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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

#181

Post by TylerE »

bdamm wrote: post #141
mehrdadn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you imagining fuel usage is independent of aircraft occupancy?

It is. That is, the difference between a full airplane and an empty airplane in terms of fuel burn is quite marginal, maybe even less than 1% net fuel burn. This is because how heavily an airplane is loaded does not change its drag coefficient. A heavily loaded aircraft will not climb as quickly as a lightly loaded aircraft, but for the airliner, that just means it gets to cruise altitude a minute or two later than i…

It does change the drag, actually.

More weight = need more lift.

The way to generate more lift is by increasing the wing's angle of attack on the wing (i.e. point the nose up). In addition to increased lift this also increases drag.

Actual numbers are hard to find, but considering the weight of a commercial aircraft can vary by as much as 50% between empty weight and maximum weight, I'd wager it is well over 1%.

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

#182

Post by koolba »

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.

I’ve been running my browsers like this for years. Not being logged in to Amazon et al also prevents buying cheap crap by adding one layer of friction.

Another easy tip is to separate out anything that requires persistent login (ex: gmail) to a separate dedicated browser.

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

#183

Post by jklinger410 »

BLP4YC wrote: post #168
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.

Care to ELI5?

Analytics javascript can assign you an Unique Identifier string that can be passed along in a form where you fill out your phone number. They then tie your "session" or "user" (depending on how they have it set up) to a cookie they have placed on your machine.

They then leverage a partnership with a large ad network, to see where they found that cookie, as well as other cookies, from other sites in their network. They then correlate where they have seen essentially your user footprint (collection of cookies and other identifiers from your machine) stored throughout their network, to put you in some kind of demographic or intent-based bucket.

When you include data from mobile apps that are tracking your location, this can get very scary. There is a small leap required in tying a mobile ID (your phone's unique identifier) to web traffic, but it happens. Obviously all depending on the level of data you "share."

They then run every user in these buckets through a machine learning algo, that tries to predict things. Income, gender, spending habits, life events, etc. They can determine where you live easily, zip codes, compare that to census data, etc. It's all a part of predictive modeling.

That is the tracking portion.

The other portion is just tying a simple customer service rating to your phone number.

So imagine you piss of several customer service reps, live in a low income part of town, and rarely spend money. You might be on hold for quite some time...

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

#184

Post by cgriswald »

fhbdukfrh wrote: post #155
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…

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.

I don't think you're a sucker, but I will say Starbucks is one of the few that I'm actually signed up for; mostly because the app lets me just run in and grab my coffee instead of worrying about a line and waiting for it to be made. The 'free' coffee from stars is just a bonus.

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

#185

Post by harryh »

jklinger410 wrote: post #130
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…

>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.

It doesn't work on 90% of the HN crowd

Hahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhaha.

No.

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

#186

Post by Arbalest »

koolba wrote: post #182
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.

I’ve been running my browsers like this for years. Not being logged in to Amazon et al also prevents buying cheap crap by adding one layer of friction. Another easy tip is to separate out anything that requires persistent login (ex: gmail) to a separate dedicated browser.

Chrome/Chromium's --user-data-dir is great for this

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

#187

Post by Godel_unicode »

hueving wrote: post #158
babygoat wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And you get that time back with interest in how easy it makes the check-in process.

Push notification 24hrs in advance, check in and automatically download boarding pass.

Phone has your boarding pass at the airport, as well as push notifications for gate changes.

Phone has the baggage carousel information and terminal maps with food and restrooms called out.

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

#188

Post by nobody271 »

Honestly, this sounds like a pretty practical feature. Just do some basic arithmetic on key variables to let customer service know how much of that all too prescious resource (effort) they have to spend on that call.

I think the real problem is a lot more nuanced, though. For one, even tiny unsophisticated call centers implement painfully slow numeric menu navigation that always gives you that extra little kick in the nuts, "please listen carefully as our menu options have changed". Even if they haven't changed in a hundred, or even a thousand, years. They're an industry ripe for change because they haven't kept up with technology. To the contrary, customer support interactions have clearly become heavily scripted and dehumanizing. I can't imagine that industry having taken an uglier turn.

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

#189

Post by Godel_unicode »

fhbdukfrh wrote: post #155
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…

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.

What value are you getting for the discount and convenience you're giving up?

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

#190

Post by JohnHammersley »

jklinger410 wrote: post #183
BLP4YC wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to ELI5?

Analytics javascript can assign you an Unique Identifier string that can be passed along in a form where you fill out your phone number. They then tie your "session" or "user" (depending on how they have it set up) to a cookie they have placed on your machine. They then leverage a partnership with a large ad network, to see where they found that cookie, as well as other cookies, from other sites in their network. The…

Thank you for this, that's a very nice summary, pitched at a very understandable level.
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