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SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
31–40 of 277 posts
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#32But 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…
> But 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.
Do you have any evidence for that claim? It seems unlikely that could be true since people need to call for things like repairs which a manual couldn’t help with and the intersection of people who don’t read manuals but will read them when prompted seems to leave out a lot of other people.
> 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.
This is leaving out a lot of obvious alternatives: products don’t fail often enough that people buy anything but the cheapest one (or the one that is featured more prominently in the store they have a promotional agreement with), companies have all cut their support staff so the ability to shop around is limited, the cost is shifted to the retailers or installers, some fraction of people give up and ask a friend or neighbor to help, etc.
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#33>The waiter hasn’t been replaced by an iPad, they’ve been replaced by you.
I've noticed as well that in grocery-store lines. Where customers are being conditioned to patiently wait in long lines to be next at the checkout machines. To wave their purchases over lasers, then pack them into each and every bag they'll pay for. Be careful what you put in the bagging area! the machines' metallic voices shriek at the customers. They must do exactly as they're told. Or else the single human attendant will walk over to ask them what they did wrong. While others still waiting trade impatient glances. Oh the shame.
Meanwhile the silent rows of unmanned registers wait in the gloom, just in case. Are they waiting for an EMP?
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#34It’s the same with the tipping that seems almost everywhere these days. Instead of the workers being paid properly by the company the customer gets guilt tripped to tip and when you don’t tip the worker is angry at the customer, not the company.
How does the customer know whether or not a worker is paid properly? It is none of their business, or responsibility.
Ah, but pushing that responsibility onto the customer is part of the scam!
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#35> Southwest Airlines ticketing agents, cashiers at Nando’s Chicken, low-wage call center workers for Verizon overseas, become corporate sin eaters
This is why it is a good idea to be nice to the people you deal with on the front lines, and write a very politely worded letter to the head of the department at the company you are dealing with, and potentially letters to their boss, and their boss, etc. Mail it, if possible, as a follow-up to the email. I am sure people here need no instruction on how to find the appropriate person in the corporate structure to contact with their concern. These are the people who can get things done -- not just for you, but for everyone. Oh, don't forget that if you have a 401k you may legitimately be a stockholder in the company, so you can mention that if true.
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#36But 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…
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Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#37> Southwest Airlines ticketing agents, cashiers at Nando’s Chicken, low-wage call center workers for Verizon overseas, become corporate sin eaters This is why it is a good idea to be nice to the people you deal with on the front lines, and write a very politely worded letter to the head of the department at the company you are dealing with, and potentially letters to their boss, and their boss, etc. Mail it, if possi…
How do I find the mailing addresses of the bosses? Actually how do I find the names of the bosses? Maybe from LinkedIn?
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#38It’s the same with the tipping that seems almost everywhere these days. Instead of the workers being paid properly by the company the customer gets guilt tripped to tip and when you don’t tip the worker is angry at the customer, not the company.
How does the customer know whether or not a worker is paid properly? It is none of their business, or responsibility.
workers who are paid well usually dont have tip jars.
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#39But 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…
This comment is so wrong it hurts.
> But 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.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. It's a strategy to try to get you to go online, use an automated system, or annoy you until you give up. Trust me, if I'm calling into a business something has already gone horribly wrong. The automated line lying about "higher than normal call volume" (bullshit, hire more people) or "You can find the answers you need on our website" (nope, that's why I'm calling in) only pisses me off. It has never in my life provided information that I found useful.
> If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all!
What does this even mean? Of course understaffing saves the company money.
> Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.
Yes, because I have a real choice on what electric, gas, water, internet company I use /s. For non-monopoly companies (growing increasingly rare) I often can't help that I currently have their product, I might buy an alternative (if one exists) next time around but "vote with your dollars" doesn't really work here well.
> 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".
No, it's not. It might be a metric for human workers but they literally don't care if it takes you 10x longer to find the answer as long as they don't have to pay a human it's a win. I've worked for companies with call centers and I assure you the only thing they care about is reducing that headcount, the outcome for the customer doesn't even rank.
Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers
#40It’s the same with the tipping that seems almost everywhere these days. Instead of the workers being paid properly by the company the customer gets guilt tripped to tip and when you don’t tip the worker is angry at the customer, not the company.
As a customer, I support workers unionizing to improve their wage bargaining power. Besides tipping, I can’t do much to help them do that. They’ve gotta organize to do it, and call on the NLRB when there’s (always inevitably) Corporate Fuckery [1]. Luckily, the NLRB received a $25M funding bump in the latest Omnibus spending bill signed into law. [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/cases-decisions/decisions/administrativ...
How does tipping improve their bargaining power? Seems to me like it would weaken it (“why do you need a higher base wage? You get so many tips!”)