SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
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SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
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Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#2But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual.
If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all!
Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.
Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible time is the metric, and if humans were better at it - you could still hire less humans and "save labor costs".
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#3[flagged]
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#4>>the deliberate, built-in ways corporate “customer service” is set up to not only shield those on the top of the ladder—executives, vice presidents, large shareholders—but pit low-wage workers against each other in an inherently antagonistic relationship marked by powerlessness and frustration.
Yup. Just like the classic experiment on rats where they start introducing stresses into the environment (increased crowding, reduced food, noise, etc.) and the rats start fighting each other. Here's it is letting the customers fight the customer service reps, who are themselves deliberately understaffed.
Maybe time to using LinkedIn and other sources to find the higher level managers executives and start letting them hear the complaints directly in their inbox.
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#5But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual. If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all! Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead. Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible t…
>Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.
I have never seen customer service come up during a purchasing discussion outside of large corporate purchases. It's pretty firmly a "cost center" that MBAs try to optimize into being as cheap as possible. It is simply cheaper to outsource your support and make it obtuse/difficult to reach a person, basically only fulfilling the absolute bare minimum to not get sued.
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#6But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual. If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all! Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead. Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible t…
Are you a real person?
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#7But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual. If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all! Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead. Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible t…
How do you know the problem is solved, and the customer didn't just hang up in frustration?
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#8But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual. If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all! Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead. Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible t…
I’ve never encountered an automated phone system that can direct me to the manual for a product. Do you have an example of this?
I have, however, encountered phone systems that make it literally impossible to talk to a person.
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#9But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual. If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all! Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead. Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible t…
Solving a customer's problem does not directly make a company money. It may arguably avoid them losing potential future money but it doesn't make them money.
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#10But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual. If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all! Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead. Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible t…
Automated call centers save money by disincentivizing calling in, and by making people give up.
Most people don't think about customer service or support when they are buying stuff.
Actually solving the customers problem is way down the list of objectives for most phone systems. It's easy to see this by comparing the quality of phone support with the kind of market power a company has.