On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #96

kenneth wrote: post #57

The most obvious example of this in daily life is through airlines, where the difference is pretty transparent and you get night-and-day better service by being a loyal customer. With top status with AA and UA (EXP and 1K), you connected to U.S.-based very senior phone agents right away, who always make sure to take care of any issue that arises. 50min delay on your AA flight? No problem, sir, we are rebooking you on…

Tangent: Are there other people here who just refuse to sign up for any of these programs? I have family members who are super into frequent flyer programs, credit card points, etc, etc. But I don't like the cognitive load they introduce, and I don't like having to figure out how much I'm being manipulated in any given interaction. I get that I'm missing out on goodies, but they're paying for those goodies somehow, s…

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by astura » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

newnewpdro wrote: post #95

mehrdadn wrote: post #91

> Zeta Global, whose clients include wireless carriers, generates scores using data points such as the number of times a customer has dialed a call center and whether that person has browsed a competitor’s website or searched certain keywords in the past few days. Wait, so this means I dial a number and they link my identity to my browser to tell whether I've browsed a competitor's website in the past few days? Is th…

Did you think they weren't going to leverage your phone number in other ways when you furnished it for "improved security"?

Personal Capital does this. They require your cell phone number for 2FA, but they call you to try to sell you financial advisors (and they know how much money you have because you've links your accounts).

I still use it though, it's valuable enough to me to put up with it.

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

#113

Post by ggm » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

Serious question: google has no helpdesk at the consumer level and a very fractured one in corporate space. (I have GPC. AdWords and some other relationships for work aside from my personal google id so I do believe I know something of what I write, because I've seen at least two or three of the many sides of their product space beyond consumer ones)

Does anyone believe they could run some kind of helpdesk at consumer scale FOR PROFIT?

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

#114

Post by Vraxx » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #98

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.

I presume you're making a distinction between services from private businesses and services from the government, and I feel like there are also nearly equivalent succinct arguments for how terrible government services are for certain groups of people (particularly poor people and minorities). So, yes, you can call that a succinct argument against privatizing everything , but very few people actually advocate for that…

It seems a ridiculous opinion to say privatize everything, but I've seen more and more politicians in the US who support that, or at least that's what I hear when they talk about privatizing education, healthcare, and even the FAA.

I agree that, as you point out, some government services are terrible for certain groups of people (poor and minorities), but I don't think that's an argument for privatization because at least we try to pretend we hold the government to those standards. Nobody pretends that we do or even can hold corporations to any sort of standards. Sometimes there's regulation to help with that, but it's fought kicking and screaming the whole way from the regulated industry and is followed by constant lobbying to repeal or relax said regulation.

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

#115

Post by mbillie1 » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #25

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…

In my extremely limited experience, the people pulling out the "do you know who I am?" card are typically not regulars. They might think they are, but they're not. I'm a regular at a few places, and I treasure that status and the privilege that comes with it, and wouldn't go trying to fuck it up unless I was prepared to completely burn that bridge.

> I'm a regular at a few places, and I treasure that status and the privilege that comes with it, and wouldn't go trying to fuck it up unless I was prepared to completely burn that bridge.

Same. In fact, I tend to think that the "cost" of being a regular includes specifically NOT complaining too much or throwing your weight around. The benefit is great and preferential service, oftentimes free stuff, and so on.

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

#116

Post by atwebb » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #91

> Zeta Global, whose clients include wireless carriers, generates scores using data points such as the number of times a customer has dialed a call center and whether that person has browsed a competitor’s website or searched certain keywords in the past few days. Wait, so this means I dial a number and they link my identity to my browser to tell whether I've browsed a competitor's website in the past few days? Is th…

That's not nearly how far it's gone, but yes, this is an implementation of it.

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

#117

Post by root_axis » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

newnewpdro wrote: post #95

mehrdadn wrote: post #91

> Zeta Global, whose clients include wireless carriers, generates scores using data points such as the number of times a customer has dialed a call center and whether that person has browsed a competitor’s website or searched certain keywords in the past few days. Wait, so this means I dial a number and they link my identity to my browser to tell whether I've browsed a competitor's website in the past few days? Is th…

Did you think they weren't going to leverage your phone number in other ways when you furnished it for "improved security"?

It's even crazier than that. The phone companies have data-sharing agreements with data-providers that (for a fee) sell your subscriber data through a phone number based API (this includes name, address and other information valuable to a sales funnel, KYC, or customer verification process). Check your wireless service EULA to see that you have agreed to this.

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

#118

Post by astura » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #96

kenneth wrote: post #57

The most obvious example of this in daily life is through airlines, where the difference is pretty transparent and you get night-and-day better service by being a loyal customer. With top status with AA and UA (EXP and 1K), you connected to U.S.-based very senior phone agents right away, who always make sure to take care of any issue that arises. 50min delay on your AA flight? No problem, sir, we are rebooking you on…

Tangent: Are there other people here who just refuse to sign up for any of these programs? I have family members who are super into frequent flyer programs, credit card points, etc, etc. But I don't like the cognitive load they introduce, and I don't like having to figure out how much I'm being manipulated in any given interaction. I get that I'm missing out on goodies, but they're paying for those goodies somehow, s…

Plenty of people. My grandma used to stay at the same hotel every week, didn't want the loyality program, never signed up for the credit card.

Extra cognitive load is real.

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

#119

Post by Scoundreller » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #103

Scoundreller wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cheap seats have very low margins, oftentimes negative… so it just infeasible economically to give everyone good service. An empty seat costs the airline more than a paid ticket. They can’t exactly fly just 189/233rds of the plane.

An empty seat costs the airline more than a paid ticket. As stated, you seem to be implying that selling a ticket for 1 cent is better than flying an empty seat. But that's not guaranteed to be true. If they put someone in that seat at a ticket cost of 1 cent, does it cost more than 1 extra cent in fuel to move the now-increased weight of the aircraft? If there's a free soda or something offered, does the extra one t…

I’m running on the assumption that an airline only ever sells a paid ticket for at least its operational costs of that extra pax.

The 1 cent paid ticket simply doesn’t (or shouldn’t) exist.

But if the plane crashes, even the $2k last-minute 1st-class short-haul ticket will be a massive loss after all lawsuits are settled.

If the marginal expense of a seat is $200, and you paid $1000, you may sit next to a discount flyer that paid only $250. And because of that, the flight may be net-profitable instead of net-loss.

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

#120

Post by totoglazer » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 9:26 PM UTC

arebop wrote: post #108

wpietri wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent: Are there other people here who just refuse to sign up for any of these programs? I have family members who are super into frequent flyer programs, credit card points, etc, etc. But I don't like the cognitive load they introduce, and I don't like having to figure out how much I'm being manipulated in any given interaction. I get that I'm missing out on goodies, but they're paying for those goodies somehow, s…

Also: does anyone see these programs and think wow, this airline UX is so awful I want to show them my loyalty so that eventually they'll stop trying so hard to make me unhappy? I'm pretty convinced this all boils down to a sort of low-grade white collar corruption: people who travel a lot for business sometimes can get away with favoring one airline over another, where this decision costs the shareholders a little b…

That's literally the entire business model...