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I'm not in full agreement here. Having spent nearly a decade in customer service, I've found that it requires: + Lots of empathy + The willingness to learn an

by rkho 7y ago

I'm not in full agreement here. Having spent nearly a decade in customer service, I've found that it requires: + Lots of empathy + The willingness to learn and be wrong + A ton of training Even then, human-based customer service is still subjected to the whims of: + Gut checks + Power trips + Misinformation/misinterpretation of policy (whether intentional or not) + Lots of emotion on both sides of the interaction Not every single customer service interaction requires a human behind it. At some point, there are simpler and more efficient ways of solving a problem besides throwing another human's time at it. Robots can easily process replacements without requiring a human being hear about why it needs to happen. They can quickly identify when something is late and proactively issue a credit.

tomc1985 7y ago
On the flipside, I hate nearly every non-human interaction introduced in the last few years that I have to make. With the exception of withdrawing money from an ATM (later edit- and some kinds of online shopping), automated customer service experiences have always been worse, mostly because they always seem to be programmed with a very narrow and optimistic set of goals in mind. Life would be even more of a hell if I couldn't mash 0 to speak to an operator in a lot of cases; as it is that option is already hidden. There isn't a lot of good reason to be optimistic about the future either; chatbots and fast food kiosks were a flop (and rightfully so) and most of these other styles of interaction feel forced and constricting. Humans may have their flaws but you can't beat the fact that they're what other humans are comfortable around.
jgust 7y ago
Piling on to this, customer service isn't just an interaction with an [entity] when something goes wrong. I would fairly categorize the initial shopping & fulfillment experience in the context of Amazon's e-commerce product as "customer service". If it solves your problem correctly & reliably, I'd call that "good customer service".

by rkho 7y ago

tomc1985 7y ago

On the flipside, I hate nearly every non-human interaction introduced in the last few years that I have to make. With the exception of withdrawing money from an ATM (later edit- and some kinds of online shopping), automated customer service experiences have always been worse, mostly because they always seem to be programmed with a very narrow and optimistic set of goals in mind. Life would be even more of a hell if I couldn't mash 0 to speak to an operator in a lot of cases; as it is that option is already hidden. There isn't a lot of good reason to be optimistic about the future either; chatbots and fast food kiosks were a flop (and rightfully so) and most of these other styles of interaction feel forced and constricting. Humans may have their flaws but you can't beat the fact that they're what other humans are comfortable around.

jgust 7y ago

Piling on to this, customer service isn't just an interaction with an [entity] when something goes wrong. I would fairly categorize the initial shopping & fulfillment experience in the context of Amazon's e-commerce product as "customer service". If it solves your problem correctly & reliably, I'd call that "good customer service".