4 ms·

Why is a phone the gold standard for support? If I have to talk to someone on the phone, it means I have exhausted every other possible method to resolve my pro

Why is a phone the gold standard for support? If I have to talk to someone on the phone, it means I have exhausted every other possible method to resolve my problem, and I am furious with the company for making me talk to an idiot in real time. What I want is an issue tracker that has responsive, accountable, people on the other end. That's my ideal support experience. Phones are the worst case scenario.

benbristow 10y ago
Because you're pretty much guaranteed an instant answer for every question you ask. It's live 1 to 1 and instant. They can't patch you or put you in some backlog.
- zedadex 10y ago
  Please hold while I transfer you to someone who has a counterexample to that statement. hold music plays
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  I don't want instant answers. I want right answers, in a timely manner. That's entirely doable in a ticket system. Not so much with phone support...at least, not in my experience. Phone support generally has a script. When your problem diverges from the script, the person on the phone is of negative value. I want my problem triaged to someone who can solve it, not hear how very sorry they are and how much they appreciate my patience. If I sound bitter...well, I really hate phones. My favorite support experiences have never been on the phone. Chat maybe, email maybe, phone never.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    > I don't want instant answers. I want right answers, in a timely manner. THIS. TIMES. A. MILLION. Call centers put pressure on employees, especially good ones to wrap up calls quickly to keep their numbers high (because shitty policies result in a ton of people calling) meaning that even if you get a rep who legitimately wants to help you, they are punished in their job if they try too hard to do that (or take too long.) Sidebar; Maybe this is a generational thing, I hate the phone. I hate being on the phone, I hate using the phone. If I have to talk to sales reps I'd much rather do it over email/in person, but not over the phone.
    - allengeorge 10y ago
      Email support makes it too easy to cut-n-paste replies. I've had too many interactions where I spell out a problem - along with resolutions I've tried - and then receive an obvious generic response (Evernote support - looking at you). It can take multiple rounds to resolve the issue, and it's infuriating.
      - FussyZeus 10y ago
        That's very true, but email comes with a written record of everything that's happened so far which makes dealing with that sort of issue a lot simpler. I mean the phone alternative is where you get transferred from dept. to dept., having to re-explain the issue over and over again. I'll take a copy-paste reply over that any day of the week.
  - tmd83 10y ago
    For some situations a discussion can actually make explaining a complex problem much easier. But for the most part I think phone support is a less efficient way to work and actually waste a lot of time both for the customer (waiting in line) and support side. It's expensive for the company but because it's expensive and cumbersome it works as a form of escalation. And given that they are wasting time & money keeping someone on phone might mean they provide some form of support. At least thats what I think. So it really isn't the best way to support for the most part. But depending on the issue after its triaged, tracked through a issue tracker sometimes a proper phone/conference call might actually be helpful.
- gambiting 10y ago
  Sure, but the same time their answers don't mean anything. I've had more situations than I can count where a rep said something that wasn't actually true. I will only communicate in written text with companies for this specific reason.
Retric 10y ago
I have never had an email fix an issue in under an hour. Which is the real problem, phone calls cost companies more so they prioritize getting you off the phone.
- tmd83 10y ago
  Ah missed this comment. I think I just explained this above much less elegantly.
mcphage 10y ago
> Why is a phone the gold standard for support? It's not so much "on the phone", as "talking to an actual human being whose job it is to help solve problems like mine". The 'phone' part of it is mostly incidental, although obviously it works better than typing for people who aren't as comfortable with keyboards.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  That makes sense. I mean, I'm also frustrated by the inhuman and inhumane support provided by companies like Google, Amazon, PayPal, etc. I just don't like that the thing people fixate on is whether you can call the company. You can call Comcast on the phone, but nobody is going to say Comcast has good customer service. Even for non-technical, non-complicated stuff, where going off-script isn't a concern, it's still such a tedious waste of time to have to call someone. I get angry at T-Mobile about once every couple of months (I've got a complicated and expensive mobile broadband habit, spread across two providers, so I spend a lot of time fiddling with my mobile data plans), because their website often won't let me change service without talking to a human.
andrewstuart2 10y ago
> Why is a phone the gold standard for support? Bandwidth and latency. You can convey, to a human at least, much more with your tone, cadence, etc, than over email or even chat. You will also get much quicker responses and more empathy because of this, and because of the cultural norms around polite conversation (answering when spoken to, etc). You will also be able to judge better the listener's level of empathy and react accordingly. Text is great for recording and distributing facts, but not so for emotions and the rest of the human psyche, which play a huge part in support and customer service.
- speleding 10y ago
  You are assuming a case where both the caller and callee speak the same language and speak it with a proficiency that allows them to convey and pick up on tone, cadence, etc. I'd rather take my chances with good email support.
  - andrewstuart2 10y ago
    That's exactly why many companies offer support in multiple languages (with a phone menu or separate numbers) and hire people who are fluent in those languages specifically for phone support. I can say this with certainty because it's one of the services my current employer provides.
    - speleding 10y ago
      For the kind of difficult issues being discussed here it is already challenging to train staff in a single language capable and with the proper authority to resolve. A company operating in Europe has 20+ languages to deal with... (I work for a company doing customer service in 12 languages, we deliberately do not offer phone support because escalating or forwarding anything becomes unmanageable)
      - csydas 10y ago
        It's not unmanageable, but it does depend on the user base and the expectations set from the first sales call. My current employer is a truly worldwide company - we officially provide support in 6 languages via phone and email and make it clear that English is the business language when we don't have a dedicated language support team. Our users are told quite clearly by regional sales teams that higher tier support is done in English and local major languages only. (I.e,. Apac escalated cases only have Chinese and English as options) While there are occasional hiccups, more often our biggest complaint is time zone differences not language, since calls are routed to the proper language queue world wide. Our support staff is chosen for tech knowledge and comfort with language and customer service skills. Now I mention userbase mattering since were primarily working with it professionals not your average computer user. There seems to be a higher likelihood that tech people world wide know at least some English or have someone in office who speaks it. If truly no one in the customer's business speaks English, we've gotten by on translate tools and a lot of patience and understanding. The rather specific nature of our product allows a narrower vocabulary to be used, and support works well even if we don't understand each other through spoken word. This obviously couldn't work for all things - a large enough userbase tends to have no common denominator you can rely on. But if your product Has a clear customer in mind with a certain background multi lingual phone support is plenty possible.
vmateixeira 10y ago
> Why is a phone the gold standard for support? Because it's comforting to know that someone is actually looking at your problem and that it's just not awaiting for automation on some pile. Most of the times when I have a problem I need it fixed straight away. And because companies forums/frequently asked questions/chat/whatever don't cover all your support needs. It's often a big labyrinth. I personally passed through some hard times with Microsoft, Google and Vodafone. Glad that with Amazon, chat support has been very helpful so far.
mcherm 10y ago
> Why is a phone the gold standard for support? The phone provides a means of contacting a human being who is (more or less) constrained to respond to you in some fashion, rather than being able to simply fail to acknowledge what you say. Any system that provided contact with a human who actually responded would be satisfactory. Bonus points if the human has the authority to escalate things they THEY (not the irate customer) believe that they need to be escalated. I'd love to start a company that offered this sort of communication AS A SERVICE. In fact, I could run a very successful business just offering "talk to a human" services for one or two big companies (Google, I'm talking to you). But the problem is how to get the company to cooperate -- it would require "political connections" within a company with poor customer service.
- andrewstuart2 10y ago
  > I'd love to start a company that offered this sort of communication AS A SERVICE. My company does exactly this (mostly for multilingual support), and I'm pretty sure it's pretty common (and in some cases exceedingly disliked by customers -- I'm looking at you, offshore support) to outsource your phone customer service.
  - mcherm 10y ago
    > it's pretty common (and in some cases exceedingly disliked by customers -- I'm looking at you, offshore support) to outsource your phone customer service. Good point. It _is_ disliked by customers. The only thing worse than outsourced customer service is ABSOLUTELY NO customer service.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

benbristow 10y ago

Because you're pretty much guaranteed an instant answer for every question you ask. It's live 1 to 1 and instant. They can't patch you or put you in some backlog.

zedadex 10y ago
Please hold while I transfer you to someone who has a counterexample to that statement. hold music plays
SwellJoe 10y ago
I don't want instant answers. I want right answers, in a timely manner. That's entirely doable in a ticket system. Not so much with phone support...at least, not in my experience. Phone support generally has a script. When your problem diverges from the script, the person on the phone is of negative value. I want my problem triaged to someone who can solve it, not hear how very sorry they are and how much they appreciate my patience. If I sound bitter...well, I really hate phones. My favorite support experiences have never been on the phone. Chat maybe, email maybe, phone never.
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  > I don't want instant answers. I want right answers, in a timely manner. THIS. TIMES. A. MILLION. Call centers put pressure on employees, especially good ones to wrap up calls quickly to keep their numbers high (because shitty policies result in a ton of people calling) meaning that even if you get a rep who legitimately wants to help you, they are punished in their job if they try too hard to do that (or take too long.) Sidebar; Maybe this is a generational thing, I hate the phone. I hate being on the phone, I hate using the phone. If I have to talk to sales reps I'd much rather do it over email/in person, but not over the phone.
  - allengeorge 10y ago
    Email support makes it too easy to cut-n-paste replies. I've had too many interactions where I spell out a problem - along with resolutions I've tried - and then receive an obvious generic response (Evernote support - looking at you). It can take multiple rounds to resolve the issue, and it's infuriating.
    - FussyZeus 10y ago
      That's very true, but email comes with a written record of everything that's happened so far which makes dealing with that sort of issue a lot simpler. I mean the phone alternative is where you get transferred from dept. to dept., having to re-explain the issue over and over again. I'll take a copy-paste reply over that any day of the week.
- tmd83 10y ago
  For some situations a discussion can actually make explaining a complex problem much easier. But for the most part I think phone support is a less efficient way to work and actually waste a lot of time both for the customer (waiting in line) and support side. It's expensive for the company but because it's expensive and cumbersome it works as a form of escalation. And given that they are wasting time & money keeping someone on phone might mean they provide some form of support. At least thats what I think. So it really isn't the best way to support for the most part. But depending on the issue after its triaged, tracked through a issue tracker sometimes a proper phone/conference call might actually be helpful.
gambiting 10y ago
Sure, but the same time their answers don't mean anything. I've had more situations than I can count where a rep said something that wasn't actually true. I will only communicate in written text with companies for this specific reason.

Retric 10y ago

I have never had an email fix an issue in under an hour. Which is the real problem, phone calls cost companies more so they prioritize getting you off the phone.

tmd83 10y ago
Ah missed this comment. I think I just explained this above much less elegantly.

mcphage 10y ago

> Why is a phone the gold standard for support? It's not so much "on the phone", as "talking to an actual human being whose job it is to help solve problems like mine". The 'phone' part of it is mostly incidental, although obviously it works better than typing for people who aren't as comfortable with keyboards.

SwellJoe 10y ago
That makes sense. I mean, I'm also frustrated by the inhuman and inhumane support provided by companies like Google, Amazon, PayPal, etc. I just don't like that the thing people fixate on is whether you can call the company. You can call Comcast on the phone, but nobody is going to say Comcast has good customer service. Even for non-technical, non-complicated stuff, where going off-script isn't a concern, it's still such a tedious waste of time to have to call someone. I get angry at T-Mobile about once every couple of months (I've got a complicated and expensive mobile broadband habit, spread across two providers, so I spend a lot of time fiddling with my mobile data plans), because their website often won't let me change service without talking to a human.

andrewstuart2 10y ago

> Why is a phone the gold standard for support? Bandwidth and latency. You can convey, to a human at least, much more with your tone, cadence, etc, than over email or even chat. You will also get much quicker responses and more empathy because of this, and because of the cultural norms around polite conversation (answering when spoken to, etc). You will also be able to judge better the listener's level of empathy and react accordingly. Text is great for recording and distributing facts, but not so for emotions and the rest of the human psyche, which play a huge part in support and customer service.

speleding 10y ago
You are assuming a case where both the caller and callee speak the same language and speak it with a proficiency that allows them to convey and pick up on tone, cadence, etc. I'd rather take my chances with good email support.
- andrewstuart2 10y ago
  That's exactly why many companies offer support in multiple languages (with a phone menu or separate numbers) and hire people who are fluent in those languages specifically for phone support. I can say this with certainty because it's one of the services my current employer provides.
  - speleding 10y ago
    For the kind of difficult issues being discussed here it is already challenging to train staff in a single language capable and with the proper authority to resolve. A company operating in Europe has 20+ languages to deal with... (I work for a company doing customer service in 12 languages, we deliberately do not offer phone support because escalating or forwarding anything becomes unmanageable)
    - csydas 10y ago
      It's not unmanageable, but it does depend on the user base and the expectations set from the first sales call. My current employer is a truly worldwide company - we officially provide support in 6 languages via phone and email and make it clear that English is the business language when we don't have a dedicated language support team. Our users are told quite clearly by regional sales teams that higher tier support is done in English and local major languages only. (I.e,. Apac escalated cases only have Chinese and English as options) While there are occasional hiccups, more often our biggest complaint is time zone differences not language, since calls are routed to the proper language queue world wide. Our support staff is chosen for tech knowledge and comfort with language and customer service skills. Now I mention userbase mattering since were primarily working with it professionals not your average computer user. There seems to be a higher likelihood that tech people world wide know at least some English or have someone in office who speaks it. If truly no one in the customer's business speaks English, we've gotten by on translate tools and a lot of patience and understanding. The rather specific nature of our product allows a narrower vocabulary to be used, and support works well even if we don't understand each other through spoken word. This obviously couldn't work for all things - a large enough userbase tends to have no common denominator you can rely on. But if your product Has a clear customer in mind with a certain background multi lingual phone support is plenty possible.

vmateixeira 10y ago

> Why is a phone the gold standard for support? Because it's comforting to know that someone is actually looking at your problem and that it's just not awaiting for automation on some pile. Most of the times when I have a problem I need it fixed straight away. And because companies forums/frequently asked questions/chat/whatever don't cover all your support needs. It's often a big labyrinth. I personally passed through some hard times with Microsoft, Google and Vodafone. Glad that with Amazon, chat support has been very helpful so far.

mcherm 10y ago

> Why is a phone the gold standard for support? The phone provides a means of contacting a human being who is (more or less) constrained to respond to you in some fashion, rather than being able to simply fail to acknowledge what you say. Any system that provided contact with a human who actually responded would be satisfactory. Bonus points if the human has the authority to escalate things they THEY (not the irate customer) believe that they need to be escalated. I'd love to start a company that offered this sort of communication AS A SERVICE. In fact, I could run a very successful business just offering "talk to a human" services for one or two big companies (Google, I'm talking to you). But the problem is how to get the company to cooperate -- it would require "political connections" within a company with poor customer service.

andrewstuart2 10y ago
> I'd love to start a company that offered this sort of communication AS A SERVICE. My company does exactly this (mostly for multilingual support), and I'm pretty sure it's pretty common (and in some cases exceedingly disliked by customers -- I'm looking at you, offshore support) to outsource your phone customer service.
- mcherm 10y ago
  > it's pretty common (and in some cases exceedingly disliked by customers -- I'm looking at you, offshore support) to outsource your phone customer service. Good point. It _is_ disliked by customers. The only thing worse than outsourced customer service is ABSOLUTELY NO customer service.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]