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I hate telephones

jameshfisher.com

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Re: I hate telephones

#431

Post by CaptSpify »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #179
projektir wrote: post #85

I recently had to spend a lot of time on the phone to set something important up. It was a very frustrating experience. I would call them, and be met with a robocall. The robocall would not really have a section for what I actually needed to do, so I would stumble around and often end up at the wrong person. Often we were both confused and it wasn't clear what was going on. Every time I called, it's a different perso…

At this point, I have to assume that it's deliberate at some level. There is so much low-hanging fruit for improving the customer experience that it's no longer plausible to me that most call centers have that as a genuine goal.

I used to work as part of the helpdesk for a large company a few years ago. Calls that never made it to a live person were considered "solved by the phone-tree". Everyone there knew that 9/10 of those were people who just got too frustrated with the phone tree, hung up and tried to call back again. It's all about padding those reports.

Re: I hate telephones

#432

Post by CaptSpify »

icebraining wrote: post #195
projektir wrote: post #85

I recently had to spend a lot of time on the phone to set something important up. It was a very frustrating experience. I would call them, and be met with a robocall. The robocall would not really have a section for what I actually needed to do, so I would stumble around and often end up at the wrong person. Often we were both confused and it wasn't clear what was going on. Every time I called, it's a different perso…

There's no excuse for lack of continuity nowadays, though. The callcenters I know have software to create tickets where the operators write the details of your request. Next time you just need to provide your client number or other ID to continue where you left of.

Just because there's no need doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Yes, this is a solved problem, but companies don't like using those solutions. They'd rather you punch in your id number into a phone tree, only to be asked for that same id again as soon as a human starts talking.

You are correct that there is no excuse, but companies still do it all the time.

Re: I hate telephones

#433

Post by bdhess »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #150
blfr wrote: post #33

Rarely can I get the same level of service out of companies over text that I can easily over the phone. Talking to a human over the phone is by far the most customer friendly medium of communication. I can do it without physically going anywhere, yet I get almost all the benefits of visiting the business. Online chats on websites are usually undermanned and overall useless. On the phone I am sure I have at least one…

It's less about having one person's attention, and more about making the BATNA for solving your problem "customer ties up a CS agent for phone support at $10/hr until the problem gets solved".

$10/hr sounds high even for on-shore telephone support.

Re: I hate telephones

#434

Post by grkvlt »

thomk wrote: post #210

My favorite is this call from an unknown caller. /ring Me: Hello. Caller: Hello, is this Me: Who is this? Caller: IS THIS ? Me: Who is this? Caller: Sir, I can not give you any information until you identify yourself. Me: Hahah. /click Don't call me and make demands. Seriously. If you aren't willing to tell me why you just called this number, I'm not even going to verify I'm a person let alone identify myself.

What's interesting here is how things are different from say 20-30 years ago, when everyone would answer their land-line with 'Hello, this is NAME on NUMBER, can I help you' or some variant. This is how I was taught to answer the phone at home, certainly.

Perhaps what's changed is that calls are no longer expensive, and numbers are no longer hand-dialled, so knowing as quickly as possible that you had connected to the wrong number or person is not as important. There's probably other cultural issues at work, I guess, to do with an increased awareness of privacy and so on. The way we communicate has certainly been changed by the Internet and mobile phones in an enormous way.

Re: I hate telephones

#435

Post by grkvlt »

Feniks wrote: post #258
simonbarker87 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the average person can’t type faster than they can talk. Generally a conversation has two sides and typing forces both sides to express themselves in a much slower manner, the time you save reading you will waste typing

Typing forces people to think before they act. It is marvelous. Synchronous communication is overrated. A well written message of a few sentences can replace an hour of talking.

The 'well written' part of that is what many people seem to struggle with. It can sometimes take over an hour to produce just a paragraph or two containing a 'well written' message with the right style, optics, tone, and connotations, spending time checking the spelling, punctuation, grammar, and factual content for accuracy and readability. A hastily thrown together couple of sentences with spelling errors, unexplained abbreviations and acronyms, and perhaps even missing some important detail will cause more damage and waste more time than that hour long phone conversation.

Re: I hate telephones

#436

Post by squarefoot »

chrisbennet wrote: post #346
tyingq wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add spammers phone as a contact, then select "all calls to voicemail" for that contact.

Spammers use a spoofed caller ID with the same first 3 digits as your phone number so it looks like a local number sO blocking them by number doesn’t really work.

So let's make a daemon app which calls that exact number on the 2nd SIM and if it's not busy drops both calls.

Re: I hate telephones

#437

Post by jandrese »

tyingq wrote: post #266
daveFNbuck wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you do this via settings in Android? I've spent hours searching for the answer and have yet to find it.

Add spammers phone as a contact, then select "all calls to voicemail" for that contact.

Spammers generate random numbers in your area code for each call though, they don't call from the same number twice.

Re: I hate telephones

#438

Post by randycupertino »

figurehe4d wrote: post #173
izacus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 spam calls per day? That sounds like torture... is there really no body in USA that would prevent that from happening? (I've never received a spam call on my now 20 year old phone number.)

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way, the ones that DO give you the option to be 'do not call' will forward your number to other spammers, actually increasing the spam calls you get. Do not ask them to put you on the d-n-c list! Here's what does work (in my experience): answer the call, but say nothing, heck, mute your phone mic if you have to. Just give them silence. I'm not sure if there's some 'person on the oth…

I used to work in tech at a call center and that would confuse the auto-dialer software. It's designed to know a person and designed to know voicemail. But just silence is a new one! Good strategy.

Re: I hate telephones

#439

Post by projektir »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #376
projektir wrote: post #85

I recently had to spend a lot of time on the phone to set something important up. It was a very frustrating experience. I would call them, and be met with a robocall. The robocall would not really have a section for what I actually needed to do, so I would stumble around and often end up at the wrong person. Often we were both confused and it wasn't clear what was going on. Every time I called, it's a different perso…

By far the worst phone call experience I've ever had was with Washington Health Plan Finder. You can still experience it for yourself by making a call now. It's a never-ending loop of holding followed by mind-numbing options and random hangups. If you get lucky to speak with a real person, the level of incompetence will drive you to the brink of insanity. I swear, they just let random people walk in from the street t…

Oh, what a coincidence, these are the same institutions I had these problems with!

> Somehow NOBODY was able to help me. I was so fed up with this situation that I moved countries half way around the world.

It's funny how much I can relate to this. I did eventually figure it out but it very much made me want to move somewhere else.

Re: I hate telephones

#440

Post by WCityMike »

Zarel wrote: post #324
tyingq wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add spammers phone as a contact, then select "all calls to voicemail" for that contact.

You can't add "Private Number" as a contact, nor can you block it.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=se.embargo.blo...
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