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Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

blogs.forrester.com

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Re: Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

#51

Post by banana_giraffe »

mwfunk wrote: post #49
diogenescynic wrote: post #38

I cancelled my Comcast subscription because their phone support is so horrible and they removed the ability to chat to a live agent on their website. If you call Comcast customer service you have to verify your account/identity to access the phone tree and then once you are actually connected to an agent you have to verify your account/identity again. Then when that person transfers you to the department or agent who…

What frustrates me most about Comcast is that so many common tasks that one would think would be solved by checking a box on their site requires making a call to customer service. They are not incentivized to provide decent self-help options because they WANT you to have to call, because phone support is another sales channel. I don't think I've ever called Comcast about anything where they didn't make me listen to (…

I can't speak for Comcast, but when I worked at a medium sized ISP back in the day when ISP meant dealing with dial-up modems, all of this was caused by politics, and not by design.

The customer support department was only really concerned with call times. If the number one call type was customers asking to delete a 'stuck' email, then all that mattered was that the reps could handle that call quickly. The devs were only concerned with shiny new features.

There was a feedback channel so the reps could say "a lot of email seems to be 'stuck', can you make it easier for the customer to delete it?". But that'd be a bug like any other, and not prioritized above others just because the reps said it was their number one type of call. And reps wouldn't fight too much for it, since reducing calls wasn't really a concern, just keeping call times short.

I'd think a big org like Comcast could fix some of these stupid issues with cross-department politics, but then again, from what I've seen, fixing that sort of thing in big orgs is even harder.

Re: Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

#52

Post by maxerickson »

rbritton wrote: post #50
maxerickson wrote: post #21

Someone else used my email address for their Ubisoft account. The problem with this is that Ubisoft doesn't verify addresses, so I end up getting a bunch of junk from them (maybe things they should not be sending me too...). I looked for an email contact form to ask them to remove my address from the account. No dice. Their Twitter person said to call Ubisoft Support. Not gonna do that, so now their user isn't gettin…

I have a gmail address. It's unbelievable the number of people who sign up for stuff and think that's their email address. I get pay stubs from some New Zealand company, OB-GYN reports for some woman in Baltimore, and so on. Very few services verify email addresses.

My email is maxerickson@, so about the same as yours. My favorite example was a nice woman who started sending pictures of her newly born baby to the address (thinking the kid could then log in to the account in the future).

It turned out okay, I sent a polite note and she figured it out. One of the main reasons I do anything about it is that I simply don't want to ever see so many of the messages.

My theory is that the Ubisoft guy is also the guy giving the address to employers. Hurray for that.

Re: Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

#53

Post by joshstrange »

bsder wrote: post #33
devonkim wrote: post #22

I have to disagree with some of the implications of the article. Older people (baby boomers or older) like my parents or mother and father in-law immediately look for a phone number when they encounter an issue because they "don't trust computers to be as up-to-date as a real, live person" (summarization). This tendency seems to decrease as a person becomes faster at looking up information online, but even my father…

The under-25 generation seems to be actually terrified to have to ... gasp ... TALK to somebody. Many of them will sit and wait for 2 days after ordering something online when something is available 5 minutes away at a brick and mortar store. I don't get it. I guess I'm just old.

> The under-25 generation seems to be actually terrified to have to ... gasp ... TALK to somebody.

No I don't like talking to customer service, their english is normally subpar but that's not even the worst part, they ask you to verify identity with every transfer (and after you verified it through their phone system). Phone lines often drop for no good reason throwing you back to square one. I'm not terrified to talk to someone, I'm terrified I'll spend an hour on the phone and NEVER talk to anyone (Hello IRS).

> Many of them will sit and wait for 2 days after ordering something online when something is available 5 minutes away at a brick and mortar store.

5 minutes? Hahaha. I have to go down 16 floors (elevator but still), find my car in the parking garage, then drive through traffic where the closest grocery store is 10 min away and tech/superstore is 20 min away then I have to go in the store, find what I want, stand in line, and buy it. OR I can order it on the couch in my pajamas and have it cheaper and delivered to my door.

> I don't get it. I guess I'm just old.

You might be old but that's not the issue. You must live next door to every store you ever need to buy things from and call companies that answer with a real understandable human on the first ring.

Re: Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

#54

Post by david-given »

nikanj wrote: post #4

I. WANT. TO. CALL. SUPPORT! Nothing is more infuriating than having a problem, and being endlessly redirected from a FAQ to user forums to email. Email gets me a canned answer from Bob, who didn't read my mail for more than 7 seconds. Replying to said mail gets me Chuck, who's very sorry Bob couldn't help me..and then pastes the same canned answer. With a phone, you're not running totally stateless, and can actually…

Phone calls are synchronous. If I phone someone, I have to commit to (usually) an hour of my life to get the problem solved.

Email is asynchronous. I can send the message and then get on with something else while waiting for a reply.

I loathe phoning support.

Re: Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

#55

Post by edraferi »

dredmorbius wrote: post #43

Typical Forrester bullshit (I've been wading hip-deep through their crap for 20 years). Yes, offer defense in depth, more below. But when your customers DO call you, it's because other avenues are clearly failing, and their reasonable expectation is for excellent, clear, fast, appropriate, and effective service. That expectation is usually observed in the breech. I loathe phone support calls because of: 1. busy signa…

I generally agree. I like companies that enable me to do most things independently online, then quickly connect me with a competent human when I call about complex issues I don't understand.

Re: Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

#56

Post by leepowers »

dredmorbius wrote: post #43

Typical Forrester bullshit (I've been wading hip-deep through their crap for 20 years). Yes, offer defense in depth, more below. But when your customers DO call you, it's because other avenues are clearly failing, and their reasonable expectation is for excellent, clear, fast, appropriate, and effective service. That expectation is usually observed in the breech. I loathe phone support calls because of: 1. busy signa…

From the article:

> Voice increasingly evolve to be an escalation— not a primary service — channel.

I hope this trend continues. And companies drop the know-nothing scripted CSRs (who are like a FAQ that you access through a clumsy voice interface) and instead staff their call centers with pleasant, smart people with actual domain knowledge.

Re: Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

#57

Post by dredmorbius »

edraferi wrote: post #55
dredmorbius wrote: post #43

Typical Forrester bullshit (I've been wading hip-deep through their crap for 20 years). Yes, offer defense in depth, more below. But when your customers DO call you, it's because other avenues are clearly failing, and their reasonable expectation is for excellent, clear, fast, appropriate, and effective service. That expectation is usually observed in the breech. I loathe phone support calls because of: 1. busy signa…

I generally agree. I like companies that enable me to do most things independently online, then quickly connect me with a competent human when I call about complex issues I don't understand.

As do I.

But, first, this is already a 3rd-order failure: the product was poorly-designed enough not to be clear, and failed to offer in-product guidance or help to guide the user to the right solution. By the time you're searching online, the vendor has failed twice.

Supporting a community of intelligent, literate, and adult users who all the same simply don't get technology, that's just not good enough though.

Yes, make your online support information publicly available online. It's part of what I look for when assessing new technologies, and lack of this is a huge demerit. And make sure it's the same information your own people are using. Some of your customers can self-support, or be supported through dedicated staff, friends-and-family plan, or online community support.

But get that damned phone support quality up there too.

Re: Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

#58

Post by dredmorbius »

dredmorbius wrote: post #43

Typical Forrester bullshit (I've been wading hip-deep through their crap for 20 years). Yes, offer defense in depth, more below. But when your customers DO call you, it's because other avenues are clearly failing, and their reasonable expectation is for excellent, clear, fast, appropriate, and effective service. That expectation is usually observed in the breech. I loathe phone support calls because of: 1. busy signa…

I meant to mention a couple of best practices I've encountered.

A large data analysis/reporting package, when I used it (quite some years back now) had excellent phone support. Front-tier was basic, but calls would get escallated if necessary, and I once spent a good 45-60 minutes talking through a data extraction language nuance for mainframe formats. That company budgeted $50 per support call. In the 1990s.

My experience recently with Apple is that you schedule a support call and they call you. Often before I can take my finger off the mouse from filing the request. This really is excellent (though resolution of problems themselves is mixed). Part of Apple's cost is that end-user support, and it's good.

There's the case of Dell selling a former gig a storage solution that, despite promises of the salesman, Dell wouldn't support (and it turned out, couldn't). Front-tier was as helpful as he could be, but when I escallated to a supervisor I was informed that support wouldn't be provided and that the supervisor's interest was in not providing support but in actively denying it.

That's been some 7-8 years ago now. Oddly enough, I still remember the incident.

Re: Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

#59

Post by iofj »

donperignon wrote: post #15
iofj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, given the current quality of phone support, one wonders why they aren't replaced by scripts + voice recognition + voice synthesis. I'm pretty sure I can write a basic AI program that can beat comcast tech support agents at their job, assuming an eventual fallthrough is available.

With the recent improvements in voice recognition and deep learning algorithms, machine-driven support is just about to happen soon. Plus there are many companies actually working on that field, ie. http://www.artificial-solutions.com or http://www.anbotogroup.com/en/index.php

Thanks for the links, but if that's the quality of their voice synthesis ... it's not going to work.

Re: Customers Don't Want to Call for Support

#60

Post by iofj »

joshstrange wrote: post #53
bsder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The under-25 generation seems to be actually terrified to have to ... gasp ... TALK to somebody. Many of them will sit and wait for 2 days after ordering something online when something is available 5 minutes away at a brick and mortar store. I don't get it. I guess I'm just old.

> The under-25 generation seems to be actually terrified to have to ... gasp ... TALK to somebody. No I don't like talking to customer service, their english is normally subpar but that's not even the worst part, they ask you to verify identity with every transfer (and after you verified it through their phone system). Phone lines often drop for no good reason throwing you back to square one. I'm not terrified to tal…

Having started out, during studies, as a tech support agent for an ISP, as I imagine a lot of people have here, companies don't like support calls either.

The vast majority are either dumb (trivial problem like misspelling username), unreasonable (demanding a truck roll because "their latency went up by 2ms", download speed going down, ...), shouting or combinations of the above.

Treating callers that call about a product like adults is an expensive mistake for companies.

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