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> what that's potentially worth in terms of wasted effort, lost orders and customer hostility. I agree with all of the above but wanted to underline this. Beca

by musage 9y ago

> what that's potentially worth in terms of wasted effort, lost orders and customer hostility. I agree with all of the above but wanted to underline this. Because it snowballs so much. First call they explain the problem. Second call they explain how they explained the problem to someone before, how instead they understood X and did Y. Third call... and so on. Add to that long waiting times and it compounds even more. I did work in customer service and while I loved the people I talked to for the most part, it was really obvious that they were so nice to me because I was simply 100% frank, which was unexpected for them. And it was kinda heartbreaking how many thanked me just for listening, and not deflecting any blame, or just pointing to the EULA or whatever, but treating them like a normal person -- even though I really couldn't fix their problem, just agree that it sucks and wish them a nice day and mean it. I always tried but in many cases there was just nothing I could do except tell them all I know, and how sure I am about it. The bar was so incredibly low. When I offered people to call them back to follow up on a problem, they always were surprised when I actually did. Officially, I would have to ask permission for every outbound call, but I simply decided that that would just make it take even longer in total, so I did that once. I just made sure I was there to solve problems not chit chat, and then did what I considered necessary, not what people who didn't even talk with customers thought might be good. And when calling other departments, I also encountered people who said "you know, officially it would be X, but I think I can fix this", and they did. But it was a total crap shoot, sometimes they just made it worse or said they'd do something end then not do anything. Once I told a coach that if the bread he eats were made as sloppily as he had suggested to me I should handle a specific problem (that is, hand it off in exactly the same way that happened 3 times before, knowing it would resolve nothing but make it someone else's problem), he would be dead in 3 months. He threw a fit and dragged me to my team leader, who had my back - a month later I hear I have a "solution rate" (some customers were asked after the call to rate friendliness etc. and if their problem was solved) of 66%, twice above the average. You might say I had ignored "orders" because I considered them bad, and my results had proven me correct. It didn't change anything about the process, but it did give me leg room if you will. At the end of the day I did the job the way I did it because I thought, if I'm going to be a drone for shitty pay, at least I want to be able to sleep at night, right? The job simply wasn't worth squirming and lying all day when I could try to make a little difference at least to that one person who had to ask me for assistance after some awfully long waiting period. But it ended up being fun and meaningful I wouldn't have imagined beforehand, and if I had just followed official suggestions and marketing materials, it would have turned out so differently, I would have learned nothing and it would have just been this shitty job I once had. I don't believe it saves money. Maybe in the short term for the one company or a few execs in it or their shareholders, but in aggregate, it's just a waste. Call centers should simply fulfill some standards for the work and then get paid by the hour, not by call. That's all it would take, people who are in this job would mostly prefer being able to make a good job. During breaks we always used to share stories about customers on some freakish odyssey because of fucking $company. I'm sure there's also people who enjoy what little power they have over helpless callers, but if the incentives were aligned properly, they'd be gone before you can say "welcome to X, my name is Y, how can I help you?" :P Most complaints I heard from customers, aside long waiting times, unfriendly treatment or outright incompetence, were that they didn't get feedback and had no single point of contact. Like, one person at the company who is assigned with following up on that problem until it's fixed. How would that not be flat out better? It takes 30 seconds to try to reach a customer. Just do that until you reach them, or you see something in their file indicating they called on their own and the issue is solved. Have a mechanism in place for sickness, quitting the job etc, done? Why is that hard? How is the current way better in any shape or form? If I've ever seen anything ripe for disruption, it's call centers. Talk about pain.

pjc50 9y ago
Yeah, call centres are especially disastrous. The whole thing is just set up to be bad because the employees are deskilled and disempowered but trying to fix cases where the automation has failed. See http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-call-centres-part-one/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-... (three part series)
- musage 9y ago
  Thanks for that! > some sites experience levels of failure demand, that is to say calls generated due to a prior failure to serve, over 50% of the total inbound calls. Yeah, that sounds familiar. And the worst part is, as call centers get paid for call volume (and quality, but measuring quality except by the most shallow and misguided metrics would cost money to employ additional real people so it's avoided), it's kind of in their best interest to just have customers call over and over again. I always wondered about the kind of mutually parasitic relationship between call centers and companies that outsource to them, maybe that's really the whole problem, maybe it should be done in-house, period. If you have a big house and that makes it hard, boo-hoo. Make a smaller house, or learn to hack hard things. > Our first anti-pattern is queueing. Call centres essentially all work on the basis of oversubscription and queueing. On the assumption that some percentage of calls will go away, they save on staff by queueing calls. This is not the only way to deal with peaks in demand, though – for example, rather than holding calls, there is no good technical reason why you couldn’t instead have a call-back architecture, scheduling a call back sometime in the future. I used to fantasize about this. First off, you can't turn off caller ID for this, but that's fair I think. So you call the hotline, it tells you in what place in the queue you are, and that you can either hold the line or get called back when you are very close to being the next in line. You can call anytime to have an update on your queue position and wait, and if you miss the call (since it would be automatic and there would be no person waiting on the other end just yet, no harm in letting it ring for as long as possible), you're back to square one. Why isn't it already done this or a similar way? Surely such systems exist, even if not (yet) widely used? Why not allow pressing numbers to change the music as you wait? And last, but not least: how hard is it to loop something properly? (I swear, some of that has to be on purpose, sadism is a better fitting explanation than incompetence.) > Worse, companies are always tempted to impose on you while you wait – playing music on hold (does anybody actually like this?), or worse, nagging you about using the web site. We will see later on that this is especially pointless and stupid. Well, they really really want you to use the website. For a lot of "they"'s. Not that they can manage to run that well, either, but it's still cheaper and "scales better". I agree it's stupid, I detested it not because of job security but because I hated the lame website and how pointless it was to try to make any suggestions "above my pay grade", but in their mind, there is a point, it's not just filler. http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/politics-of-call-centres-part-three-really-part-three-this-time/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/politics-of-call... > But the big issue is management, and I think expectations. People expect the experience to be terrible. People expect the job to be status-reducing and generally horrible. People expect that because it’s a cost-centre, there’s no way to improve it other than flogging the slaves harder. Yes. I was lucky in that I found a way to not reduce my status, but actually learn a lot about myself and people, but that's generally the pattern I saw.

by musage 9y ago

pjc50 9y ago

Yeah, call centres are especially disastrous. The whole thing is just set up to be bad because the employees are deskilled and disempowered but trying to fix cases where the automation has failed. See http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-call-centres-part-one/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-... (three part series)

musage 9y ago
Thanks for that! > some sites experience levels of failure demand, that is to say calls generated due to a prior failure to serve, over 50% of the total inbound calls. Yeah, that sounds familiar. And the worst part is, as call centers get paid for call volume (and quality, but measuring quality except by the most shallow and misguided metrics would cost money to employ additional real people so it's avoided), it's kind of in their best interest to just have customers call over and over again. I always wondered about the kind of mutually parasitic relationship between call centers and companies that outsource to them, maybe that's really the whole problem, maybe it should be done in-house, period. If you have a big house and that makes it hard, boo-hoo. Make a smaller house, or learn to hack hard things. > Our first anti-pattern is queueing. Call centres essentially all work on the basis of oversubscription and queueing. On the assumption that some percentage of calls will go away, they save on staff by queueing calls. This is not the only way to deal with peaks in demand, though – for example, rather than holding calls, there is no good technical reason why you couldn’t instead have a call-back architecture, scheduling a call back sometime in the future. I used to fantasize about this. First off, you can't turn off caller ID for this, but that's fair I think. So you call the hotline, it tells you in what place in the queue you are, and that you can either hold the line or get called back when you are very close to being the next in line. You can call anytime to have an update on your queue position and wait, and if you miss the call (since it would be automatic and there would be no person waiting on the other end just yet, no harm in letting it ring for as long as possible), you're back to square one. Why isn't it already done this or a similar way? Surely such systems exist, even if not (yet) widely used? Why not allow pressing numbers to change the music as you wait? And last, but not least: how hard is it to loop something properly? (I swear, some of that has to be on purpose, sadism is a better fitting explanation than incompetence.) > Worse, companies are always tempted to impose on you while you wait – playing music on hold (does anybody actually like this?), or worse, nagging you about using the web site. We will see later on that this is especially pointless and stupid. Well, they really really want you to use the website. For a lot of "they"'s. Not that they can manage to run that well, either, but it's still cheaper and "scales better". I agree it's stupid, I detested it not because of job security but because I hated the lame website and how pointless it was to try to make any suggestions "above my pay grade", but in their mind, there is a point, it's not just filler. http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/politics-of-call-centres-part-three-really-part-three-this-time/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/politics-of-call... > But the big issue is management, and I think expectations. People expect the experience to be terrible. People expect the job to be status-reducing and generally horrible. People expect that because it’s a cost-centre, there’s no way to improve it other than flogging the slaves harder. Yes. I was lucky in that I found a way to not reduce my status, but actually learn a lot about myself and people, but that's generally the pattern I saw.