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I recently had to spend a lot of time on the phone to set something important up. It was a very frustrating experience. I would call them, and be met with a ro
by projektir 9y ago
I recently had to spend a lot of time on the phone to set something important up. It was a very frustrating experience.
I would call them, and be met with a robocall. The robocall would not really have a section for what I actually needed to do, so I would stumble around and often end up at the wrong person. Often we were both confused and it wasn't clear what was going on.
Every time I called, it's a different person. I have to tell them my contact information and details every time. There's no continuity from previous discussions.
Sometimes, the phone would cut out, for a reason I still haven't figured out. Often in the middle of me talking to someone, and since there's no continuity, all that time is now lost.
I had different people tell me different things at the same phone number.
I end up with no record of my conversations, so it's hard to go back later and say: "Hey, they told me to do X, but it didn't work".
Holds, holds, holds. When I finally did a phone call that fixed everything, I spent about an hour and I was bounced between 5 different departments, including one case of being bounced in a cycle. Overall, I had to call this company about 5 times.
I don't hate phones per se, I like talking to people on the phone if it's a productive conversation for both of us. But I absolutely hate the idea of figuring out something important or receiving a service via a phone.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y agoAt this point, I have to assume that it's deliberate at some level. There is so much low-hanging fruit for improving the customer experience that it's no longer plausible to me that most call centers have that as a genuine goal.
- CaptSpify 9y agoI used to work as part of the helpdesk for a large company a few years ago. Calls that never made it to a live person were considered "solved by the phone-tree". Everyone there knew that 9/10 of those were people who just got too frustrated with the phone tree, hung up and tried to call back again. It's all about padding those reports.
- icebraining 9y agoThere's no excuse for lack of continuity nowadays, though. The callcenters I know have software to create tickets where the operators write the details of your request. Next time you just need to provide your client number or other ID to continue where you left of.
- CaptSpify 9y agoJust because there's no need doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Yes, this is a solved problem, but companies don't like using those solutions. They'd rather you punch in your id number into a phone tree, only to be asked for that same id again as soon as a human starts talking. You are correct that there is no excuse, but companies still do it all the time.
- mrhappyunhappy 9y agoBy far the worst phone call experience I've ever had was with Washington Health Plan Finder. You can still experience it for yourself by making a call now. It's a never-ending loop of holding followed by mind-numbing options and random hangups. If you get lucky to speak with a real person, the level of incompetence will drive you to the brink of insanity. I swear, they just let random people walk in from the street to take calls because those people have zero idea what they are talking about. My experience ended in me cancelling all of our insurance policies with Kaiser because I was stuck in a beaurocratic nightmare that had me transferring from one institution to the other in a never-ending loop. Somehow NOBODY was able to help me. I was so fed up with this situation that I moved countries half way around the world.
- projektir 9y agoOh, what a coincidence, these are the same institutions I had these problems with! > Somehow NOBODY was able to help me. I was so fed up with this situation that I moved countries half way around the world. It's funny how much I can relate to this. I did eventually figure it out but it very much made me want to move somewhere else.