I hope we'll see a return of libertarian values in tech culture in the future. There's been a ton of push to force every rule into law in the past few years. Not everything should be backed by force of violence. I hope this authoritarian trend reverses sooner rather than later.
Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
31–40 of 348 posts
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#32I agree. You mentioned email, but to me the main issue is when one calls a support number. I absolutely despise calling a customer support number and having to listen to the "automated" response that gives one menu options that one navigates via numbers on the telephone (it's only automated for them, not the for the end-user, who has to manually chug through this process, with menu items that don't even necessarily c…
The sheer cardinality of ways they mess it up is impressive.
1. Long intro message with hours, location, website intro, email address and to hang up and call 911 if it’s an emergency
2. “Our menu items have recently changed” years after changing them
3. “We are currently experiencing higher than normal call volume” 100% of the time
4. No “other” option
5. Listing options 2, 3, 4, 5 and then the most common option “1,” last.
6. Following a huge phone menu and getting a busy signal at the end.
I could go on. There need to be legal consequences at some point just to counteract the mental instability we undertake as a nation as a result of this insanity.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#33Vote with your feet and your review. Leave the service, and leave a consumer review on a consumer review site.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#34Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#35That seems to preclude or seriously hamper someone trying to start a side hustle or anything small. Write an iOS app? Before you can ship it, you need to be able to take phone calls. Make a low-volume product in the evening and sell it to your fellow hobbyists, relying on your day job to pay the bills? Too bad; hope your boss understands that you'll need to take phone calls.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that you need to have a call centre for your wordle clone.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#36I agree and I've faced this situation as well and often wonder how do these companies accept operating in this manner. I personally run my business[1] with direct contact with my customers because I don't want them to feel the frustration I felt in these situations. If they have a need, they can always reach me, directly.
I do agree that there should be some form of easily searchable/browsable FAQ/Knowledgebase for the common issues, but the speak to a human should always be an option, an option that should not require endless steps to reach.
If a company cannot provide a good service to the customers, that includes being reachable for concerns related to the business, they should just not be in the said business altogether.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#37I agree. My biggest gripe is these new pop-up financial institutions that provide insight into your credit history or loans. It's impossible to find the contact info of a real human being and in many cases the only obvious way to even open a ticket is by creating an account first. If I have evidence someone is trying to commit fraud by pretending to be me and signing up for your services do not force me to sign up fo…
I am not a lawyer, so I am posting this as a question in the hope that someone who knows the law will reply.
In the situation described here, if you "sign up for another [service] just to contact you about it", are you potentially putting yourself in a worse situation than before, by accepting terms, such as arbitration clauses, that limit your options for redress through small-claims court or other legal action?
If this is so, then there is an obviously exploitable dark pattern here.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#38I agree. You mentioned email, but to me the main issue is when one calls a support number. I absolutely despise calling a customer support number and having to listen to the "automated" response that gives one menu options that one navigates via numbers on the telephone (it's only automated for them, not the for the end-user, who has to manually chug through this process, with menu items that don't even necessarily c…
The sheer cardinality of ways they mess it up is impressive. 1. Long intro message with hours, location, website intro, email address and to hang up and call 911 if it’s an emergency 2. “Our menu items have recently changed” years after changing them 3. “We are currently experiencing higher than normal call volume” 100% of the time 4. No “other” option 5. Listing options 2, 3, 4, 5 and then the most common option “1,…
The worst is when they won't accept new calls in queue, and just hang up.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#39If the same person answering those tickets answers the phone, do you think it would be any better?
The medium doesn’t really make a difference. The issues is that some companies front line support is just an FAQ document regurgitated by a human, with no ability to deviate from those canned set of responses.
If you have a problem that the front-line can’t handle, you have to escalate. If they can’t escalate for you, send a letter. If the letter doesn’t get a response, have a lawyer send it on their letterhead.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#40I 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…
Aka the Google model