When empathy becomes insulting

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3513-when-empathy-becomes-insulting

by mh_ • 13 years ago

76 77 13 years ago

lettergram• 13 years ago

I couldn't agree more. I would almost rather have Google's policy of essentially no support, at least they are clear about and do not add a false sense of help.

jeffasinger• 13 years ago

I had a phone support rep yesterday admit that she did nothing to help my problem, and then in the same breath asked if I was satisfied with her help during the call - clearly for some sort of performance metric.

That's infuriating bureaucracy at it's finest.

sageikosa• 13 years ago

It was a pleasant beating, and it hit all the marks...

smacktoward• 13 years ago

Not just infuriating for you, either. She's being evaluated on how well she did something that was most likely effectively beyond her control -- it's doubtful that they give her the tools and the authority you'd need to really solve customers' problems. So she doesn't, because she can't, and the customers (quite naturally) complain, and she gets punished.

The whole system is infuriating.

derefr• 13 years ago

"None of the power, all of the responsibility."

MattRogish• 13 years ago

Given all the fees airlines are happy to take for checked bags, you'd think they would at least give a check at the baggage claim exit that the bag you picked up is, indeed, your bag.

Every now and then at LGA I'll get someone at the exit of the baggage carousel ask me to cross-check my claim ticket with the one on the bag, but it's very rare.

Given how the airlines have gotten the TSA to check ID on tickets to verify that there aren't people using other folks' tickets, how expensive would it be to get someone to consistently check bags on the way out?

I know, I know - preaching to the choir and all that - but it's still frustrating that this is a solvable problem.

larrys4• 13 years ago

You'd have to believe that this is not a problem for them or they would do that. By for them I mean the amount of issues with people taking the wrong baggage and even having to compensate the owners of the baggage does not outweigh the cost and inconvenience to all the others having a ticket checked.

Similarly it is fairly easy to walk into a dry cleaner without a ticket and pick up something that someone else owns that could be valuable. As long as you look and quack like a duck.

jedbrown• 13 years ago

> Given how the airlines have gotten the TSA to check ID on tickets to verify that there aren't people using other folks' tickets

It does nothing of the sort, despite the fact that the obvious loophole has been published in multiple venues over the past decade. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/forge_your_own...

Many airlines give you the boarding pass in HTML, which is even more convenient than editing a PDF. Select the text below and drag it to your bookmarks bar, then click it and edit your boarding pass before printing.

    javascript:document.body.contentEditable ='true'; document.designMode ='on'; void 0

marquis• 13 years ago

They do this in Central America and I've always found it comforting, except when it's been a long flight and I can't find my ticket.

WalterBright• 13 years ago

I travel with cheap, worn, ugly luggage. Nobody else wants it!

Nobody bothers my car, either, for the same reason.

draugadrotten• 13 years ago

Same idea:

"Service is not something that happens according to a script. It is an intuitive interaction between a rep and a customer that has a different outcome every time. A company that encourages its reps to handle the situation the way the rep would want to have it handled if he were a customer is the company that wins repeat business--in spite of the problem that required the service in the first place." http://www.inc.com/vanessa-merit-nornberg/how-to-empower-you...

As far as the customer is concerned, the employee represents the whole company. That employee is a fractal of the CEO. They have the authority, the autonomy, the trust and the expectation that when they talk to the customer, they’re going to solve the customer’s problem. http://www.forbes.com/sites/oreillymedia/2012/09/12/connecte...

jonmc12• 13 years ago

This is nothing more than having to put up with a system that is tested and optimized for the average reaction from consumers who use these services. Most people don't "realize that their only job is to get you off the line". They walk away happy.

I think solution might come in following forms: 1) staggered levels of customer service, 2) gradual education of consumers on how to protect their rights and deal with larger services, 3) regulation that corrects for the imbalance of info between businesses and consumers.

larrys4• 13 years ago

"You bend a policy here, you expedite an order there, you bubble an issue up to a manager. A natural, caring organization designed to create passionate customers stretches and bends."

While it is possible it is also extremely difficult when you have a large legacy workforce.

For whatever reason the people who work in those jobs are cut from a particular bolt of cloth.

Changing that is extremely difficult and assuming they have the requisite intelligence and skills to operate differently is a stretch. Examples that you could point to that have successfully done this are most likely limited to a) companies formed from the start with a certain attitude (say zappos) or b) companies who have enough profit margin in their products to pay and motivate people better and take the hit for wrong decisions (say Neiman Marcus, Coach or name your luxury brand).

wpietri4• 13 years ago

I don't believe those people have been cut from any particular bolt of cloth. I think those people all started out as cute babies and lively children. I think they all had hopes and dreams. I think they have been trained to not give a shit. Often, for years.

What people learn can be un-learned. Saying that "changing it is extremely difficult" is exactly how companies get into that situation. Gosh, it's difficult to give good service, and we can get away with giving people the brush-off, so we'll just give people a script to read.

The solution to laziness in the organization's past isn't to renew the organization's commitment to not doing hard work.

aashaykumar92• 13 years ago

This is exactly why customer service in startups far exceeds that of large businesses. But it also makes sense. In a startup with <50 employees, it's pretty easy to reach one another so if there is a true customer issue, it can be taken to the founders if necessary. But once a company gets big, there is a communication barrier and hierarchy exists--so a customer service rep cannot contact somebody internally to help as easily, hence the cliche, “'we apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced'”.

Furthermore, the company cannot just allow customer reps to 'bend a policy here, [...] expedite an order there, [...] bubble an issue up to a manager'. If you give them the freedom to bend policies, they can choose to draw their own lines and that can result in adverse effects for the company overall. Bending of rules is too risky for a large company to allow their customer reps to take. It's a slippery slope, but honestly one that doesn't seem to have much of a solution.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

Bigger businesses also have more customers.

The article mentions American Airlines. They have about 70,000 staff, and millions of customers.

When you have that many customers you need a way to weed out the people who could, but don't, follow simple documentation so you can spend time on people who have fixable problems.

quanticle2• 13 years ago

    Furthermore, the company cannot just allow customer reps to 'bend a policy here,
    [...] expedite an order there, [...] bubble an issue up to a manager'. If you
    give them the freedom to bend policies, they can choose to draw their own lines
    and that can result in adverse effects for the company overall. Bending of rules
    is too risky for a large company to allow their customer reps to take. It's a
    slippery slope, but honestly one that doesn't seem to have much of a solution.

That's not true. Zappos, for example, is famous for its excellent customer service. They can, and do give their CS reps a significant amount of autonomy (within guidelines, of course) and allow reps to make on-the-spot calls about sending replacement items or handling refunds. It's a matter of trust and customer focus. Is the company willing to trust the CS rep to make the right call? Is the company focused on doing what's right for the customer and keeping customer loyalty in the long term even when it creates costs in the short term? Both of those things are true for Zappos. I'd suspect that neither of those things are true for American Airlines.

So, why is that? It's not because Zappos is a small company nor is it because American Airlines is a huge one. It has to do with markets. Zappos is in a highly competitive market. Not only are they competing with other online retailers, but they're competing with brick-and-mortar stores as well. In order to sell shoes online, they know that they have to not only match the offline shopping experience, but exceed it, in order to make up for the inherent risk premium assigned to novel types of shopping. They edge they've chosen is customer service. Zappos has the generous return policy that it has because they know that you're already sacrificing some convenience in shopping with them. They know that it's easier to buy (and return) shoes at a brick-and-mortar store, so they want to remove as many other obstacles as they can.

American Airlines, on the other hand, is not in a competitive market. They've split the market with Delta, United, and Continental. They don't have to care about the customer. They know that as long as they're not significantly more or less terrible than the other three carriers, the average consumer isn't going to stick to his or her principles at the cost of a less convenient or more expensive flight. In addition, the airline business has sufficiently high barriers to entry that they don't have to worry about a competitor springing up and devouring their business overnight. That's the real reason American Airlines doesn't care about its customers. It's also the same reason that, e.g. Comcast and Verizon don't have great customer service either. Simply put, they're not forced to, so they don't.

gehar4• 13 years ago

Sorry, that's completely backwards.

Zappos can do it because they have HUGE profit margins on luxury/unique products, and those margins pay for customer service.

Whereas AA can't because they have negligible profit margins on a completely price-sensitive hightly competitive landscape

LargeWu• 13 years ago

Southwest has pretty good customer service, as far as airlines go anyway, and they're profitable, and operating on very thin margins.

acheron• 13 years ago

"We don't care, we don't have to. We're the phone company."

Domenic_S• 13 years ago

Well, and Zappos' risk ceiling is incredibly low, with high margins to enable fantastic service. With an airline you're talking about hundreds or thousands of dollars at risk in each customer service occurrence, and terrible margins.

Part of this is just how the market works: if you want to fly on a jet airplane across a continent for a couple hundred bucks, expect a McDonald's level of competency. Airlines are in a perpetual race to the bottom, and the result is cheap travel at the cost of customer service.

sauravc• 13 years ago

"There’s simply nothing worse than someone telling you how sorry they are when you can hear they don’t give a damn."

-- actually there is... they could easily be a jackass about it and tell you to screw off. First World Problems... smh

gehar4• 13 years ago

No, honest rudeness is better than dishonest politeness. It wastes less time, for one, and sends a clear message that you will be happier elsewhere.

lhnz2• 13 years ago

Empathy becomes insulting when it's not empathy.

Empathy becomes positively rewarding when it's sincere.

What a terrible, link-bait title. 37signals preaches honesty and hits me with that?

Edit: Real empathy is never insulting.

benatkin2• 13 years ago

The humans that they hire for the most part have empathy for other human beings. It's a part of their personality. It shows up consistently in what they do. Since they talk to people at their jobs, there's going to be empathy.

lhnz2• 13 years ago

I disagree with you.

Sit in a call centre with no ability to fix people's problems and you'll realise that people are angry with you and that some are rude to you. Do this for long enough and you'll stop empathising with them back. You will just be going through the motions.

DanielBMarkham2• 13 years ago

It continues to amaze me that companies even use people -- many of them so tightly constrain what the people say, you might as well be talking to robots.

Not only is this terrible service, this is terribly dehumanizing to everybody involved. It tells me that the company could care less about its people -- and the people could care less about me. You'd be better off just insulting people. At least it'd be more honest.

larrys4• 13 years ago

"you might as well be talking to robots."

Well that might be part of the plan. If someone sounds intelligent people are more likely to smell that if they push an issue they have someone on the phone that can do something. If you're talking to an idiot you are stopped dead in your tracks.

Along those lines sometimes I have to answer the phones with customer service calls. What I've found is that if I sound like a robot (very staccato) people are way less likely to bother me with other issues. If I sound intelligent and knowledgeable they are very likely to pepper me with extra questions that fall out of the realm of what we actually do. And waste more time. (Not discussing the merits of whether it pays to go "the extra mile" or not. Just highlighting people's behavior.)

DanielBMarkham2• 13 years ago

"What I've found is that if I sound like a robot (very staccato) people are way less likely to bother me with other issues."

I think the key question here is whether or not your job is just to provide simple data, such as answering routine questions or some such, or developing a relationship with somebody. Many companies get so enamored with systematizing their process that they lose track of the big picture (in my opinion)

I was reading somewhere that when you call the guys at Zappos, they're there for as long as you want to talk to them. They'll even go online with you searching competitor's websites if they don't have what you need.

I like the robot idea, though. Need to try that one out!

daurnimator• 13 years ago

How much less could they care if they treat them like robots?

shpxnvz• 13 years ago

> many of them so tightly constrain what the people say, you might as well be talking to robots

I worked for a company (they were the U.S. market leader in their online communications niche) who took this to an extreme. They outsourced their customer service, and in a misguided effort at quality control scripted every single response a service rep was allowed to say. As in, they were literally prohibited from saying anything that was not a scripted response during a support call.

Eventually a rumor circulated that the folks responsible for retention and turnover decided to fight their poor numbers by manipulating the scripts to make it as difficult as possible to cancel service. Don't know for sure if that was true, but there was circumstantial evidence in the (sometimes comical) live chat scripts that infuriated customers posted online.

cateye• 13 years ago

At the other hand, people don't want to pay for decent service. Yes, training and accommodating support staff is costly and it is almost never on the list with criteria before someone makes a purchase decision.

The cost of the product is certainly always a major criteria.

As a result, service is being cut in order to have a lower product price. Win-win on the short term. On the long term, the consumer punishes himself with this behaviour.

kevinburke• 13 years ago

Hypothesis: In some industries, good/profitable companies and good customer service don't go hand in hand. That is to say, the "end game", once all the companies in the industry "figure it out", is not one company with good customer service and slightly lower margins crushing its competitors.

JangoSteve3• 13 years ago

The worst part is when this fake sincerity with no interest in actually helping creeps its way into smaller companies and startups.

For example, I'd been using Wunderlist for a long time and was a very happy user. They don't charge money, but I would have gladly paid whatever they asked. Then one day I woke up and found all my tasks were gone! Well that's what I thought at first. I soon realized they weren't gone, they had just all been removed from their respective categorized lists. I filed a ticket [1], and then emailed them when I received no response.

After several back-and-forth exchanges with their support, the answer I received was, sorry, we cannot restore your lists to any previous state and we don't know why it happened, all you can do is manually move them all back to their lists. All 1022 tasks. By hand. With no explanation or guarantee that it won't just randomly happen again at any point in time. And then they tack on their "apologies for the trouble". Absolutely astounding.

Not to mention, their response that they "can't move tasks from one list to another", or that it's not possible for them to restore my data to a previous state, is either a lie and a complacency, or it's extremely concerning in that they don't apparently have backups of data.

So yeah, my point is, when large companies do it, I somewhat expect it as part of their economies of scale; at least it's not personal (which could be a good and bad thing). When a small company does it, it feels almost like a betrayal.

EDIT: Got so caught up I forgot to mention my actual point.

[1] http://support.wunderlist.com/customer/en/portal/questions/9...

dasil0033• 13 years ago

Having backups and being economically able to restore an arbitrary chunk of them for a single customer are not necessarily the same thing.

pekk• 13 years ago

Whose responsibility was it that it needed to be done at all?

JangoSteve3• 13 years ago

Normally I would agree. But when your product corrupts an arbitrary chunk of data for a single customer, then your backups need to have the ability to restore that chunk of data your product corrupted.

EDIT: I would also clarify that this wasn't a case of "oops, I messed up my data, can you please help me get it back?" This was a case of, I logged in one morning and all my data was gone. It's apparently a known issue as their support system is flooded with users who have the same problem (except for most of them logging out and back in fixes it, for me it didn't).

fmavituna2• 13 years ago

Agreed, it's a shame. Similar thing happened to us, someone spammed our Zendesk support desk (and we pay them quite a lot money) and created lots of tickets.

Their support didn't care (not to mention they didn't have built-in flood protection, even a basic one), we have to deal with the mess in our side.

monkeyspaw3• 13 years ago

That sucks. But if the LTR of a customer < employee time to fix by a large margin, it becomes more rational.

monkeyspaw3• 13 years ago

It's kind of a "no explicit or implicit warranty provided" situation, is it not?

I wonder if there is a business model in them saying something like, "We can do this if you pay us $20". They could continue to give away the product, and charge for service/support.

They obviously don't think it's worth their time/effort to look into one person's situation. That's awful for you. At the same time, maybe that's part of the reason they don't charge -- they want to build software, not support it.

JangoSteve3• 13 years ago

That would be great if they at least offerred. On the other hand, it would lend itself to a business model that discourages them from fixing bugs in their product which randomly corrupt data, since they would make money any time that happens.

michaelbuckbee• 13 years ago

This attitude is a side effect of having stovepiped bureaucratic thinking, you find it whereever Support, Marketing and Customer Service are three different divisions with different bottom line responsibilities.

What I think is surprising is that this doesn't always happen in large corporations either.

I managed a local pizza shop as a very green manager and the owner called me to task for worrying about 'wasting' toppings by putting too many on a pizza. His thought was that what I thought of as 'waste' was actually 'cheap marketing'.

tomku• 13 years ago

I experienced this recently when I was trying to dispute a declined RMA claim for a motherboard. The support person said over and over how sorry she was that I was having trouble, and how much she wanted to help, and how she really hopes that I can get my problem solved, while simultaneously completely denying any possibility of doing anything at all to address my issue. It was incredibly frustrating, and left me with the feeling that I was being told very politely to go fuck myself.

Incidentally, that intensely negative experience was the first time in a long while that I didn't get asked to fill out a "brief survey" regarding my experience with support. I can't imagine why...

joonix• 13 years ago

I've noticed this recent trend as well. The fake over-politeness with excessive variation in tone and pitch is really patronizing and uncomfortable. Not only are you wasting my time with this, you're not accomplishing what matters. I don't get mad at the actual agent, they're just doing their job, but at the idiot who came up with this script.

wpietri4• 13 years ago

I too have stopped getting angry with agents; there's no payoff in being a jerk. But I have also stopped pretending like they are powerless victims. E.g., "That's a shame that they won't let you really help anybody. Have you thought about finding a job working for better people?"

Propping up a bad system means you are complicit. Especially when part of the way you prop up the system is by keeping people being harmed away from the people ordering the harm.

donretag• 13 years ago

Reminds me of my experiences with JetBlue. After every successful flight, they would send me a survey. After every bad flight (and there have been a few very bad ones), no survey.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

This approach seems to work. When 'work' means 'customer doesn't make an attack page'.

I don't read many pages from people were something went wrong, they called the company, and were politely fobbed off.

These interactions are frustrating, but not infuriating, and it is the infuriation that causes rage and causes someone to create an attack site.

dominic_cocch• 13 years ago

Customer server is important, but in order to build and maintain a truly good CS team you need to treat them like a good CS team.

This post mentions following rules too strictly as a big part of the problem. However, the bigger part of the problem is treating your employees, even your customer server employees, like hard working, creative, valuable people and not 10/hr calling center pawns. That means pay them a living wage, give them benefits, ask for their input, include them in the process and allow them to have a personality.

I've worked in CS for a large social networking site (about 11-12 million users), and even at those numbers the amount of anger and hatred poured at you day in and day out is hard to handle while remaining 'empathetic'. Luckily, we were allowed to be creative, to break rules and we got paid pretty well. Had it not been that way, I can guarantee you that on angry, idiot call/email number 49 for the day I wouldn't give a shit about you or your problems.

suweid• 13 years ago

I was in a call with microsoft support once. The azure management portal was giving me a 500 error, and I had to get an alternate login or something to take some servers down and to put some up. Anyway, the conversation consisted of some Indian guy dispassionately reading and re-reading the same monologue about how sorry they were, and that my business is so important to them. Finally I snapped and told him that I'm not interested in apologies just give me a new account, get rid of the 500 error or do my bidding manually. That did a fat load of good, as he redoubled his efforts and reread everything again. With more dispassion and more emphasis on words, as if I was hard of hearing. The rage I was feeling at the time, can not be described with any words of man.

danso• 13 years ago

In journalism school, one of the first lessons our indepth journalism professor taught us was to never say "I understand" as a reaction to an interview subject telling you about something tragic...because you dont. What you're supposed to say in response to a lament...either there isn't a uniform response or I don't remember, but just getting to the point and asking questions seemed to work...people don't need to be insulted or patronized when they're feeing grief.

gehar4• 13 years ago

"Oh.", with appropriate tone of voice. Works in a wide variety of circumstances.

umsm2• 13 years ago

In my opinion, when a company does this to you, you should leave. Immediately.

This is a problem and we need to look for solutions. Why should I continue to support a company that doesn't care? Wouldn't you rather pay a little more and have decent customer service? Usually this means you support local merchants.

Recently I purchased a plasma TV locally, and paid tax! Crazy, I know! But when it's time for service, I know the company will stand behind it. We need to stand behind these companies.

EDIT: Free plug to the retailer: Abt Electronics :)

TheCapn• 13 years ago

Its a mixed bag here. People wanted faster/cheaper product they got it in terms of cost cutting measures to the bottom line. Customer Service isn't something a profit driven company wants to do, its something they have to do to retain users. The idea of talking to a person seems enough for some people as they can vent their frustration at a CSR but I never felt that was good enough; when I did it it felt criminal.

But then you have companies that go out of their way to help you. They have the power to bend the rules and when its in your favor it can be an extremely rewarding experience as a customer. I'll always toot Valve's horn because of this. I placed an order and paid extra not to have DHL shipping to Canada (I've had too many bad experiences to count). Valve shipped it DHL anyway so I emailed customer service explaining my displeasure. They asked that I refuse the package when it arrives and they'll have the order correctly shipped with UPS as I instructed.

Not only did they ship my UPS order before the DHL had arrived and been subsequently rejected, they refunded my entire purchase. I'm a sworn customer now and more likely to overlook problems with Steam or busy season mishaps because they do things that keep their customers. Pleasant side effects for them? I'm on HN shooting free advertising (as if they need it here).

I'm always willing to pay more or deal with longer delays for local product now. My friends still scour the web to try and find the cheapest deal on the car stereo equipment or PC part but I keep it local. Sure I spent $40 more but I didn't deal with a kicked in box and the returns department. I didn't deal with foreign timezones and odd business hours to get a return receipt. Sure it was cheaper cash wise but my secure sound of mind is worth more than a few pennies. Always go with the underdog if they're capable of the services you are after. They need to please the customer to stay afloat unlike big box chains who don't have any obligation to you because there's someone standing behind you to buy the item you'll pass up if you don't follow their rules.

umsm2• 13 years ago

Agreed. You can be penny-wise but dollar-stupid.

Many times, these "bargains" you scour the internet for usually cost more in the end. For the few times it doesn't, oh well.

ssharp• 13 years ago

I had a billing issue with Time Warner Cable where I had fees that were not being paid. My service is through an agreement with my employer and TWC and my service is discounted and paid for directly out of my paycheck. So one day, my internet was shut off. I called and found out I had a past due balance of around $30 because I had been being charged "modem lease" fees for the past few months, never received a bill, and for whatever reason, the fee wasn't deducted from my pay automatically like the other fees are.

I tried really hard to explain the situation - that I don't get bills, wasn't notified of the charge or change in policy, and wanted to see what could be done. Well, customer support couldn't do anything other than take payment. I even asked to speak to a supervisor, only to receive the same story. Since my internet connection was being held hostage (I forgot to mention that this happened at like 4:30pm on a Friday), I reluctantly handed over my credit card info.

On Monday afternoon, I called them back threatening to cancel. When asked why, I relayed my story back to them. Lo and behold, they gave me my money back.

Not that I had any respect for TWC's customer service to begin with (I've had some interesting situations with them in the past), but this one really struck me as insulting. My situation didn't matter to them at all until I was ready to cancel my service. As soon as that was a possibility, they gave me my money back as soon as they could.

dustingetz• 13 years ago

scaling customer service is hard; customer service is a cost center at scale; leadership wants to reduce costs. DHH cites telecoms and airlines as examples; Telecoms enjoy natural monopolies, so competition and the free market can't fix it; airlines compete solely on price, so it would be silly to invest in good customer service.

logn• 13 years ago

This should not be a front page article. I'm going to start flagging all 37 signals posts since they spam us with low content and brief posts I believe are only designed to feed traffic to their domain.

michaelfeathers• 13 years ago

The thing no one mentions is that this is an inevitable side-effect of scale. It's hard enough to do good customer service in small brick and mortar stores where your ratio of employees to customers is high. When you scale up a business to the size of an airline, good customer service is a glaring cost and an easy thing to ditch in competition.

Economies of scale give us better prices but it happens are the expense of customer service. We learn to lower our expectations.

georgemcbay• 13 years ago

Whenever a customer service drone starts off their end with:

"I'm so sorry to hear that you're having $PROBLEM_DESC. That must be so frustrating for you."

I really have to hold back the urge to scream. At least fiddle around with the fucking words a bit, don't use exactly the same template as everyone else who has trained their drones to respond in exactly the same way.

I'm getting angry just thinking about this.

jspiral• 13 years ago

I respond to this with: "No, i'm not frustrated because I know you're going to make things right!" in a cheerful voice. Makes me feel better anyway...

nathantotten• 13 years ago

I actually think that software plays a huge role in causing this horrible customer service from airlines as well. I am a frequent flyer on American (125k miles last year) and have had numerous experiences that led to this conclusion. One experience in particular happened on a recent trip to Europe.

On this particular trip I was flying on a code-share BA flight (this means a flight I bought as AA, but flew on a BA plane). Normally with my flyer status I can upgrade to a good seat without issue. I was however booked in a terrible middle seat on my return flight. I called AA and they couldn't figure out how to upgrade me. I called BA, same thing. I called American Express Travel, they couldn't figure it out either. The response I got from everybody was very helpful (I get better customer service than most people, due to my flyer status), but they simply couldn't figure out how to actually make the change in their system. When I got to Heathrow, I asked a BA agent at the counter if she could change my seat. She couldn't figure it out so she called another person over who was more experienced. This lady then 'hacked' away on her terminal for literally 10 minutes. She was giving me updates the entire time on what she was doing. She tried a variety of different options to change my ticket until she found one that worked.

While there certainly is a human aspect and a policy aspect to bad customer service with Airlines, I believe that some of the problem is the result of the customer service representatives having to deal with really really bad software. Most of them simply don't actually know how to make the changes that customers want so they just tell them it isn't possible. My guess is that if the airline industry was able to massively upgrade their software you would see a huge improvement in customer service simply because the representatives would actually be able to accomplish the requested tasks.

dionidium• 13 years ago

Assuming that most transactions "just work", then these interactions are by definition at the margin, which means that fixing them probably isn't very profitable. I guess it's OK to complain about it -- I think it sucks, too -- but these companies are probably acting rationally.

bdunbar• 13 years ago

"What’s so sad too is how little it would often take to resolve the situations. You bend a policy here, you expedite an order there, you bubble an issue up to a manager."

This might be harder than it looks. A lot of customer care is outsourced. The vendor's employees aren't in a great position to bend, or bubble, or expedite much, if anything.

Calls come in, data goes out, but .. who do you bubble a problem to when 'the company' is far away and you only deal with them within the confines of a system?

When empathy becomes insulting

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