* Right to speak with a human who has the authority to actually make changes in whatever system you're pinched in.
Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
111–120 of 348 posts
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first job was a small e-commerce shop that had a one person on customer support. We couldn’t keep them and the owner would say your typical stuff like everyone’s lazy etc. Well one month we had trouble finding someone so I picked up the phones when I can and… It’s not just the company and it’s owners who think so little of CS. Almost every caller was obviously someone with an issue and they had no problem venting…
> I put people on indefinite holds, I let the phones ring a little more than I should hoping they would give up and hang up etc. The people who call into customer service are those with issues they want to have addressed. By throwing up roadblocks, you're making it even harder for them to get to a solution. They expect the people on the line to provide help, but this behavior puts them in an adversarial mindset by th…
I think they understand that logically.
But they are put in a position where that is their least painful move. The incentives are wrong due to poor management.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#113It doesn't help much when the human on the other line is very much silo'd regarding what information they can discuss with you.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aka the Google model
Oh yes. Have you ever really tried to speak to someone at google? It's an educational experience, it teaches you the value of patience, the impermanence of everything. It's a bit like what I imagine being inside the total perspective vortex is like. > The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. > Trin Tragula – for that was his name – was a dreamer, a thinker, a spec…
>Have you ever really tried to speak to someone at google?
Thought such thing wasn't even possible.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#115One of the reasons I love WPEngine so very much is that everytime I use their chat support there's a person at the end with someone knowledgeable and who has the tools to help fix my problem.
I wonder if focusing via chat support but with live, smart humans is more scalable and productive.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#116I 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 bet 99.99% of people who complain about not having a human to talk don't want to pay a single dollar for that human.
Once one realizes this, one sees the value of paying for goods and services. Being the customer and not the product. The next step is seeking out the best service providers and rewarding them with dollars.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#117This would not help, since humans are trained to respond like robots. They vaguely understand your support request and then copy-paste a knowledge base support blog post at you.
Even by phone, they do this exact same thing. At least my bank does, until you get escalated to a supervisor, who is permitted to go off-script for a minute.
You explain you've read the support info and it doesn't apply to your case, at which time they're trained to say "I am so sorry, but that is all the support I am able to provide at this time".
I had this exact experience with Tinder, when I tried to renew my grandfathered Platinum subscription (and ensure it auto-renews) a few days before it expired and got lost forever.
They wouldn't let me "add a card" or "manage my payments", so I contacted support, who told me I should go to "manage my payments" to "add a card".
After tons of back and forth, Tinder went from having an eager Platinum (re)subscriber to somebody who angrily deleted their account.
All because their support staff are essentially robots pretending to be humans (they eat, poop and go home to their families, but they're still robots while they're working for Tinder).
I actually wrote a blog post with screenshots.
https://papyrus.so/@support/how-tinder-support-turned-me-fro...
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate on that? How would it be different in a non-free speech country? Is there a country I can go to make someone legally disappear due to an online review they posted, I have a list. Let me know
Your argument doesn't logically follow. I can't connect your first and second sentences to any point anyone was making. Asking google to take down someones opinion about a business would be violating that persons first amendment right (assuming they are American). Unless you could prove libelous intent. (which luckily is very hard to prove and doesn't cover someone disliking your business)
> Asking google to take down someones opinion about a business would be violating that persons first amendment right (assuming they are American)
ah, there it is. since Google is not the Government yet, them taking action would not violate that person's first amendment right, and asking Google to do so would not violate that person's first amendment right
I wonder what the person I initially replied to thinks
its hard to tell which people just completely misunderstand the first amendment, and which people are talking about a "philosophical" free speech that they made up on the spot to bolster their point
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#119I recently had the experience of trying to do a banking operation that required an in-person visit. For some reason this bank required me to do this operation at the branch that I originally opened the account, which is not where I live anymore, and it's very inconvenient for me to go there. So, while I was in another city of that country, I decided to try and handle that problem. I went to a branch and asked them to…
This. Humans aren't a panacea for getting problems solved.
I would much rather open a ticket than wait on hold for hours to speak with a human in a call center in a low wage country half way around the world, with whom I can't easily communicate either because they have a limited mastery of English, or just because we speak very different dialects with very different accents and have limited shared cultural context with which to understand my problem, and who has no ability to solve any problem not contemplated by their script.
Humans don't solve problems. Thoughtful humans who can understand your problem, and put in a genuine effort to get it solved, and are empowered to actually do so - those are the things that solve problems, and they're much much more rare.
Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
#120I 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.
Interesting. I feel the exact opposite. The tech industry’s fascination with libertarian values have brought about the disastrous consequences of putting free speech on a pedestal, with utter disregard for the harms it has caused. And libertarianism has always required choice. Choice requires a free and vibrant marketplace. But that market place requires regulation to keep it free and vibrant. The circle cannot be sq…
We certainly disagree but I respect your opinion and appreciate describing an alternative point of view like this.