Why Everyone Hates Customer Service

https://www.wsj.com/articles/everyone-hates-customer-service-this-is-why-11564804882?mod=rsswn

by psim1 • 7 years ago

102 126 7 years ago

Please consider updating the title to something less click-baity, such as “Everyone hates customer service. AI breakpoint analysis is why.”

psim12• 7 years ago

A moderator has updated the title. I tried to keep it as close to the original article's title as possible.

0xDEFC0DE• 7 years ago

Lots of potential to undermine this. Start every customer service interaction with “I’m going to cancel my service”. Make yourself sound angry but don’t attack the representative directly of course (don’t be an asshole). Say you’re angry, definitely. Sense of urgency, and other social engineering techniques.

Companies can’t stop this that easily. If they do, they basically have to try to call bullshit and confront them. Any system that counters this will end up harming normal customers who are generally angry.

crankylinuxuser4• 7 years ago

The last time I got counterfeit goods from Scamazon (was not on prime), I called them up and they gave me a line about how I'd have to ship it back on my dime and I might get a refund.

Once I started yelling, the situation drastically changed and suddenly they were offering free shipment. I demanded a ship box delivered, since I shouldn't have to go out of my way for counterfeits. More yelling and...

And they sent a ship box to my house, and included 3 months of prime.

Literally, the more I abused someone on behalf of shitty corporate policy, the more I got.

orev• 7 years ago

Which is basically what everyone has been doing with cable companies for years to get lower bills, until recently when they started calling everyone’s bluff. If you try to cancel now, they’ll mostly just say “fine” and send you right through the process.

psim12• 7 years ago

YMMV. My method has been working well with Comcast. When it's renewal time, I call and ask for the retention department immediately (say "cancel" to the interactive voice response system). When the agent comes on the line, I say that my rate is going up and I just want to keep the same rate and same service. No threatening, no anger, no actual statement that I want to cancel. Just, "I want to keep the same service and the same rate. Can we do that?" It has worked for about five years so far. I switched to Comcast from Verizon DSL. With Vz, there was no negotiation, and besides, their service was actually terrible and I did want to cancel.

yardie3• 7 years ago

Which is why. Some friends rotate accounts by using their name, their partner’s name, and even their kid’s name in an annual dance of getting the new user introductory rates.

crankylinuxuser4• 7 years ago

So as much as it angers and creates a horrible atmosphere for all involved, screaming and cursing at a customer rep does indeed work. The faster you escalate, the quicker you will get what you want.

dazc2• 7 years ago

My niece worked for the mortgage arrears dept. of a major bank one time and, apparently, it was common for people to make death threats and such because she would have to ask they brought their payments up to date.

All this achieves is a high rate of staff turnover and a lot of bad feeling on both sides of the fence.

crankylinuxuser4• 7 years ago

Oh, I completely agree. It makes me feel terrible, and I'm sure it creates an even more terrible work environment for the CSRs. I know. I've been an IT helpdesk employee. And we only got a sliver of nasty complaints.

The distinction from the article, is that the big companies whom can afford this tech, are doing analytics and reporting to the CSR when to not offer solutions, and when to offer. And unfortunately when doing voice analytics, the louder you are and the more 'power words' you use, the better you're treated by the company.

I in no way said this was good or ethical. It's abhorrent, and I'd rather steer clear with companies that use this. But in the bigger scheme of things, if I deal with a handful of mega-conglomerates that have phone lines, I must use this tactic in order to be made whole.

And then, I help create the horrible work environment... Sigh.

thrav• 7 years ago

The Effortless Experience says the opposite, and all kinds of industries are working very hard to make issue resolution as effortless as possible. That said, those are definitely not long term contract type situations, where resolving the issue often means losing long term money.

When you look at the industries with the best and worst customer service, it’s mostly just a difference between low and high switching costs.

mikeash4• 7 years ago

The technology isn’t why. Idiot businesspeople focused on the short term who think it’s good business to piss off their customers as long as they don’t switch to a competitor is why.

bogwog• 7 years ago

That's not what it is either. It's just the effects of monopolies. If the telecom giants had to worry about real competition, they'd actually need to make customers happy to stay competitive.

The only way I was able to escape Comcast's dogshit service was by moving to a different house.

whyenot• 7 years ago

There is what appears to be "real competition" in the airline industry. It doesn't seem to help.

charles_f• 7 years ago

Completely agree, looks like that's where evolution is sadly bringing us.

Reminds me of a totally different example, recently saw a documentary on the history of Whistler Blackcomb (ski resort in BC). They used to be two different resorts geographically right next to each others. While they were competing, they were innovating, one playing on the cool side, crafting runs to be perfect for snowboarding. The other was playing on the family / classy side, distributing hot chocolate in the lineups. Prices were kept down. Then they merged into one resort, which apart from the purely skiing part is undifferentiable from others. Prices went up. The resort got bought out by Vale 3y ago, prices skirocketed (50% increase on the daily tickets).

Point is, competition was keeping two small businesses at bay, caring at least 2fks for their satisfaction cause if they weren't, they would just climb the south mountain rather than the north. Now if you want actual competition you need to drive 6h to the east, so who cares. Plus you now need to extract administration cost for the larger entity and dividends for the larger number of shareholders that have supported the investment.

Any consolidation that happens makes me sad, cause it's never good for you as a customer.

close046• 7 years ago

Are they idiots though? They know the customer has no choice so they leverage this into offering the absolute worst service they can offer and still make money. On the other hand their lobby groups make sure this remains the status quo.

This isn't a happy accident for those "idiot businesspeople", it's a carefully thought out business plan.

mikeash4• 7 years ago

Even if you can ride the fine line to keep frustrated customers, they’ll tell friends, family, and strangers about how much you suck and you’ll have a harder time acquiring new customers.

ryanmarsh3• 7 years ago

When I started traveling more frequently for business I learned from a veteran traveler, “always fill out the surveys they email you and nit pick anything and everything they did wrong”. This, she said, would result in more upgrades, shorter hold times, etc. From what I’ve been able to gather it’s true. I’m upgraded almost every time after I complain. I do this for hotels too. I’m regularly gifted extra points and meals.

Being a sophisticated programmer I thought complaining too much might weight my feedback. Seems the airlines and hotels aren’t that sophisticated.

lowercased• 7 years ago

it's also going to bring down the scores of every human employee that was part of your experience, meaning they may not get bonuses or raises, even if they were generally good at their job. :/

isoskeles2• 7 years ago

They get bonuses?

ryanmarsh3• 7 years ago

I don’t rate people poorly if they were generally good at their job. Also those surveys are lengthy. You don’t know what aspects I’m rating or how so don’t assume anything.

maxerickson• 7 years ago

A local store has a gadget built into their card reader that asks a question about your "shopping experience" that day. I had to train myself to not answer the question, because fuck helping them manage their employees that way.

I think that's something to consider when doing your customer feedback.

jaclaz5• 7 years ago

It must be a pleasure providing you services.

That strategy might work as long as you have to deal with large corporations/chains/etc., but besides being unfair to the people involved, it won't likely work in places where you are not a number.

ryanmarsh3• 7 years ago

Yes. I’m not a monster. I don’t poorly rate the gal who grabs my dry cleaning because she wouldn’t deserve that.

If United, however asks how clean the aircraft was and there was chocolate smeared on my seat they get a 1 out of 5. I think people don’t use these surveys enough to tell companies how they’re doing. If the company wants to take general cleanliness feedback and punish good hard working employees then I’m not sure what my role in that toxicity is. I prefer to err on the side of strong signals rather than weak ones because they help force the system to respond. If that means they loose key people to Delta for treating them poorly then maybe it all works out. I have no idea how I’d know or could take action otherwise. It’s a big opaque bureaucracy.

dfee• 7 years ago

Question: the article cites a lady who was frustrated with AT&T customer service - she’s from Illinois.

How do newspapers find anecdotal stories like this? I mean this could have been anyone, anywhere - we all have these sorts of frustrating stories.

Is there a sort of marketplace or broker who has a list of on-demand anecdotes?

I just can’t imagine it’s worth it for WSJ to fly a reporter halfway across the country to get a head shot and a one paragraph statement.

EVdotIO• 7 years ago

HARO is mostly the answer.

eclipxe• 7 years ago

Help A Reporter Out

dredmorbius5• 7 years ago

https://www.helpareporter.com

"Help A Reporter Out (HARO): Your PR Agency's Worst Nightmare" https://www.forbes.com/sites/zalmiduchman/2015/11/27/haro/

"Help a Reporter Out (HARO): Ultimate Guide 2019" https://fitsmallbusiness.com/help-a-reporter-out-haro/

diyseguy• 7 years ago

AAAS: Anecdotes as a Service

  I think I found my new startup idea

siphon22• 7 years ago

No, you need to do a ML-powered "This Anecdote Doesn't Exist" instead. Could provide a lot of amusement for HN.

wp381640• 7 years ago

If I was writing this story i'd scour social media replies to the major telco's and then get in touch with people.

Likely picked telco's since they rank so low on customer satisfaction, ditto with banks

Large part of being a good reporter and getting the story right is networking and finding where the story leads you

This is certainly right in this case - if you count the sources in the story you'll see the reporter spoke to at least 9 people and cited a few reports and previous reporting

edit: it's also possible the reporter didn't fly to IL - she may have done the interview over the phone/video and the editor sent in a local freelance or bureau photographer

dredmorbius5• 7 years ago

From some cases in which I've been interviewed:

- A very large online footprint associated vaguely with the story.

- Knew the reporter socially.

- Knew the reporter through previous contacts. (Emailing the publication can do this.)

- Chaining through other contacts -- "oh, you should talk to ...".

That includes a decade or three's experience. Today with social media the task is much easier.

Various public filings (court records, consumer complaints to gov't offices, to watchdog groups) can also trigger journalist follow-ups, depending on the case.

The reporter very likely talked to 10x the people cited in the article -- one reason good journalism is hard. As with high-quality video and audio production, it's what's left out that makes what's left in much better.

magicseth• 7 years ago

Not quite the same, but there are networks of people that reporters can reach out to when they want a quote or a piece for a story. They send out prompts and people with relevant experience can reply: https://www.helpareporter.com/

formercoder• 7 years ago

WSJ is the master of anecdata

dazc2• 7 years ago

'It was only when Ms. Robey was in the act of switching phone numbers to Verizon from AT&T that the wireless carrier buckled, she said.'

Often the only people empowered to help are those in the customer retention department.

The standard response of 'before I can help you I need to ask you a few questions...' is another way of saying 'I am going to offer you no help whatsoever but keep you on the line anyway...'

isoskeles2• 7 years ago

Instead of solving their customers' problems immediately, they have a computer analyze the tone of your voice and decide whether or not you really need to be helped. We're one step closer to life being a "simulation" where very little that is real matters. Your position as a customer and customer service's position as an agent are irrelevant, what matters is whether or not the computer has decided you are worth helping (until then, the agent "cannot" help you).

I think the worst part is, people will adapt and start to treat customer service with more anger, as they'll learn it solves their problems more frequently. Some of them will take this behavior out into meatspace instead of just doing it over the phone. Of course, people already do this, but even more people will do it as a result of this sort of treatment.

rapind• 7 years ago

This just makes me want to automate the customer end. Bot wars.

kilburn• 7 years ago

I won't deny many companies are playing this game of skimping as much as they can get away with, and I despise this practice. There's also the other side of the fence though: customers who are just a resource drain.

I've recently been involved in some customer support efforts, and there are customers who are just unreasonable. They'll demand to have their cake, eat it too, and even get a new one. For the nuisance that a completely made up problem caused them. A problem that wouldn't even be your fault if it had been real.

They are a vast minority, but they spoil it for everyone. They consume your time and especially your team's morale. There is only so much bullshit a support agent can take before getting fed up with it and degrading their service to subsequent customers.

Now the organization has to figure out a way to detect those customers early enough to prevent them from screwing up everything for everyone. But false positives are very expensive: get one wrong and it becomes a PR nightmare.

Furthermore, if you try to give the best possible support, you must empower your agents to act. They can now screw up and even get your company in legal trouble. Good training reduces this risk, but humans making calls means errors will be made eventually.

In the end, reducing support to the bare minimum possible appears a reasonable option for many companies: it is the easiest to implement, it reduces legal/PR risks, and it has a very measurable and consistent effect (how many people stop buying/using your service after failing to get support). If that number is low enough, it just doesn't make economical sense to try to provide good support, which is a very hard endeavor for the reasons mentioned above.

kartan• 7 years ago

In the end, reducing support to the bare minimum possible appears a reasonable option for many companies: it is the easiest to implement, it reduces legal/PR risks, and it has a very measurable and consistent effect (how many people stop buying/using your service after failing to get support).

I agree that this is the best short interest for corporations. And that is why it is so important laws to protect consumers.

"Salmonella sickens 1.2 million Americans every year and causes 450 deaths ... But there’s a loophole when it comes to salmonella: It isn’t on that prohibited list of adulterants." https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/10/4/17936714/be...

Corporations act in completely selfish economic interest. Mandatory customer support and hefty fines and regular inspections are the only protection for consumers. Also, it creates a fair environment where having good customer support is not an extra cost because of all companies having to provide it.

Corporations have a social responsibility that needs to be enforced. Corporations are going to optimize their extractive capacity until we humans are just reduced to production machines that survive another day to feed corporations profits. Our society goal should be human wellbeing, not corporate profits.

AdmiralAsshat• 7 years ago

There's also the other side of the fence though: customers who are just a resource drain.

Sweet Jesus, this. At one of my older software support jobs, we had a Law of Inverse Size-to-Attention: the guys with hundreds of employees who paid us hundreds of thousands of dollars in support rarely called us (or if they did, they had actually competent IT staff we could work with), while the Mom-and-Pop shops that paid for the bare minimum licensing and support were the ones that called us every day and repeatedly refused to RTFM. Some would balk at the idea of paying anything at all, as though we should be so honored that Bob's Shack in Bumf*ck, ID decided to use our software that we should wave all associated costs.

mathattack2• 7 years ago

This is a Sales problem. When you. Can sell profitably to large customers, should avoid the bottom.

ProblemFactory• 7 years ago

the guys with hundreds of employees who paid us hundreds of thousands of dollars in support rarely called us (or if they did, they had actually competent IT staff we could work with)

These are all related.

Customers who are successful businesses tend to have money, and competent employees who solve many of the problems themselves. Customers who are not successful tend not to have money and less competent employees.

This is why so many people recommend startups and contractors to raise their prices - not only do you get paid more, but also you filter out less competent customers.

hn_throwaway_99• 7 years ago

It's also possible, though, that companies are inadvertently training customers to be "bad customers" with the games they play around retention.

Consider the example of the AT&T customer in the article. The agent said there was "nothing she could do" until right up to the moment when the customer was switching. It's now common knowledge that this is basically the best way to get a deal, so many people skip the whole "Can you please give me a discount?" and instead go straight to the combative "Just close my account" first, as that's often the only way to get a deal.

doctorpangloss• 7 years ago

That's funny, I regularly say please give me a discount or credit, politely, in person, emails or on phone. For the last four times I can remember, the CS rep was always nice and on top of that, does it.

luckman212• 7 years ago

This exact thing happened to me yesterday. Was trying to get Verizon to reverse a recent $20 rate increase due to a "customer loyalty discount" that automatically got removed.

I spent 47 minutes going around in circles with the rep, politely explaining that I did not wish to change my plan, or even get my bill lowered to the current promo rates which are about $30 less than what I'm paying for the exact same service. She would not budge, and offered me all kinds of crappy options such as entering into a new 2-year lock in contract, or removing ALL HD channels from my TV lineup. Finally I threw in the towel and said, "I guess I just have to cancel this, I'm sorry". She immediately said, "Wait, let me see... hmm, Ok yes there does seem to be an offer here where I can extend your loyalty discount for another year. I'll go ahead and do that." Magic. Just like that.

I asked her why we had to play an hour long cat-and-mouse game to get this done. She had no explanation.

abledon• 7 years ago

in some parts of the middle-east its expected you haggle to get a deal. if you don't , you arent showing respect and society expects you get screwed with a ridiculously high price.

oceanghost• 7 years ago

I worked for a massively incompetent electronics conglomerate at one point. They decided to change all of our phone numbers for some reason. My number became a former support number, and if you had an old enough product and looked in the manual for our support number, I might have gotten that call.

Most of the time I just gave the callers the correct number, but if it was a product I had worked on I would try to answer their questions...

Some dumb f* called up once and claimed he had taken the batteries that came with a product of ours he bought, put them in his Apple keyboard, and they had leaked, ruining his keyboard. He was adamant he was owed a keyboard.

I tried explaining politely that batteries leak from being over-discharged... But he wasn't having any of it. I eventually handed him off to customer service, who I assume told him to pound sand.

cannonedhamster4• 7 years ago

What most likely happened wasn't that they were overcharged, but that they dried out and expanded. He probably just needed to clean his terminals and put in fresh batteries. That doesn't just happen overnight. Either that or he tried to recharge non rechargable batteries.

dredmorbius5• 7 years ago

If your CS dept. can't distinguish between (and silo) problem customers, you've got a CS organisational problem.

And if you're finding that selling licenses and support bundled doesn't work, or that unlimited support doesn't work, start metering support.

Mom'n'pop and enterprise markets are hugely different. Sounds as if a fair bit of the problem you're encountering is trying to map them the same.

Then there's the alternative of providing a subsidy to transfer those customers to your competitors....

clairity3• 7 years ago

"...it just doesn't make economical sense to try to provide good support, which is a very hard endeavor for the reasons mentioned above."

it's economically rational but it's also a classic externality. the cost of poor service is externalized onto customers not only as direct costs in time and money but also indirectly as human anger and violence, which trickles out socioeconomically as general incivility (e.g., road rage).

i'm all for strengthening the legal equality of the individual so that corporations can't shirk off such externalities as simply a cost of doing business, as you suggest.

most "bad" customers are reacting to unfairness and injustice, not trying to swindle the company. treat customers fairly, even erring on their side, rather than treating them like moneybags for the squeezing, and you'll find good customer service is fast and easy (if tricky to master).

g051051• 7 years ago

Back in the early 2000s, I could call up my internet provider (Bellsouth) and talk to an actual, technically trained person who could intelligently diagnose and fix problems with my service. Now, I get someone who parrots back my problem descriptions without understanding them, insists I perform useless steps that could never help, then shrugs and tells me a technician has to come to my house. That's if I can get through the phone system that forces me to use voice commands.

CamperBob25• 7 years ago

Never, ever sign up for residential Internet service. Always sign up for business service. You'll be amazed at how much better this type of situation plays out, for both you and the support rep.

dep_b• 7 years ago

Customer service got so much better over the years it's almost unbelievable that we accepted where we came from. It used to be that companies needed to be shamed on national TV before they would even consider to change their attitudes to paying customers.

In the 21st century so many companies really rely on good ratings by consumers they go out of their way to get a negative review, or to compensate you to take one away if you do post one.

Maybe the companies stuck in the 20th century or the ones that think they'll just hold on to their monopoly forever still believe they'll get away with it but those are businesses most likely to be disrupted in the next 10-20 years.

droithomme• 7 years ago

Given they are playing the game of abusing the customer until they push back or crack, all validated by studies, it is morally right and sensible for customers to play the game on their terms. Get angry quickly, abuse customer service, yell, and make threats. According to this article that is how you get taken seriously by customer service and escalated to reps who will treat you fairly and resolve your problem.

Some companies now equip call centers with software that analyzes a caller’s tone of voice and pace of speech to determine how upset the person is. Angrier callers get routed to agents skilled at de-escalating conflict

js2• 7 years ago

Let me provide a counter-anecdote.

I purchased a utility sink/cabinet combo from Home Depot last year for $200. The same product is sold by Lowes and all over the Internet in various styles. The OEM is this company called Conglom, but Home Depot markets all its plumbing products as "Glacier Bay" and has its own support system for those products.

So anyway, I install the sink and the faucet has a small leak. So I call the Glacier Bay number expecting terrible service. The call is answered immediately. A lady takes my information and says she'll contact the OEM and get a new part sent to me and puts me on hold. She picks back up a minute or two later to say the OEM is closed for the day but she'll contact them the next day. I think that's the end of it, but then I get a call from her the next day to confirm she's reached the OEM and the replacement part is on the way.

HD can't make but a few dollars if anything on this product.

Aside, Moen also provides insanely good customer service. And I've heard Delta faucets does too. Maybe it's a plumbing thing. :-)

mikeash4• 7 years ago

I think this sort of support has to be good because your alternative is to return it to the store, and this costs them way more.

In the past few years, I’ve noticed a proliferation of material included in the box that attempts to preempt this. “Don’t return this to the store! Call us at 1-800-WHAT-EVER for help.”

Where the customer’s remedy isn’t so easy and costly for the business, it’s much more hit or miss.

dredmorbius5• 7 years ago

An incentive may be process improvement, combined with competitive products.

Faulty items returned to the store may or may not be returned to the manufacturer. In trying to suss out what went wrong, having the actual failed hardware in hand is useful.

And certain sectors (especially manufacturing) face numerous other competitors. A few bad reviews can have a large impact on purchases.

crankylinuxuser4• 7 years ago

I've had a similar extremely amazing experience. I do a lot with 3d printing, and I buy Misumi extrusions.

During a large format printer I built, their website claimed that the 90deg brackets werent guaranteed to be 90deg ?! So, I called them, and got the secretary. I was expecting to be shoved off. She looked at the website where I indicated, and asked me to wait a few moments.

About 45 seconds go by, and I'm talking with a Japanese engineer who's fluent in English who runs the line ! He looks at the design schematic and the website, and says it had to do with a data import that didnt convert the tolerance data (90deg +- .0021) correctly, and instead put a boilerplate 'NOTANUMBER' result.

He then sent me the design schematic for all incident angles.

It was absolutely amazing - that I talked with the engineer responsible for that part in less than a minute.

So.. I keep buying from Misumi. :)

bsder• 7 years ago

I've had a similar extremely amazing experience. I do a lot with 3d printing, and I buy Misumi extrusions.

Excellent products and customer service seems to also be a very Japanese thing.

We used to order ring clamps from a manufacturer, and they would always come back polished absolutely perfectly. We didn't order it that way, and we told them several times that they were wasting money doing that. It didn't matter; there was an old Japanese engineer running that line and he was going to be consigned to the fires of hell before a part with a substandard finish would leave his line.

Then he passed away. And even the tolerance control (which is vitally important) went to shit. It seems that attention to detail is all or nothing.

bena2• 7 years ago

The Lego Group is also insanely good about this sort of thing.

If you tell them you're missing parts from a product, it'll ship. It happened to me once. The set was missing an entire bag. They shipped one out. No proof of purchase required.

If you tell them you're missing a manual or it got destroyed. They'll ship one out.

A hiccup on their site caused me to miss out on a promotional item. And when I realized, the promotion was over. They sent me one. Just my word was enough.

Scoundreller2• 7 years ago

Ikea too.

Sometimes they’ll insist you go to the store, but if you push them, they’ll mail it out.

But it’s obvious their powers that be are playing the long game, not the next quarter game.

I wonder if Public Incs like AT&T has a dial where they decrease or increase their level of support based on how that quarter is doing.

Gotta best the analysts’ estimates by a penny or else.

nitwit0052• 7 years ago

My experience has been that customer support numbers are great at conventional issues. Anything like an address change, return under warranty, or similar will probably go fine.

The issue with that is, I'll rarely call them for such a problem. Companies tend to let you fill out some form on their website for such an issue these days.

Sometimes calling with an oddball problem goes okay because you hit an excellent person on the other end, but often they're clueless, and the whole thing becomes a struggle.

This is, I suspect, made worse by call centers having metrics around call time. They want to get rid of you quickly and move to the next call.

axaxs• 7 years ago

I just had the same magical experience, but with char broil. Frustrated that the assembled grill I'd brought home was not only showing some rust, but was missing grate, I sent them a short note via web form. They called me 2 days later to confirm they were going to mail me a new grate, gave me cleaning tips, and offered to ship me a whole new one if I couldn't get it cleaned up. I was really blown away, and fully expected them to tell me to take it up with the store and sod off.

GuB-42• 7 years ago

Interestingly, Amazon, one of the champions in analytics and automation, is known for its good customer service.

Personally, I called them, sent them messages, etc... And every time I had a helpful human (or an incredibly advanced AI) within a reasonable time.

So companies less profitable than Amazon that skimp on customer service using analytics should learn something here. Particularly ironic if they run their system on AWS.

tzs• 7 years ago

I recently contacted Amazon for customer service and was shocked at how fast it was. I entered the phone number they could reach me at on their site, submitted it, and before I could even read the thing telling me that they would call soon my phone was ringing.

That was an automated call to tell me that a human would be with me soon and the current wait time was one minute. As soon as the message ended, a human picked up.

Unfortunately, they could not do anything about my issue. Briefly, I ordered something on Prime Day that is normally available in 3 colors. My first choice was not available, my second choice was listed as taking a week, and my third choice could ship immediately. I went for my second choice.

A week later, they admitted that it was not actually going to be available for something like three weeks. Meanwhile, my first choice color was now available. I wanted to change my color choice to that.

Alas, apparently customer service does not have the ability to change the color option on an existing order. All they could suggest was cancel the order and re-order, but that would lose Prime Day pricing, which had been $22 on an item whose normal price was $49.

(Yesterday, I got a notice that because of the delays they were canceling the order, and they gave me a coupon code to get the $22 price if I wanted to re-order, along with a $5 gift card to help make up for the inconvenience. The color I originally ordered was listed as being back on stock on Aug 9 for Aug 12 delivery. My first choice was listed as being back in stock on Aug 9 for Aug 9 delivery...not sure how that works. My third choice was listed as in stock for 2 day delivery. I decided that the third color would work with my decor after all, and ordered that just to get this whole thing over with. It's been shipped and I'll get it tomorrow).

manjana• 7 years ago

The thing that scares me though is at what point, if not already, will they start to use training data on individual customers.

kazinator• 7 years ago

That's really no different from a child figuring out how far it can take various mischief before pissing off its parents. Why wouldn't corporations do what children do?

cultus• 7 years ago

The magic of capitalism is that the full resources of the planet's human minds are devoted to increasing the wealth of the owners of capital.

dredmorbius5• 7 years ago

The problem with pushing right up to borders of tolerance is that borders shift. Sometimes suddenly and violently.

As I'd commented a few days ago[1], Google's then-CEO Eric Schmidt said "The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it".

The problem with such a policy is in thinking that cultural and legal boundaries are fixed and inviolate. The very process of repeatedly pressing up to a border may trigger the backlash which moves it, and can leave the fate-tempting party in deep water -- with its own culture, processes, amd institutions unable to adapt, or with goodwill so badly burnt it never recovers.

In particular, the resource most being burnt is trust, a commodity that's expensive to acquire, quick to burn, and that big business in particular has had in short supply for most of the past 50 years[3]. Trust, once earned and deserved, hugely reduces costs of business in that counterparties -- not just customers, but vendors, employees, regulators, and even competitors -- tend to be inclined to cooperate and assist. And when squandered, makes every interaction (including customer service) a scorched-earth battleground. The topic is something of an evergreen in the business field, I'd posted an item recently on it.[4]

There are numerous places where customer service gets it wrong, but breakdowns of trust across multiple boundaries is hugely evident: the company doesn't trust its customers, or CSRs, marketing doesn't trust manufacturing, sales doesn't trust service, engineering doesn't trust sales, and more. Combine this with monopoly-sector practices and you've got huge problems. Add in elements of James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State and much more.

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Notes:

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20507894#20511372

2. https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-googles-policy-...

3. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.as...

4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531236

malcolmwhat• 7 years ago

Ironic that trying to scroll down immediately floods me with a ridiculous full page message that is not the article...

anon4242• 7 years ago

“People want to deal with someone who is smarter than they are and who will fix their problem,”

This is exactly the worst kind IMHO. I once had a support person telling me to listen to him telling me what my problem was as I was describing it to him.

  Me: "The device doesn't work..."
  Him: "Listen. Listen! LISTEN! Your device isn't connected."
  Me: "Uhm, no it's ..."
  Him: "Listen. Listen! LISTEN! You haven't plugged the cable in."
  Me: "If you would please LISTEN to me maybe we can get somewhere?"

a1369209993• 7 years ago

That person in your transcript is neither smarter than you nor will they fix your problem, so the quoted quote seems spot on in this case.

cannonedhamster4• 7 years ago

On the flip side I watched a poor tech person at Walmart trying to explain to a customer that while he was having an issue with an application, it was not grounds for return. It was also apparently not an issue he could work to fix.

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

It's like why people hate police. When you're dealing with them, you're already having a bad day. And we tend to hire mediocre people for the job because all the better candidates are doing better work.

cannonedhamster4• 7 years ago

I've got a great friend who's in the police service. They aren't all mediocre, but there's an awful lot of them and bad apples rightly get a lot of attention. I think the problem with policing is that it's been disproven that it's just a few bad apples, and that they forget the adage is that a single bad apple spoils the bunch. There's also very little public accountability for bad policing, which is the opposite of what it should be, punishments should be public just like their promotions and commendations are. If people were seeing actual bad policing getting punished appropriately there would be less outcry. You also can't take back killing someone.

pmiller22• 7 years ago

It also helps that police can legally end or ruin your life with no real repercussions if they’re wrong.

aalleavitch• 7 years ago

A lot of customers treat customer service like a psychological outlet, someone who is paid to take their abuse. I have seen and heard some pretty horrible situations of a customer who is clearly taking out their own emotional problems on a poor CS rep time and time again. I don't know many CS people who haven't ended up in tears at work at least once. It's a psychologically hazardous job, and it gets no fanfare.

It doesn't help that the relationship between customers and businesses is so often just directly antagonistic, customer service isn't something that businesses want to do, it's something they have to do. CS people end up being the meat shield between the customer who knows they are being exploited or manipulated and the people in the company making decisions for little bits of profit or to cut costs here and there and never directly has to face repercussions for all the shortcuts they take just to bolster their personal KPIs. There's a reason people hate working CS and retail; it can be legitimately traumatic, and they often have to find themselves being the friendly face pasted over an uncaring machine.

For all the hate that open offices get, I appreciate the fact that my desk is within earshot of CS taking phone calls. As a developer it's a hell of a lot easier to see what the downstream effects of the things you do and the changes you make are when you can hear the repercussions of them directly. It also definitely motivates me to try to find ways I can ease the burden on them. These stresses ought to be distributed as equally among a corporation as possible.

nitrogen• 7 years ago

I've worked for a couple of companies where engineers shadowed the people on the phones (both sales and support) periodically. It can definitely help build empathy for the users of internal tools and the end customers, but it doesn't do much if the rest of the company doesn't prioritize fixing the problems found by those shadowing.

awakeasleep2• 7 years ago

It's interesting that you see the relationship as existing between the customer and the customer service rep.

I think the relationship is actually between the company, which abuses its customers, and the CSRs, which are hired as a meat shield.

cannonedhamster4• 7 years ago

I run a support group and the amount of terrible it is to get people not in support to recognize that taking care of our customers is not trivial. We ship a lot of software releases and at one point took to QAing the software before release as best we could become it would mean we'd get less support calls. Then they started shipping the software regardless of bugs because shipping bad software to meet the promised release dates was more important than releasing good code.

lovich• 7 years ago

I can't really think of any company I've worked at or seen that cares about good code. They care about making money today. Good code helps in a few years but shipping a useableish product helps make money today

Why Everyone Hates Customer Service

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