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Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

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111–120 of 149 posts

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#111
post #22

Support chat is pretty terrible, but poor quality phone support isn‘t that great either, in my view. (High-quality phone support does exist, but is unfortunately increasingly rare.) I wish email support was more of a thing in the US. Not chat, not a web-only form or ticketing system, just plain old email (on the frontend): It leaves a paper trail (persisted within my control), it has minimal overhead (the forced supe…

> Not chat, not a web-only form or ticketing system, just plain old email (on the frontend):

Really! I tried several companies to fill taxes for LLC (foreign owned)(https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/11kkkn2/best...) and good luck finding a way to use email.

Chat is so bad for support of first issues!

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#112
Not just phone support, even places that have a physical presence or storefront are almost completely useless. Many times all the customer support representative does is update a "trouble ticket" on the automated computer system.

I've seen mailed letters from companies that say nothing more than: "Thank you for writing to us about issue ABC, issue ABC has been assigned case number XYZ, we will reach out again within XX days, please refer to ticket number XYZ when contacting the company." Then when you visit the physical bank or government DMV they tell you to go back home and wait to receive your driver's license or debit/credit card replacement.

The local plumber that supports my neighbor has an office about a block from my home yet if you call the number it's routed to some answering service three states away and the plumber never answers any phone calls. Then after work is performed, the plumbing company expects you to pay online and never accepts cash. Good luck if you have a customer service issue with the plumbing job or billing because it takes forever to get a hold anyone that can resolve anything.

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#113
post #69

For me the worst is you talk to someone at a company, be it phone or support chat, and it becomes clear the person wants to help but the policies of the company prevent their customer support people from doing anything meaningful. The support person has no power, may not even be employed by the company in question, etc. Then you get the salt in the wound customer satisfaction survey of "Did X resolve your issue today…

I had this exact issue with at&t. They weren't honoring a promotion that we signed up for. I talked to the support people and they verbally told me that they agreed with my assessment of the situation. It took taking at&t to small claims court to reach someone with any ability to help me. The situation was quickly resolved after they received the summons to court.

In my not so humble opinion the bigger problem is the inherent complexity and opacity of billing. If buying your communication and entertainment services were similar in complexity to buying your groceries few people would have issues to resolve. If you want apples and beans the price is apples + beans and nobody pays 15c an Apple today and $7 an apple next month.

The current model makes money due to lack of options and attrition where fewer people are willing to threaten to switch the 4th time or jump ship every year. Some pay more than reasonable others jump through hoops like trained seals. It's not the best model for anyone.

Support dollars are better spent on actual problems instead of such self inflicted wounds as billing complexity.

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#114
post #22

Support chat is pretty terrible, but poor quality phone support isn‘t that great either, in my view. (High-quality phone support does exist, but is unfortunately increasingly rare.) I wish email support was more of a thing in the US. Not chat, not a web-only form or ticketing system, just plain old email (on the frontend): It leaves a paper trail (persisted within my control), it has minimal overhead (the forced supe…

Do you mean that the EU mandates a generic email address (like ‘support@mycompany.com’) as distinct from whatever more personalised support address(es) they may push more publicly? Do you have a link to the regulation? I've not been able to find anything.

Hm, on second thought this might be a German regulation. German imprints definitely do need to contain a monitored email address (which somewhat hilariously is often imprint@company.com or impressum@company.com).

This used to be the only way of reaching my phone operator for a while (they had chat support, as well as a phone number, but ironically that one would only text-to-speech read out "helpful" FAQ articles and then hang up, only forwarding callers to a support agent if they know the secret incantation producing zero FAQ hits).

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#115
post #33
post #22

Support chat is pretty terrible, but poor quality phone support isn‘t that great either, in my view. (High-quality phone support does exist, but is unfortunately increasingly rare.) I wish email support was more of a thing in the US. Not chat, not a web-only form or ticketing system, just plain old email (on the frontend): It leaves a paper trail (persisted within my control), it has minimal overhead (the forced supe…

I've had mostly very positive experience with chat support. It's always what I look for first.

For me, it's been mostly nightmares. I will say though that chat via a third-party messenger (e.g. WhatsApp, iMessage etc.) is significantly less frustrating than in-app or web chat, which frequently times out ("please respond within 30 seconds or we will consider your issue resolved" after having me wait for 15 minutes for an agent etc).

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#116
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s because emails continue to queue up and it’s impossible to answer them all. While people will actively avoid calling if at all possible and will drop off if it’s not important.

Sounds like shithole company behavior at its finest, who cares about responding to support queries after all? Cheaper to not backfill vacant support positions than engage with actually supporting your products.

Every company has finite time to give to support even if they heavily invest in it and people continually demonstrate how bad they are at basically everything. People treat emails to people they deem less important than them as asynchronous to be dealt with whenever and emails TO such folks as synchronous to be dealt with immediately. If not given immediate response they are liable to forget about it until its convenient for them to deal with it again and if the response is again not immediate they will forget about it again.

People's initial problem statement may be insufficient to even establish identity let alone nature of problem and solution. This is usually established by repeated follow up questions sometimes repeating questions to get the actual answer because it turns out they had no idea about the actual answer or indeed don't know what words mean.

Due to both of the above even simple issues are likely to become 12 step marathons with the associated cost of context switching to their problem 12 times. Worse due to the low cost of initiating an exchange they are likely to do so even when they could have resolved the issue in 10 seconds with google or even turning their head into the on position.

Your suggestion would turn a well funded support center into a team of professional shit shovelers trying to clean the Aegean stables with teaspoons.

An actual call queue intentionally and constantly drops matters too unimportant to invest 5-10 minutes in resolving and makes people do the whole shebang in one go by having them answer the follow up questions now.

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#117
I've been trying to get a webex with elastic for support and they want me to use their ticketing system first, explain in detail the issue, attach logs and diagnostic files, and so much crap that it's not even worth asking for help. Just get on a conference and look at it. I'm paying them 12k a month for the crappiest support ever. Splunk was never this bad...

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple can do this because they have absolute mountains of cash and users willing to pay extra for the experience and reputation. Your average business can’t do this.

They can and often do. IMO small businesses often have much better support.

[dead]

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#119

For me the worst is you talk to someone at a company, be it phone or support chat, and it becomes clear the person wants to help but the policies of the company prevent their customer support people from doing anything meaningful. The support person has no power, may not even be employed by the company in question, etc. Then you get the salt in the wound customer satisfaction survey of "Did X resolve your issue today…

In my experience, the best option is usually to print your issues onto professional-looking paper and send a registered letter to their legal contact.

Lawyers are the only people that are still allowed to make decisions in modern corporations.

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#120

On a related note, please stop telling me about the website when I call for customer support. It's 2023, people know that websites exist. If I could do it on the website, I wouldn't be calling you.

> If I could do it on the website, I wouldn't be calling you. You might not. Most of my relatives over 40 will though. At my company it is incredibly common for a support ticket to be answered in the FAQ.

There is a split between "could" and "will" between these two points but more importantly: if telling people they could do it on the website meaningfully worked it wouldn't need to be said anymore by now.
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