’d like the offer you gave him”. They said “no”. So I guess at that point I can either accept the initial offer or start yelling like the other guy did until they give me the good offer. The incentive in this system is to act like an ass. Pretty unfortunate.

I've been on the other end, as a rideshare driver whose app frequently malfunctions/customers rescind tips/etc. When anything other than, "Get order, pick up, drop off, get paid," happens, you call customer service. They bounce you around, you ask for a supervisor, voice your original complaint AND how you had to deal with being bounced around and put on hold, etc. The supervisor issues some sort of reparation (sometimes less than what was originally lost, occasionally more). It's a bandage over the broken processes that the company can't be assed to fixed, because the alternative is drivers becoming so fed up that they quit driving, and suddenly you don't have a business anymore.

I suspect that the cause is further up the chain, and possibly even out of corporate's ability to fix. Maybe they can't afford a process rewrite. Maybe such an endeavor is futile because even the best interfaces will never cleanly program your customer base to approach your service as you intend for them to, and you simply NEED human-facing humans to smooth out the wrinkles. Maybe the entire business model is faulty and there's no point in trying to fix it versus just riding things out until collapse. Considering how widespread the problem is, there probably just needs to be a general rebalancing of expectations and perceived value. In some cases, rip off the bandage and perform the surgery. In others, maybe fire your UX team and invest in CS, because another n redesigns just simply isn't going to fix the problem as well as having a knowledgeable contact available would.

There is a huge asymmetry in costs. When an issue arises, the customer has to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort to fix it, but for the company, the problem actually benefits them (e.g. a billing mistake, refunds for a cancelled flight, saving customer support costs).

Company profits increase and stock goes up, but customers' lost weekdays and weekends are not measured.

1. Businesses no longer have to bend over backwards to stake their name on customer service. Starbucks can take 30 minutes to do a mobile order multiple times and millions of people will still go pay $6 for coffee every day.

2. Most people working these jobs are upset/miserable/hate their lives due to "America problems". If you make less than $60k/yr, chances are your life is very unfulfilling. You are constantly stressed about money, you might be in debt/behind on your bills. You have to work at least 32-40 hours a week at a job you wish you didn't. Your soul is beat down. You hate your co-workers + manager. You can't afford to own anything. You use social media/sports to escape the monotony of your life. You probably don't have great health care. You are probably not in great shape statistically and a victim of the high fat, high calorie, high sugar, low nutritional content American diet. You trade your sanity and freedom for a paycheck that can barely buy you anything. So what do you do? Take it out on customers. Why? Because you can get away with it, because your company/manager is desperate for employees (which is weird, you think this would lead to higher wages supply/demand wise)

We probably have an oversupply of people who can do customer-service level work, so you can be rude without fear of your manager caring.

In the past week I've picked up food multiple times. Wasn't greeted, no smile, was barely acknowledged, if employees do say "thank you" as we leave a restaurant, they're looking down at their phone while scrolling TikTok/Instagram. Nothing wrong with, just not the "glory days" of customer service.

It all depends on the company/management. If management tolerates rude employees and empowers their employees to be rude to customers/be on their phone, it's a "top-down" decision.

In reference to 2. - I'd say that more reflects where you live as opposed to most people being 'upset/miserable/hate their lives'. I don't experience that whatsoever where I live (Santa Barbara, CA) or where I grew up (Boise, ID).

Where you live is highly correlated with cost of living. That cost of living affects those at the bottom of the economic ladder the most.

To be honest it sounds like America is just starting to experience face to face customer service like the rest the world has always had.

Describe the above scenario to any Brit and we would say “well of course” and they would probably then follow it up with how we would rather honest surliness than the fake saccharin type service of America.

Management tolerates the rule employee because that managers manager is being rude to them an likely spewing a stream of vitriol that is tantamount to 'lower costs, increase sales'. This goes back into the opening statement on point number 2, the business does not exist to server customers, the business exists to serve the investor class with higher profits. And while you would think that better customer service would lead to higher profits quite often that is not true. Instead the business starts operating in wild swings where you get good, but higher paid employees. Well that's too expensive so they get rid of them, and for a time the business is more profitable until the customer get tired of the bullshit. But at the end of the day the upper management sees the spreadsheet that shows that highest profitability occurs after getting rid of high paid staff.

But the cool thing about money is that that spreadsheet really does show the preferences of customers: more business if prices go down, even just a little, no matter the cost in customer service.

It's management responding to the customers. Yes they "have the power" (the higher up in management I go, the less power I seem to have. I can affect an invididual a LOT, but if you think going up in management will get you the power to, for example, make a new product ... best of luck with that)

In other words: we get what we collectively pay for.

I'll always remember how my German brother-in-law found that when he arrived in America, retail store clerks were always eager to offer help, but actually didn't know anything about the products being sold and were untrained and basically useless.

I'll +1 to this. Coming from Australia to the US I've found that (generally, especially in big corp entities/govt.) American customer service is always extremely courteous and eager but ultimately unhelpful or severely limited in what they can do. As soon as you are off script, good luck.

on the counter I think Australian retail is some of the best. fun, low pressure, engaging and helpful.

I would agree. My standard engagement with CS in Australia was a lot more personable and once it was recognized that a situation was off script they were far more willing to go into problem solving mode.

Might also be related to how the public treats retail workers (ie not well). So there's a lot of turnover, which means the remaining employees have less experience and the parent company isn't going to want to invest a lot in training.

The turnover is yet another "feature." Lots of new people on staff makes it more difficult for them to learn the ways they're getting screwed by management and corporate, and to subsequently organize for better conditions.

I worked in a unionized retail store and it definitely did _not_ incentivize better work.

I didn't say it did. The implication was that fear of unionization caused companies to take actions which degrades their workforce's capabilities as a side effect.

That said, other countries with unionized retail seem to be able to provide excellent customer service. So, maybe the problem isn't unions, but Americans (or Americans in unions)(or Americans in unions in a country where unionization has historically been waning). Or maybe your experience mischaracterizes the actual circumstances.

customer problems are more complex and organisations need staff who are trained to deal with a wider range of issue

I think this is a function of the complexity of products being offered by service companies.

In the rush to differentiate themselves from their competitors, they end up providing so many variants or extras on top of the core product that still need support and problem resolution, and that all falls on the poor CS rep.

https://archive.ph/uTmRC

1) Because vast hordes of people have become horribly confused about the purpose of business, so when they start optimizing for "making money" they get everything that is actually the purpose wrong.

2) Because people need jobs, apparently, so vast hordes of people who shouldn't be in a particular job (because they don't care about it) are doing it anyway, with predictable outcomes. Certainly related to #1.

3) Because mass consumers don't care, and if your decision-making capacity has been shattered by #1 and #2, you won't care, either, because ultimately you don't know what you're doing, you don't know why, and you don't care.

4) Humans do not know how to scale. This exacerbates the above.

5) Stupidity is a much bigger problem than you can probably recognize. This exacerbates the above.

In my view customer service has never been better. I’ve always been able to get a human on the phone wherever I am trying to call, and by being polite and considerate can most often get exactly what I want. In other cases, livechat - as long as you are willing to multitask and go back and forth to the chat for an hour - has freed up a lot of my time so I don’t have to be stuck on a hold phoneline.

Maybe this issue is like search engines, where they can be really frustrating to use if you don’t know the right things to say to them.

I’ve had the same experience… when I can get a human on the phone, they’ve all been really friendly and helpful.

This has been a trend in the last couple of years. I’ve even had good experiences at the DMV the last time I went. I thought I had entered the upside down…

Checkboxes, tasks, wrong kpis, remote warriors (keyboard or phone)

Here's the fixed version with improved style and grammar:

I blame it on the influencers. People aged 18-26 used to work in retail or customer service. It sucked, but it was the only option for talented individuals. So you gained a varied experience. The pay was also enough to provide a living wage.

Nowadays, the pay is meager, so capable people find opportunities elsewhere. Those who are left behind are bombarded with messages like, "You're wasting your life," and "You could be a travel blogger," etc.

In many countries, instead of customer service or retail, numerous people have turned to delivery services since they allow more autonomy and no physical contact with customers. I actually think social media has made the human experience worse rather than improved it.

Customer service was a marketing technique aimed at the baby boomers. It was used to lower friction of a high spending customers at any absurd level of babying the customer to avoid them having to experience difficulties. As the baby boomers have aged and are no longer really needing "things" the baby boomer money has moved to healthcare. Now customer service as a product will return to policy level since there is no longer any monetary benefit for the poorer millennial and continuing generations.

In all of history customer service has been handled the real way. The proprietor or their employees sized you up for how much they thought you could spend and then provided the amount of customer service they thought they needed to get your outsized spending. If you seemed low income they simply said take it or leave it and did not care if you left. This is still the way it is done in the overwhelming majority of the world.

TLDR. Customer service declining is a result of the huge baby boomer generation dying and there no longer being a group that is able/willing to pay double the price for avoiding any inconvenience or rudeness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

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