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On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

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Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#61

Post by eisa01 »

shittyadmin wrote: post #53
monochromatic wrote: post #37

I wish there were a rule against posting paywalled content here.

Yeah - reality is even if I think there's quality journalism worth paying for, subscriptions to those sources often cost $10/mo+, odds are I'm not going to pay for all of them, I'm especially not going to pay for it when it's an article I'm tangentially interested in. Yet participation in some interesting discussions often hinges on it. So here I am, pirating more and more of my news... you'd think someone would have…

You can read WSJ articles for 49 cents at Blendle, no need to bypass with Outline: https://blendle.com/i/wsj-com/on-hold-for-45-minutes-it-migh...

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#62

Post by cutchin »

The methods might be a bit more sophisticated now, but this has been going on for many years now.

A single call center may take calls for hundreds of consumer retail products, but if you call the 800 number for your high annual fee, high-balance card, you will absolutely be higher in priority than people who called about their pre-paid starter credit card. Asking for an operator won't change that.

More recently, the last 15-20 years or so, it became much more common for a "data dip" to happen when you call, or when data is provided, so the system can look you up and make intelligent routing decisions. If you've called before with a particular phone number, there's a decent chance the system already knows who you are and will prioritize you accordingly unless you provide account numbers suggesting otherwise.

Call centers (whether in-house or farmed out) are high-volume, low-margin enterprises. Everyone is frustrated dealing with them, and they prioritize reducing that frustration for high-value customers. It's definitely unfair at times (an errant $500 charge that would be trivial for someone rich could be devastating for someone poor, but the rich person's call will be taken first) but that's just how the business is.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#63

Post by Scoundreller »

mszcz wrote: post #8
hiei wrote: post #2

At least for my phone provider, you can hit 0 about 6-7 times after the automated responses and be directly sent to a live agent.

I use another method. I select all the options in the automated system that indicate that I want to buy stuff from them. Suddenly I get connected to a live person almost immediately ;)

The “Canadian” method is to know enough French to get through the French menus to get to a real person.

They’re almost always bilingual and based in Canada (often New Brunswick, which is the most bilingual place in Canada anyway).

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#65

Post by Scoundreller »

tyingq wrote: post #46
notyourday wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prefix it with the famous f word and become the next call answered.

Once you get a real person, the word "chargeback" also can sometimes get them onto a different track.

Just call the “collect” number on the back of the card.

When they think they’re paying $4/minute for the call, they route you prettt quick to someone experienced.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#66

Post by empath75 »

azinman2 wrote: post #6

“Not all customers deserve a company’s best efforts,” says Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School who helped popularize lifetime value scores. I feel like this is a succinct argument against the idea to privitize everything — there’s no accountability nor notion of “fairness” baked in whatsoever.

Have you ever had a customer facing job? Some customers are just toxic. Rude, demanding and usually a cheapskate as well. It’s just not worth spending time dealing with them.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#67

Post by shittyadmin »

eisa01 wrote: post #61
shittyadmin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - reality is even if I think there's quality journalism worth paying for, subscriptions to those sources often cost $10/mo+, odds are I'm not going to pay for all of them, I'm especially not going to pay for it when it's an article I'm tangentially interested in. Yet participation in some interesting discussions often hinges on it. So here I am, pirating more and more of my news... you'd think someone would have…

You can read WSJ articles for 49 cents at Blendle, no need to bypass with Outline: https://blendle.com/i/wsj-com/on-hold-for-45-minutes-it-migh...

Yikes, that gives me some major sticker shock.

I like where they're going, seems like they've got a lot of papers signed up which is great, but I was hoping for more of a subscription model which would allow me to read as I please rather than spending on a per-article basis.

I'd have to be deeply interested in the content to pay that price.

The way the movie and music industries largely beat piracy was by getting good subscription models - I'm hoping we'll see the same here too.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#68

Post by mfringel »

DiffEq wrote: post #54
mfringel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you restate your assertion in a way that can not be trivially torpedoed by a single existence proof?

There is no need. OP seems to imply that there is some kind of inherent fairness built into human governments; as if they are outside the influence of human nature. My assertion contains all of human history; within each of those governments one can find some form of injustice or lack of fairness. OP thinks government it a solution to the woes of privatization - even a casual look at the world and at history will sho…

You used a universal quantifier in your initial statement. That is, all of human history, implying all governments at all times. This is trivially falsifiable.

With your current statement, you're attempting to modify that to all governments in human history, at a single point in time for each of them. In the most charitable case, that's vacuously true.

You chose the hill you wanted to defend... it's a bit late to complain about the location. The question stands.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#69

Post by goostavos »

grahamburger wrote: post #17
hiei wrote: post #2

At least for my phone provider, you can hit 0 about 6-7 times after the automated responses and be directly sent to a live agent.

Honest question: does this actually help you get what you're after faster? I've never been a call center agent, but I've worked closely enough with call centers to know that they are often divided up in to different skill sets. Even if the automated responses won't get you what you need (modern ones can do quite a lot!) and you really need to talk to a person, you still have to talk to the right person. (Or the right…

>Even if the automated responses won't get you what you need

I honestly hate that this is a thing at all. If I'm calling customer service, it's because I've exhausted every other option _other than calling customer service_. I'm not here to have fun, I've got a problem than I unfortunately need a human to solve.

Sitting through several minutes of "helpful" suggestions, options, and tips completely unrelated to why I am calling only heightens the annoyance of needing to call in the first place.

Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score

#70

Post by neuralRiot »

soneil wrote: post #13

How's this a secret? I used to work in retail/service. Not something with data and metrics, just a mom'n'pop. But we knew our customers. We especially knew our regulars. And you did try not to piss off a regular. But from this I learnt that people will try to play their 'value' as a trump card when they want to complain. Do you know who I am, do you know how much I spend here, I come here every day, blah blah blah. T…

On the other hand, you might also be alienating new customers that might become regulars, if a business i'm going for the first time shows no interest in me even if i buy a cup of coffee i'm not gonna be returning for sure.
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