Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human” • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#171

Post by stonemetal12 » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 3:18 PM UTC

>be told conflicting things by different people via email

What makes you think phone support would be any different? I have been told different things by different people on the phone, do we demand in person support? What makes you think even in person support wouldn't lie to your face to get you out the door?

The problem is quality not formfactor. As long as people buy the cheapest they can support will always be cut to reduce costs. I just wish there was more pay per incident support that actually got you world class support and was cheap enough to be worth it.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#172

Post by kostyal » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

Scaling a customer support organisation is difficult. You need to find people to do a low-status job with unpredictable hours, in a tight labour market.

Also, you probably don't just want to speak to any human. You probably want to speak to an intelligent, skilled human who can fix your problems. That pushes cost up further.

If great support is a priority to you, I recommend being an early adopter of startup products. These companies get their edge from being customer-focused and will be happy to speak to you for whatever reason.

Of course, there are tradeoffs to that approach too. As customers, we want it all: we want cheap products that add tons of value to our lives and never break. In reality it's necessary to make some tradeoffs

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#173

Post by lancesells » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

yunohn wrote: post #109

SqueamOssi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt being a rep is difficult. However, if customers were able to reach someone quickly without enduring maddening phone trees and were able to speak with someone who was friendly and actually empowered to provide help, I think the customers would generally be pleasant to work with. So I don't think aggressive customers are the only problem. A lot of the issue can be resolved by the company's willingness to…

I’m not sure what you’re saying - IF everything were different, things would be better? Sure, but we live in a reality where CS is expensive but also underpaid and customers are mean.

There's a lot of things companies can do to make it easier for customers. I try live chatting all the time and it's typically answering 10 questions for a stupidly dumb bot, finally getting someone online and then answering the exact same questions. Then telling CS my issue in detail and being given a macro answer that ignores everything I just wrote.

The level of training of CS is bad in a lot of companies and I can become that mean customer. I don't use abusive language but I'm upset having to explain myself repeatedly and getting nowhere.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#174

Post by stevenhuang » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #155

Msw242 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a higher price level! It's important to write out and acknowledge that people cost money.

People cost money, yes. But when you're distributing that cost across thousands (or tens of thousands) of customers every year, those costs are a pittance. Single digit dollars per year on the outside. Not exactly a bank breaker for a vast majority of businesses.

> costs are a pittance

That is completely dependent on the support burden at the margins of an additional customer. If your business is high-touch, your business won't scale.

Which is perhaps the problem. Companies should not scale beyond what they ought to (when additional scaling hurts those at the margins).

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#175

Post by ironmagma » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #167

ironmagma wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren’t talking about law, we are talking about spirit. It’s perfectly legal for you to ask Google to take it down and for them to take it down. The point is, that goes against the spirit of this culture, which is that you really can’t and shouldn’t silence someone in general. Again, I ask, are they lying or do they have accurate points? This is best taken as a learning experience because treating it as a battle is…

> We aren’t talking about law, we are talking about spirit. ah damn, one of the the philosophical free speech people that made up a standard the spot, I wrote in a related comment: > 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 so, what does that have to do with any…

Where did I say this country is unique? Every country could be identical for all I care, that isn’t the point. The point is, here, we have the idea that you can’t shut anyone up. Maybe everywhere else they have that idea too, but again, that isn’t the point.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#176

Post by fourseventy » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

There is so much anti-business rhetoric on this site lately. A regulation like this would severely hamper peoples ability to start and profitably run a business. My guess is that OP has never run a startup.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#177

Post by muttled » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

SqueamOssi wrote: post #61

edgyquant wrote: post #15

Earlier 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 don't doubt being a rep is difficult. However, if customers were able to reach someone quickly without enduring maddening phone trees and were able to speak with someone who was friendly and actually empowered to provide help, I think the customers would generally be pleasant to work with. So I don't think aggressive customers are the only problem. A lot of the issue can be resolved by the company's willingness to…

I think you hit on something here. In phone situations where I'm able to help, I've found them to be generally positive, even if the person started off a little angry. It's the ones where you're stuck between company policy and an angry customer who also happens to be in the right where it really grinds you down. That said, there's only so much you can take of people coming in angry at you and having to cheer every single one of them up.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#178

Post by PragmaticPulp » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #99

PaulKeeble wrote: post #16

I 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 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. Well, that's their problem. There should absolutely be a "right to speak with a human", like a restaurant must pass health inspections, and other such things. If they c…

> There should absolutely be a "right to speak with a human", like a restaurant must pass health inspections, and other such things.

> If they can't afford it as a basic cost of doing business, they can always close.

If you're not paying for a service, are you even really a customer?

Hacker News is free. Do you really expect to be able to pick up the phone and call someone at Y Combinator to discuss your Hacker News account? Do you really think it's a good idea to make this a legal right?

Or how about GitHub? If they were obligated to provide phone support to anyone with an account, their only option would be to disable all free accounts. If you wanted to use GitHub, you'd have to get a paid account.

The whole idea is ridiculous. Unless you want most of the free internet to disappear completely (or move overseas) then it's a non-starter.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#179

Post by andjd » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

"Right to speak to a human" seems tangental to the right you're actually asking for. It is just as possible to have a that human bound by a rigid set of policies that makes them as frustrating or useless as getting automated or slow emails or interacting with a chatbot. Any business that has a call center of any scale already does this, especially if they are at all adversarial to their customers. (think cable companies)

What it sounds like you're asking for is that you can talk to a human, explain your edge case, and get an exception to their general policy on the spot. That is much harder to regulate. If the government says there must be a "talk to a human" button, if the company doesn't want to have it, they will train these humans to just say no to everything. Nobody benefits from this arrangement.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#180

Post by BoppreH » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 3:23 PM UTC

lghh wrote: post #153

BoppreH wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't see an ethical imperative for, say, Giphy (pre-acquisition) to provide that kind of support. Giphy hosts user-generated content and encourages sharing. Imagine someone uploads a gif of you and fake subtitles of racial slurs and calls to violence. It starts trending. Your friends and families are asking you about it. You've submitted a request to remove it, but got no response yet. You can't get hold of…

Has this actually happened? Additionally, you are not a customer of giphy. So now giphy has to reasonably have the amount of human customer support for non-customers? So, essentially everyone on earth?

The scenario above was fictitious, but people need content removed all the time. Here's an article [1] from The Guardian about Pornhub being slow to remove revenge porn and CSAM. And in this thread you'll find a business owner trying to remove a bad faith review.

Yes, you'll need more staff depending on your business' impact on people's lives, regardless if they are "customers" or not. If you have so many complaints you can't pay enough people to deal with it, you should not be in business.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/16/pornhu...