Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane • Hacker News Board

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#131

Post by orf » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 10:47 AM UTC

ucm_edge wrote: post #47

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…

Why would you give credit card information over the phone to anyone? I’m not in the US but that sounds crazy.

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#132

Post by mike503 » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 10:55 AM UTC

posguy wrote: post #52

mike503 wrote: post #51

Not just phone support. Support, period. It feels like Covid broke things and nothing has fully recovered. Take for example the Subway app. It has no built-in support. You can't report issues with an order or the fact it never even showed up. I used their mail forms and even tried to get their attention on twitter. I got one auto response once from a form (but with a woman's name like it was a real response) and neve…

The Chipotle and Wendy's apps and websites have nearly the same issue, and Chipotle won't let you even call your local store anymore, it just goes to a useless AI Chatbot.

Yeah! I tried to call Chipotle to tweak an order I placed and was met with the fact they don't have the store answer anymore and they somehow sell it as a benefit to me that their workers aren't distracted by that.

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#133

Post by is_true » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 1:28 PM UTC

sacnoradhq wrote: post #124

is_true wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does this. They even tell you that they cannot help you because but you get a lot of empathy

Which part of Google? Google is run like 450 half-assed companies.

I've experienced this with My Business and AdWords.

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#134

Post by effingwewt » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

vinnydiehl wrote: post #102

boxedadin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of messages being non-persistent, it seems that chat representatives take a minimum of five minutes per reply. It’s unclear if they’re (1) helping other people simultaneously (2) performing a slow corporate policy (3) multitasking. It shouldn’t take 5+ minutes to reply with “let me look into that for you”.

It's very clear that they're assisting multiple people. It would be an incredible waste otherwise, but unfortunately these agencies likely stretch their support agents far too thin.

Oh,they very much are helping multiple people at once.

I worked at a call center with a T-Mobile LOB, at which I had several friends working in their online chat dept.

Support reps and sales reps alike were both required to be on at least 7 open chat windows or face termination.

They could be shadowed at any time by an ops agent, who would ding them for not pasting proper replies (they frowned heavily upon real interactions- going 'off-script'), or having less than the 7 required chat windows.

If these companies could they would nix phone agents entirely, and this is why- one agent becomes 7.

Customer satisfaction? What even is that?

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#135

Post by kylehotchkiss » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #25

lucumo wrote: post #10

Unlikely. Phone support was one of those things that was driving people insane before. Remember jokes about hold music, foreign accents and phone menus? I personally can't stand phone support. It always takes way longer than it needs to, and I can't do anything else during it. Just firing off an email is far more efficient. Easier to do after office hours too.

The problem is that it's been replaced with either nothing or a help page that doesn't solve your problem. I recently had a company email me saying: > In this case, your review of___ has been flagged because we couldn’t verify its authenticity, and on that basis we’ve removed your review from our platform. > While we’re confident that this is the right call, we appreciate that sometimes we get it wrong. If you think…

For a lot of us, it’s been replaced with credit card disputes. It tends to escalate issues very quickly on the vendors side.

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#136

Post by kylehotchkiss » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

throwaway128128 wrote: post #63

Not just private industry. Seattle PD literally doesn't pick their phones up. Do a Google search for "seattle pd non emergency" and you'll see that everyone in the city is having this problem. Sometimes they just turn off the phone tree entirely. And no, don't talk about "defunding" - Seattle PD is lavishly funded. They just like to throw temper tantrums when they're held accountable.

How do you get a police report number for insurance claims then?

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#137

Post by kylehotchkiss » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 5:37 PM UTC

posguy wrote: post #52

mike503 wrote: post #51

Not just phone support. Support, period. It feels like Covid broke things and nothing has fully recovered. Take for example the Subway app. It has no built-in support. You can't report issues with an order or the fact it never even showed up. I used their mail forms and even tried to get their attention on twitter. I got one auto response once from a form (but with a woman's name like it was a real response) and neve…

The Chipotle and Wendy's apps and websites have nearly the same issue, and Chipotle won't let you even call your local store anymore, it just goes to a useless AI Chatbot.

It makes sense for chipotle to not answer the phone, they make like 60% of takeaway orders wrong somehow and would rather you just ask for a replacement for their app, who will give you a coupon code for one immediately ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#138

Post by kylehotchkiss » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 5:40 PM UTC

abigail95 wrote: post #18

Phone support is a baumol cost. Rising wages for more productive forms of work both pulls away workers from working in phone support - and increases its demand by giving everyone else more money to spend. I would say a high amount of increased productivity in phone support is by using cheaper labor in developing countries.

So long as the person in the other country is capable of solving issues and can communicate clearly it doesn’t bother me. I’ve had many good experiences with American Express’ outsourced customer service. American Express seemed to have the nicer office buildings around Delhi so I presume they are recruiting really good candidates

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#139

Post by throwawaysleep » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #120

throwawaysleep wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Depends. Have they spent 5 minutes trying and then called or 5 hours? You want them to spend 5 hours before calling.

Re: Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane

#140

Post by wlesieutre » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #135

wlesieutre wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it's been replaced with either nothing or a help page that doesn't solve your problem. I recently had a company email me saying: > In this case, your review of___ has been flagged because we couldn’t verify its authenticity, and on that basis we’ve removed your review from our platform. > While we’re confident that this is the right call, we appreciate that sometimes we get it wrong. If you think…

For a lot of us, it’s been replaced with credit card disputes. It tends to escalate issues very quickly on the vendors side.

A friend of mine recently had an issue with PayPal and couldn't find a way through the support robots.

I think they've entirely outsourced their first line support to taxpayers via the CFPB and have no process to fix anything without you filing a complaint against them to get the ball rolling.