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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

#11

Post by AlexandrB »

subradios wrote: post #2

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. 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.

Why? And how would they know?

Customer service is a thing that maybe 10% of customers will interact with, and usually long after the product is purchased. It's very hard to evaluate up-front except through "brand" reputation.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#13

Post by rqtwteye »

It’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.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#14

Post by adriancr »

subradios wrote: post #2

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. 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 would argue automated call centers are a problem.

If you end up needing to call someone since you've exhausted all other avenues you do want to talk to someone.

At that point you will either:

- waste a lot of time navigating prompts until you give up or reach a human.

- automated call center will decide that prompt it gave you is the correct one and close your call... (had this happen a lot...)

- automated call center asks you to state your issue, does speech to text, does a stupid prompt and close...

And all metrics will show great for the company while you've given up or you start looking for other companies.

Sure, lots of problems are solved by pointing to correct manual... although that would be an argument if product is user friendly enough.

Now... on southwest airlines case... what manual could you look up to fix your cancelled flight?, how do you deal with that?

Personally, I have had a cancelled flight on vacation. I could not find someone to talk to, automated prompts and calls closed. I booked another airline flight home and asked for a refund and compensation after the fact... This might not be an option in a lot of cases.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#15

Post by phreack »

This is why my #1 metric to choose a service provider is support capability. Things will always go wrong and if the point of contact with the customer does not have any agency to fix things effectively, I will not deal at all. The exception is the norm, and front facing employees must be able to act instead of just reading a script and hoping the problem will solve itself.

That phrase about recorded apologies is just dystopian.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#16

Post by lotsofpulp »

subradios wrote: post #2

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. 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.

Not all products/services offer customers (or end users) a choice. Government, wired ISP, and health insurance are usually not a choice.

A lot of times, mobile network and airline are effectively without choice too.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#18

Post by prpl »

monero-xmr wrote: post #3

[flagged]

I like most self service things but ordering at e.g. McDonalds is much quicker in person usually. I think even the pared-down menu that is in-vogue is pretty complicated for ordering for more than one person.

I also started phoning in orders instead of using most other services too (Uber Eats, Grubhub, Yelp) because it’s just quicker

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#19

Post by mattashii »

subradios wrote: post #2

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. 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.

> If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all!

If a company's phone tree can make the consumer drop the call, it saves the company support worker time, regardless of whether the customer request was adequately served.

For a company, the tradeoff where customer may be on the line for 10 hours in a call tree to get an answer a their question, or 10 minutes with a support agent, is fairly easy if you do not care about support.

Phone trees do not automagically save anyones time, and especially not that of the customer.

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