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I'm in the customer service industry. A lot of issues stem from certain customer's preconceived notions about the capability of a person on the other side of a

I'm in the customer service industry. A lot of issues stem from certain customer's preconceived notions about the capability of a person on the other side of a phone. That attitude is usually conveyed by tone of voice and mannerism. You expect to be treated like a human, and so do customer service workers. I'm not surprised you have such a sour taste in your mouth when your belief is that customer service people are worthless.

jaclaz 9y ago
Well, you don't know me. I can assure you that I am among the most polite and patient people you can find. And I don't - in the least - put the blame on the (usually very nice and polite) guys/gals that answer the phone, they are (normally) very good willing and courteous, and I always treat them with the utmost respect. It is the management that often (not always) puts in the front line clueless people or people constrained to follow a given (often wrong) procedure that rarely brings satisfying results. The Authors of the (flawed) procedures AND the call center responsibles that blindly and senselessly implement them in extremely rigid ways (and hires, for the sake of the low wages, largely inadequate people) are the ones to blame, not the poor workers (the ones that will lose their already scarce income thaks to these chatbots). There is no reason to believe that because of the chatbots the procedures will be bettered, nor that they will introduce more flexibility.
- owebmaster 9y ago
  > I can assure you that I am among the most polite and patient people you can find. Reading your posts (this one included), it seems to me that you are not even among the most polite and patient people of this thread (neither I).
wott 9y ago
I claim my right to insult the people paid for customer support, * who cannot understand any 10 or even 5 lines of text properly; * who do not answer the single question you asked and finish their answer with "I hope I answered all your concerns"; * who asks you for information that you already provided (in the very mail to which they are replying); * who provides you with information that is unrelated to the case; * who gives instructions which are inappropriate for the case; * who gave you already 3 different and conflicting versions, assuming you are stupid enough not to notice it; * who has demonstrated several times her lack of basic knowledge of the products; * who blatantly lies; * who repeatedly refuse to transfer the case to another of their workmates, despite your several requests; I am entering my 6th week of struggle with such an individual (and we didn't get to half of the process), for a problem that could have been sorted in a week. It has taken a lot of my time already, and I do not get paid for that time, unlike her. It's also been damaging for my nervous health. I formed a (kind of) theory (because that's far from the first time this happens, even if this one is the worst of them): We used to have plenty of jobs for people with low intellectual capabilities. As workers, skilled workers, sometimes craftsmen. As long as the work was framed, directed, with many repetition, they could become efficient and even develop fine skills in their trade. But those jobs became scarce. Unemployment rose a bit, but not so much in fact. The same kind of people are now kept in the school system, to keep them busy and not send them increase the unemployment figures. Many fancy educational streams have been created, they are given degrees, even small higher education degrees. And they end up in the millions of tertiary jobs, they are service employees. But they are still the same people, and despite having been given degrees for the time they spent at school, those degrees have almost no value, for those people lack intellectual capabilities, abstraction, adaptable intelligence, you name it. They cannot read and comprehend basic very short texts in their mother language. (A few years ago, I was back into studies for a while, and I have seen people who were given some kind of Bachelor degree, who were like that. The degree was not much more than an acknowledgement of the fact that they were present at school. But, for example, after 10 years of English lessons, they could not spell A-B-C-D-E...) The class of employees used to be higher than the one of the workers, employees were better paid and better considered. Now it is the opposite. They are not more brilliant than workers, and the problem is that their job would require some intelligence and knowledge, but they don't have it, thus they suck at their job. It wouldn't have been a big problem if they had become workers, they would have been suitable after a while, but they chose, or they were made to believe so, to pursue 'studies' and become employees. Now they are less paid than workers, they cannot do their job properly, and customers have to undergo them. In short: intellectual abilities still present the same repartition amongst the population as 40 years ago, except that there are much less low-skilled jobs available for the low-skilled people, so those people were artificially moved to higher-skills jobs, and it doesn't work because they don't have sufficient capacities for those jobs.

jaclaz 9y ago

Well, you don't know me. I can assure you that I am among the most polite and patient people you can find. And I don't - in the least - put the blame on the (usually very nice and polite) guys/gals that answer the phone, they are (normally) very good willing and courteous, and I always treat them with the utmost respect. It is the management that often (not always) puts in the front line clueless people or people constrained to follow a given (often wrong) procedure that rarely brings satisfying results. The Authors of the (flawed) procedures AND the call center responsibles that blindly and senselessly implement them in extremely rigid ways (and hires, for the sake of the low wages, largely inadequate people) are the ones to blame, not the poor workers (the ones that will lose their already scarce income thaks to these chatbots). There is no reason to believe that because of the chatbots the procedures will be bettered, nor that they will introduce more flexibility.

owebmaster 9y ago
> I can assure you that I am among the most polite and patient people you can find. Reading your posts (this one included), it seems to me that you are not even among the most polite and patient people of this thread (neither I).

wott 9y ago

I claim my right to insult the people paid for customer support, * who cannot understand any 10 or even 5 lines of text properly; * who do not answer the single question you asked and finish their answer with "I hope I answered all your concerns"; * who asks you for information that you already provided (in the very mail to which they are replying); * who provides you with information that is unrelated to the case; * who gives instructions which are inappropriate for the case; * who gave you already 3 different and conflicting versions, assuming you are stupid enough not to notice it; * who has demonstrated several times her lack of basic knowledge of the products; * who blatantly lies; * who repeatedly refuse to transfer the case to another of their workmates, despite your several requests; I am entering my 6th week of struggle with such an individual (and we didn't get to half of the process), for a problem that could have been sorted in a week. It has taken a lot of my time already, and I do not get paid for that time, unlike her. It's also been damaging for my nervous health. I formed a (kind of) theory (because that's far from the first time this happens, even if this one is the worst of them): We used to have plenty of jobs for people with low intellectual capabilities. As workers, skilled workers, sometimes craftsmen. As long as the work was framed, directed, with many repetition, they could become efficient and even develop fine skills in their trade. But those jobs became scarce. Unemployment rose a bit, but not so much in fact. The same kind of people are now kept in the school system, to keep them busy and not send them increase the unemployment figures. Many fancy educational streams have been created, they are given degrees, even small higher education degrees. And they end up in the millions of tertiary jobs, they are service employees. But they are still the same people, and despite having been given degrees for the time they spent at school, those degrees have almost no value, for those people lack intellectual capabilities, abstraction, adaptable intelligence, you name it. They cannot read and comprehend basic very short texts in their mother language. (A few years ago, I was back into studies for a while, and I have seen people who were given some kind of Bachelor degree, who were like that. The degree was not much more than an acknowledgement of the fact that they were present at school. But, for example, after 10 years of English lessons, they could not spell A-B-C-D-E...) The class of employees used to be higher than the one of the workers, employees were better paid and better considered. Now it is the opposite. They are not more brilliant than workers, and the problem is that their job would require some intelligence and knowledge, but they don't have it, thus they suck at their job. It wouldn't have been a big problem if they had become workers, they would have been suitable after a while, but they chose, or they were made to believe so, to pursue 'studies' and become employees. Now they are less paid than workers, they cannot do their job properly, and customers have to undergo them. In short: intellectual abilities still present the same repartition amongst the population as 40 years ago, except that there are much less low-skilled jobs available for the low-skilled people, so those people were artificially moved to higher-skills jobs, and it doesn't work because they don't have sufficient capacities for those jobs.