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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

#151

Post by christianmello »

pkaye wrote: post #44
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.

With private companies you many times have a choice. With public organization, most times you don't. I needed to go to the CA DMV to renew my drivers license and appointments are booked 3 months in advance and if I go to visit them, some people are waiting 3-4 hours. Because of my flexible schedule I managed to estimate and go at a less peak time and reduce it to half this time. There is certainly no accountability i…

What would an alternative to the DMV be, in this case?

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

#152

Post by harshreality »

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…

Economics. If you only view flights as getting from point A to point B, then the rewards programs aren't worth it. For some people, there's more at stake than getting from point A to point B... eventually.

Comfort and less time wasted are very valuable for the wealthy (in terms of $ they're willing to spend without monetary return, since it ends up being a smaller percentage of their disposable income).

For business travellers, it's efficiency, fewer missed meetings, and psychological comfort, allowing maximum focus on business concerns.

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

#153

Post by kenneth »

CrackpotGonzo wrote: post #137
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…

I was lucky enough to fly Global Services on United through my old boss' account at my old company. Flew internationally a couple of times and the level of attention was insane. Get to airport and they walk you to the lounge, past security, and then come grab you when you're ready to pre-board (before everyone including military). My connecting flight was delayed by 20 minutes, cutting down my connection time to 50 m…

Global Services is insane. Qualification requirements are insane, too. It's invite-only, based on unpublished criteria. It's speculated that when based at a hub airport like SFO, it takes about $75k in annual spend on full-fare United first of business tickets. There are a few other ways to qualify: fly 4 million miles with United, marry a million-miler who has GS, pre-pay $250k towards airfare for your company, or $50k personally.

As a lowly 1K who only spends the minimum $12k annually of my own dime (and earns around 125k UA PQM on top of 100k over at AA), I would never dream of qualifying for GS myself… but one can dream.

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

#154

Post by Scoundreller »

technofiend wrote: post #134
arebop wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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, I suppose it depends on the business but at my Fortune 50 we're required to use "lowest logical airfare". You can force a choice of Southwest over United by choosing one airport over another, and there's enough wiggle room to let…

It can usually work out to a 3-6% return if you don’t think too much and just buy gift cards with the miles.

It’ll be hard to earn enough on domestic flights, but I eeck out a $50 gift card every couple years for my annual trans-Atlantic flights.

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

#155

Post by fhbdukfrh »

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…

I pay cash for coffee at Starbucks at least once a day and coworkers can't believe I don't have the app and collect stars.

Yet somehow I'm the sucker who doesn't get it.

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

#156

Post by tomjen3 »

lostlogin wrote: post #97
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…

In my experiece the exact opposite is done by telecoms, insurance and banks. New customers are enticed with offers not available to existing customers, and great things are offered to them. Being a customer for decades doesn’t have rewards with that group of businesses.

I have been with my current bank since I was 3 months. I needed a loan to pay deposite for my first after college apartment -- nearly couldn't get it, had to provide a budget, etc even though it was a very reasonable amount.

The thing I don't get is, do they expect me to ask them should the time come to get a loan for a house?

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

#157

Post by cpeterso »

hetspookjee wrote: post #148
da_chicken wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I'm quickly reaching a point where I want the default browser to work in Incognito mode, and the browser should only switch to regular mode when I explicitly whitelist the domain.

On Android I browse by default with Firefox Focus and only to use sessions like posting this response I copy the URL to chrome and make the post. Than I'll go back to Focus. It's crude but Firefox Focus beats all browsers privacy and responsiveness on Android imo.

Once I started using Firefox Focus, I was surprised at just how much of my browsing didn't need to be logged in. I don't need to keep session state when I'm just reading Wikipedia, news sites, or blogs.

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

#158

Post by hueving »

babygoat wrote: post #143
kenneth wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're giving up a 5%+ (minimum) return on your money spent by declining to participate. For me the return is closer to 20–30%. Declining to participate has a non-trivial opportunity cost.

It's not free to participate.

It's only like 5 minutes of your time (if that), unless you have difficulties following basic account sign up processes on a website.

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

#159

Post by forapurpose »

da_chicken wrote: post #140
jklinger410 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they link my identity to my browser They link your phone number to a session/user along with ad networks who have stored cookies on your machine and use predictive modeling to guess at who you are/what you do. It doesn't work on 90% of the HN crowd, people who block ads/disable javascript, or just don't do a lot of traditional "browsing", but yeah.

You know, I'm quickly reaching a point where I want the default browser to work in Incognito mode, and the browser should only switch to regular mode when I explicitly whitelist the domain.

Does Incognito mode solve this problem? I thought it mostly prevented data from being stored on your local computer; I did not think it was effective against tracking.

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

#160

Post by rjbwork »

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…

I only do cashback. I currently get anywhere from 1.5 to 5% off of anything I buy via cash back. I don't think about it until I go to pay my credit card bill, then I just use the points to take the balance down the 5%
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