With written communication you have proof and don't have to repeat over and over. If tickets can't solve then speaking definitely won't.
Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
21–30 of 348 posts
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#22I would rather just scorch the business on social media then take my business to a competitor. Even talking to a human, you will find poor customer experience that amounts to the same outcome. But survival of the fittest will eventually kill off such companies
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#23I think its important to recognise that quite a lot of modern web based companies are running their business on the 0 cents model. That is they take the marginal cost of a customer and push it down to zero and rely on scale to make a profit from it. They can't add anything to their business that would scale with the number of their customers that has any real cost, computing resources even are heavily optimised for l…
This is fundamentally about not being undercut by competition which means the costs a business can absorb are fundamentally relative to competitors' costs (especially so in high margin SAAS businesses). If everyone has to offer support and there's no way to cheat, the market will find a way to meet demand efficiently under new circumstances
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#24THERE IS !
See the GDPR rule on automated decision making and your right to speak to a human. The GDPR is your friend.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#25This week we had a disgruntled employee leave a 1-star Google review of our shop. They have never been a customer... I reported it as a Conflict of Interest PER GOOGLE'S OWN STATED POLICY and it was rejected almost immediately. Google could find nothing wrong with the review. We have no recourse to escalate. No way to even interact with a human about it. It's absolutely ridiculous. I have plenty of documentation and…
Maybe try suing them in small claims court.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_1...
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#26This week we had a disgruntled employee leave a 1-star Google review of our shop. They have never been a customer... I reported it as a Conflict of Interest PER GOOGLE'S OWN STATED POLICY and it was rejected almost immediately. Google could find nothing wrong with the review. We have no recourse to escalate. No way to even interact with a human about it. It's absolutely ridiculous. I have plenty of documentation and…
Threaten to sue for libel.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#27I think its important to recognise that quite a lot of modern web based companies are running their business on the 0 cents model. That is they take the marginal cost of a customer and push it down to zero and rely on scale to make a profit from it. They can't add anything to their business that would scale with the number of their customers that has any real cost, computing resources even are heavily optimised for l…
I think the point here is that it’s a bad business model. I don’t mean “bad as in won’t make you money or keep the business running,” I mean “bad for society.” Hence the desire to regulate.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#28An elderly relative keeps calling the mobile company about her line not working. We explained to her it was the charger. She keeps calling them. Same for her ISP. Same for the bank. Same for anything tech related. She won't budge. This costs a lot of money to companies and government offices.
I think there should be different set of companies with support catered to this growing age group who struggle with new technology. Maybe a service middle-man support.
Also, they are prime targets for things like "Windows Support" scams and all kinds of sleazy sales campaigns.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#29I don't see it as a solution because they will all just outsource it to humans from a country that cost less per hour, so your experience will be about the same. The only solution IMO is to spend more money on support, but that should be a public ranking and not a "right"/law. As an example, in my country, one of the big banks have ads with literally 2 sentences: "Talk to human, and we have a human branch in every ci…
The outsourced humans are still better than robots at customer service.
Often times, yes, but it still depends on the human.
I've been in a situation before where an outsourced human decided the right course of action was to insult me and scream at me for an open-ended question along the lines of "I need X, (how) can your company help me with that?", which they apparently perceived to be extremely stupid. Needless to say, I decided not to continue doing business with that company.
I feel like even a robot could've handled that situation better (especially from the perspective of the company, me not getting an answer at all would've probably been the more favorable outcome).
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#30This is by design, corporations have learned how to make anything that costs them into a lifetime of hassle for the customer so the customer is forced to give up. Reaching people doesn't help, they just forward you to other people and/or bureocratic procedures.