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Why Everyone Hates Customer Service

102 points by psim1 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
barryrandall 7y ago
Please consider updating the title to something less click-baity, such as “Everyone hates customer service. AI breakpoint analysis is why.”
- psim1 7y ago
  A moderator has updated the title. I tried to keep it as close to the original article's title as possible.
0xDEFC0DE 7y ago
Lots of potential to undermine this. Start every customer service interaction with “I’m going to cancel my service”. Make yourself sound angry but don’t attack the representative directly of course (don’t be an asshole). Say you’re angry, definitely. Sense of urgency, and other social engineering techniques. Companies can’t stop this that easily. If they do, they basically have to try to call bullshit and confront them. Any system that counters this will end up harming normal customers who are generally angry.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  The last time I got counterfeit goods from Scamazon (was not on prime), I called them up and they gave me a line about how I'd have to ship it back on my dime and I might get a refund. Once I started yelling, the situation drastically changed and suddenly they were offering free shipment. I demanded a ship box delivered, since I shouldn't have to go out of my way for counterfeits. More yelling and... And they sent a ship box to my house, and included 3 months of prime. Literally, the more I abused someone on behalf of shitty corporate policy, the more I got.
- orev 7y ago
  Which is basically what everyone has been doing with cable companies for years to get lower bills, until recently when they started calling everyone’s bluff. If you try to cancel now, they’ll mostly just say “fine” and send you right through the process.
  - psim1 7y ago
    YMMV. My method has been working well with Comcast. When it's renewal time, I call and ask for the retention department immediately (say "cancel" to the interactive voice response system). When the agent comes on the line, I say that my rate is going up and I just want to keep the same rate and same service. No threatening, no anger, no actual statement that I want to cancel. Just, "I want to keep the same service and the same rate. Can we do that?" It has worked for about five years so far. I switched to Comcast from Verizon DSL. With Vz, there was no negotiation, and besides, their service was actually terrible and I did want to cancel.
  - yardie 7y ago
    Which is why. Some friends rotate accounts by using their name, their partner’s name, and even their kid’s name in an annual dance of getting the new user introductory rates.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
crankylinuxuser 7y ago
So as much as it angers and creates a horrible atmosphere for all involved, screaming and cursing at a customer rep does indeed work. The faster you escalate, the quicker you will get what you want.
- dazc 7y ago
  My niece worked for the mortgage arrears dept. of a major bank one time and, apparently, it was common for people to make death threats and such because she would have to ask they brought their payments up to date. All this achieves is a high rate of staff turnover and a lot of bad feeling on both sides of the fence.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    Oh, I completely agree. It makes me feel terrible, and I'm sure it creates an even more terrible work environment for the CSRs. I know. I've been an IT helpdesk employee. And we only got a sliver of nasty complaints. The distinction from the article, is that the big companies whom can afford this tech, are doing analytics and reporting to the CSR when to not offer solutions, and when to offer. And unfortunately when doing voice analytics, the louder you are and the more 'power words' you use, the better you're treated by the company. I in no way said this was good or ethical. It's abhorrent, and I'd rather steer clear with companies that use this. But in the bigger scheme of things, if I deal with a handful of mega-conglomerates that have phone lines, I must use this tactic in order to be made whole. And then, I help create the horrible work environment... Sigh.
thrav 7y ago
The Effortless Experience says the opposite, and all kinds of industries are working very hard to make issue resolution as effortless as possible. That said, those are definitely not long term contract type situations, where resolving the issue often means losing long term money. When you look at the industries with the best and worst customer service, it’s mostly just a difference between low and high switching costs.
mikeash 7y ago
The technology isn’t why. Idiot businesspeople focused on the short term who think it’s good business to piss off their customers as long as they don’t switch to a competitor is why.
- bogwog 7y ago
  That's not what it is either. It's just the effects of monopolies. If the telecom giants had to worry about real competition, they'd actually need to make customers happy to stay competitive. The only way I was able to escape Comcast's dogshit service was by moving to a different house.
  - whyenot 7y ago
    There is what appears to be "real competition" in the airline industry. It doesn't seem to help.
    - nyolfen 7y ago
      you can fly southwest
      - chrischen 7y ago
        You can fly Singapore airlines, the #1 rated airline, only except you probably can't because airline routes are highly segregated.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      If you look through lists of companies with the worst customer service, there doesn’t seem to be any correlation with competition. For example, Best Buy frequently appears, and they have tons of competition. Other retailers show up, and banks are another big category.
    - d-sc 7y ago
      Airlines price discriminate their support. If you fly first class frequently, you will get much better service than if you always choose the cheapest tickets.
ryanmarsh 7y ago
When I started traveling more frequently for business I learned from a veteran traveler, “always fill out the surveys they email you and nit pick anything and everything they did wrong”. This, she said, would result in more upgrades, shorter hold times, etc. From what I’ve been able to gather it’s true. I’m upgraded almost every time after I complain. I do this for hotels too. I’m regularly gifted extra points and meals. Being a sophisticated programmer I thought complaining too much might weight my feedback. Seems the airlines and hotels aren’t that sophisticated.
- lowercased 7y ago
  it's also going to bring down the scores of every human employee that was part of your experience, meaning they may not get bonuses or raises, even if they were generally good at their job. :/
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - isoskeles 7y ago
    They get bonuses?
    - jaclaz 7y ago
      Anyway they try to avoid maluses.
      - clairity 7y ago
        "maluses" doesn't seem to be a real word (in american english, anyway), but i like it!
        jaclaz 7y ago
        I don't know but in Latin there is both bonus and malus, and if we accept the anglophone plural (like one virus, two viruses) it seems fine to me (in Latin it would be mali but it originally is only an adjective). Anyway: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/malus https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/malus >Noun >malus (plural maluses) > (business) The return of performance-related compensation originally paid by an employer to an employee as a result of the discovery of a defect in the performance.
dfee 7y ago
Question: the article cites a lady who was frustrated with AT&T customer service - she’s from Illinois. How do newspapers find anecdotal stories like this? I mean this could have been anyone, anywhere - we all have these sorts of frustrating stories. Is there a sort of marketplace or broker who has a list of on-demand anecdotes? I just can’t imagine it’s worth it for WSJ to fly a reporter halfway across the country to get a head shot and a one paragraph statement.
- EVdotIO 7y ago
  HARO is mostly the answer.
  - eclipxe 7y ago
    Help A Reporter Out
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    https://www.helpareporter.com https://www.helpareporter.com "Help A Reporter Out (HARO): Your PR Agency's Worst Nightmare" https://www.forbes.com/sites/zalmiduchman/2015/11/27/haro/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/zalmiduchman/2015/11/27/haro/ "Help a Reporter Out (HARO): Ultimate Guide 2019" https://fitsmallbusiness.com/help-a-reporter-out-haro/ https://fitsmallbusiness.com/help-a-reporter-out-haro/
- diyseguy 7y ago
  AAAS: Anecdotes as a Service I think I found my new startup idea
  - siphon22 7y ago
    No, you need to do a ML-powered "This Anecdote Doesn't Exist" instead. Could provide a lot of amusement for HN.
- wp381640 7y ago
  If I was writing this story i'd scour social media replies to the major telco's and then get in touch with people. Likely picked telco's since they rank so low on customer satisfaction, ditto with banks Large part of being a good reporter and getting the story right is networking and finding where the story leads you This is certainly right in this case - if you count the sources in the story you'll see the reporter spoke to at least 9 people and cited a few reports and previous reporting edit: it's also possible the reporter didn't fly to IL - she may have done the interview over the phone/video and the editor sent in a local freelance or bureau photographer
dazc 7y ago
'It was only when Ms. Robey was in the act of switching phone numbers to Verizon from AT&T that the wireless carrier buckled, she said.' Often the only people empowered to help are those in the customer retention department. The standard response of 'before I can help you I need to ask you a few questions...' is another way of saying 'I am going to offer you no help whatsoever but keep you on the line anyway...'
isoskeles 7y ago
Instead of solving their customers' problems immediately, they have a computer analyze the tone of your voice and decide whether or not you really need to be helped. We're one step closer to life being a "simulation" where very little that is real matters. Your position as a customer and customer service's position as an agent are irrelevant, what matters is whether or not the computer has decided you are worth helping (until then, the agent "cannot" help you). I think the worst part is, people will adapt and start to treat customer service with more anger, as they'll learn it solves their problems more frequently. Some of them will take this behavior out into meatspace instead of just doing it over the phone. Of course, people already do this, but even more people will do it as a result of this sort of treatment.
rapind 7y ago
This just makes me want to automate the customer end. Bot wars.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
kilburn 7y ago
I won't deny many companies are playing this game of skimping as much as they can get away with, and I despise this practice. There's also the other side of the fence though: customers who are just a resource drain. I've recently been involved in some customer support efforts, and there are customers who are just unreasonable. They'll demand to have their cake, eat it too, and even get a new one. For the nuisance that a completely made up problem caused them. A problem that wouldn't even be your fault if it had been real. They are a vast minority, but they spoil it for everyone. They consume your time and especially your team's morale. There is only so much bullshit a support agent can take before getting fed up with it and degrading their service to subsequent customers. Now the organization has to figure out a way to detect those customers early enough to prevent them from screwing up everything for everyone. But false positives are very expensive: get one wrong and it becomes a PR nightmare. Furthermore, if you try to give the best possible support, you must empower your agents to act. They can now screw up and even get your company in legal trouble. Good training reduces this risk, but humans making calls means errors will be made eventually. In the end, reducing support to the bare minimum possible appears a reasonable option for many companies: it is the easiest to implement, it reduces legal/PR risks, and it has a very measurable and consistent effect (how many people stop buying/using your service after failing to get support). If that number is low enough, it just doesn't make economical sense to try to provide good support, which is a very hard endeavor for the reasons mentioned above.
- kartan 7y ago
  > In the end, reducing support to the bare minimum possible appears a reasonable option for many companies: it is the easiest to implement, it reduces legal/PR risks, and it has a very measurable and consistent effect (how many people stop buying/using your service after failing to get support). I agree that this is the best short interest for corporations. And that is why it is so important laws to protect consumers. "Salmonella sickens 1.2 million Americans every year and causes 450 deaths ... But there’s a loophole when it comes to salmonella: It isn’t on that prohibited list of adulterants." https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/10/4/17936714/beef-recall-2018-salmonella https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/10/4/17936714/be... Corporations act in completely selfish economic interest. Mandatory customer support and hefty fines and regular inspections are the only protection for consumers. Also, it creates a fair environment where having good customer support is not an extra cost because of all companies having to provide it. Corporations have a social responsibility that needs to be enforced. Corporations are going to optimize their extractive capacity until we humans are just reduced to production machines that survive another day to feed corporations profits. Our society goal should be human wellbeing, not corporate profits.
dep_b 7y ago
Customer service got so much better over the years it's almost unbelievable that we accepted where we came from. It used to be that companies needed to be shamed on national TV before they would even consider to change their attitudes to paying customers. In the 21st century so many companies really rely on good ratings by consumers they go out of their way to get a negative review, or to compensate you to take one away if you do post one. Maybe the companies stuck in the 20th century or the ones that think they'll just hold on to their monopoly forever still believe they'll get away with it but those are businesses most likely to be disrupted in the next 10-20 years.
droithomme 7y ago
Given they are playing the game of abusing the customer until they push back or crack, all validated by studies, it is morally right and sensible for customers to play the game on their terms. Get angry quickly, abuse customer service, yell, and make threats. According to this article that is how you get taken seriously by customer service and escalated to reps who will treat you fairly and resolve your problem. > Some companies now equip call centers with software that analyzes a caller’s tone of voice and pace of speech to determine how upset the person is. Angrier callers get routed to agents skilled at de-escalating conflict
js2 7y ago
Let me provide a counter-anecdote. I purchased a utility sink/cabinet combo from Home Depot last year for $200. The same product is sold by Lowes and all over the Internet in various styles. The OEM is this company called Conglom, but Home Depot markets all its plumbing products as "Glacier Bay" and has its own support system for those products. So anyway, I install the sink and the faucet has a small leak. So I call the Glacier Bay number expecting terrible service. The call is answered immediately. A lady takes my information and says she'll contact the OEM and get a new part sent to me and puts me on hold. She picks back up a minute or two later to say the OEM is closed for the day but she'll contact them the next day. I think that's the end of it, but then I get a call from her the next day to confirm she's reached the OEM and the replacement part is on the way. HD can't make but a few dollars if anything on this product. Aside, Moen also provides insanely good customer service. And I've heard Delta faucets does too. Maybe it's a plumbing thing. :-)
- mikeash 7y ago
  I think this sort of support has to be good because your alternative is to return it to the store, and this costs them way more. In the past few years, I’ve noticed a proliferation of material included in the box that attempts to preempt this. “Don’t return this to the store! Call us at 1-800-WHAT-EVER for help.” Where the customer’s remedy isn’t so easy and costly for the business, it’s much more hit or miss.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    An incentive may be process improvement, combined with competitive products. Faulty items returned to the store may or may not be returned to the manufacturer. In trying to suss out what went wrong, having the actual failed hardware in hand is useful. And certain sectors (especially manufacturing) face numerous other competitors. A few bad reviews can have a large impact on purchases.
    - yardie 7y ago
      The defect rate for a lot Of big box stores is something like 1:100000. Which seems really low but when you move millions/year it can be volumes. And once you reach a threshold they can cancel and even clawback money.
GuB-42 7y ago
Interestingly, Amazon, one of the champions in analytics and automation, is known for its good customer service. Personally, I called them, sent them messages, etc... And every time I had a helpful human (or an incredibly advanced AI) within a reasonable time. So companies less profitable than Amazon that skimp on customer service using analytics should learn something here. Particularly ironic if they run their system on AWS.
- tzs 7y ago
  I recently contacted Amazon for customer service and was shocked at how fast it was. I entered the phone number they could reach me at on their site, submitted it, and before I could even read the thing telling me that they would call soon my phone was ringing. That was an automated call to tell me that a human would be with me soon and the current wait time was one minute. As soon as the message ended, a human picked up. Unfortunately, they could not do anything about my issue. Briefly, I ordered something on Prime Day that is normally available in 3 colors. My first choice was not available, my second choice was listed as taking a week, and my third choice could ship immediately. I went for my second choice. A week later, they admitted that it was not actually going to be available for something like three weeks. Meanwhile, my first choice color was now available. I wanted to change my color choice to that. Alas, apparently customer service does not have the ability to change the color option on an existing order. All they could suggest was cancel the order and re-order, but that would lose Prime Day pricing, which had been $22 on an item whose normal price was $49. (Yesterday, I got a notice that because of the delays they were canceling the order, and they gave me a coupon code to get the $22 price if I wanted to re-order, along with a $5 gift card to help make up for the inconvenience. The color I originally ordered was listed as being back on stock on Aug 9 for Aug 12 delivery. My first choice was listed as being back in stock on Aug 9 for Aug 9 delivery...not sure how that works. My third choice was listed as in stock for 2 day delivery. I decided that the third color would work with my decor after all, and ordered that just to get this whole thing over with. It's been shipped and I'll get it tomorrow).
manjana 7y ago
The thing that scares me though is at what point, if not already, will they start to use training data on individual customers.
kazinator 7y ago
That's really no different from a child figuring out how far it can take various mischief before pissing off its parents. Why wouldn't corporations do what children do?
cultus 7y ago
The magic of capitalism is that the full resources of the planet's human minds are devoted to increasing the wealth of the owners of capital.
dredmorbius 7y ago
The problem with pushing right up to borders of tolerance is that borders shift. Sometimes suddenly and violently. As I'd commented a few days ago[1], Google's then-CEO Eric Schmidt said "The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it". The problem with such a policy is in thinking that cultural and legal boundaries are fixed and inviolate. The very process of repeatedly pressing up to a border may trigger the backlash which moves it, and can leave the fate-tempting party in deep water -- with its own culture, processes, amd institutions unable to adapt, or with goodwill so badly burnt it never recovers. In particular, the resource most being burnt is trust, a commodity that's expensive to acquire, quick to burn, and that big business in particular has had in short supply for most of the past 50 years[3]. Trust, once earned and deserved, hugely reduces costs of business in that counterparties -- not just customers, but vendors, employees, regulators, and even competitors -- tend to be inclined to cooperate and assist. And when squandered, makes every interaction (including customer service) a scorched-earth battleground. The topic is something of an evergreen in the business field, I'd posted an item recently on it.[4] There are numerous places where customer service gets it wrong, but breakdowns of trust across multiple boundaries is hugely evident: the company doesn't trust its customers, or CSRs, marketing doesn't trust manufacturing, sales doesn't trust service, engineering doesn't trust sales, and more. Combine this with monopoly-sector practices and you've got huge problems. Add in elements of James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State and much more. ______________________________ Notes: 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20507894#20511372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20507894#20511372 2. https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-googles-policy-is-to-get-right-up-to-the-creepy-line-and-not-cross-it-2010-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-googles-policy-... 3. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.as... 4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531236
malcolmwhat 7y ago
Ironic that trying to scroll down immediately floods me with a ridiculous full page message that is not the article...
anon4242 7y ago
> “People want to deal with someone who is smarter than they are and who will fix their problem,” This is exactly the worst kind IMHO. I once had a support person telling me to listen to him telling me what my problem was as I was describing it to him. Me: "The device doesn't work..." Him: "Listen. Listen! LISTEN! Your device isn't connected." Me: "Uhm, no it's ..." Him: "Listen. Listen! LISTEN! You haven't plugged the cable in." Me: "If you would please LISTEN to me maybe we can get somewhere?"
- a1369209993 7y ago
  That person in your transcript is neither smarter than you nor will they fix your problem, so the quoted quote seems spot on in this case.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  On the flip side I watched a poor tech person at Walmart trying to explain to a customer that while he was having an issue with an application, it was not grounds for return. It was also apparently not an issue he could work to fix.
Waterluvian 7y ago
It's like why people hate police. When you're dealing with them, you're already having a bad day. And we tend to hire mediocre people for the job because all the better candidates are doing better work.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  I've got a great friend who's in the police service. They aren't all mediocre, but there's an awful lot of them and bad apples rightly get a lot of attention. I think the problem with policing is that it's been disproven that it's just a few bad apples, and that they forget the adage is that a single bad apple spoils the bunch. There's also very little public accountability for bad policing, which is the opposite of what it should be, punishments should be public just like their promotions and commendations are. If people were seeing actual bad policing getting punished appropriately there would be less outcry. You also can't take back killing someone.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  It also helps that police can legally end or ruin your life with no real repercussions if they’re wrong.
aalleavitch 7y ago
A lot of customers treat customer service like a psychological outlet, someone who is paid to take their abuse. I have seen and heard some pretty horrible situations of a customer who is clearly taking out their own emotional problems on a poor CS rep time and time again. I don't know many CS people who haven't ended up in tears at work at least once. It's a psychologically hazardous job, and it gets no fanfare. It doesn't help that the relationship between customers and businesses is so often just directly antagonistic, customer service isn't something that businesses want to do, it's something they have to do. CS people end up being the meat shield between the customer who knows they are being exploited or manipulated and the people in the company making decisions for little bits of profit or to cut costs here and there and never directly has to face repercussions for all the shortcuts they take just to bolster their personal KPIs. There's a reason people hate working CS and retail; it can be legitimately traumatic, and they often have to find themselves being the friendly face pasted over an uncaring machine. For all the hate that open offices get, I appreciate the fact that my desk is within earshot of CS taking phone calls. As a developer it's a hell of a lot easier to see what the downstream effects of the things you do and the changes you make are when you can hear the repercussions of them directly. It also definitely motivates me to try to find ways I can ease the burden on them. These stresses ought to be distributed as equally among a corporation as possible.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  I've worked for a couple of companies where engineers shadowed the people on the phones (both sales and support) periodically. It can definitely help build empathy for the users of internal tools and the end customers, but it doesn't do much if the rest of the company doesn't prioritize fixing the problems found by those shadowing.
- awakeasleep 7y ago
  It's interesting that you see the relationship as existing between the customer and the customer service rep. I think the relationship is actually between the company, which abuses its customers, and the CSRs, which are hired as a meat shield.
cannonedhamster 7y ago
I run a support group and the amount of terrible it is to get people not in support to recognize that taking care of our customers is not trivial. We ship a lot of software releases and at one point took to QAing the software before release as best we could become it would mean we'd get less support calls. Then they started shipping the software regardless of bugs because shipping bad software to meet the promised release dates was more important than releasing good code.
- lovich 7y ago
  I can't really think of any company I've worked at or seen that cares about good code. They care about making money today. Good code helps in a few years but shipping a useableish product helps make money today

102 points by psim1 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Please consider updating the title to something less click-baity, such as “Everyone hates customer service. AI breakpoint analysis is why.”

psim1 7y ago
A moderator has updated the title. I tried to keep it as close to the original article's title as possible.

0xDEFC0DE 7y ago

Lots of potential to undermine this. Start every customer service interaction with “I’m going to cancel my service”. Make yourself sound angry but don’t attack the representative directly of course (don’t be an asshole). Say you’re angry, definitely. Sense of urgency, and other social engineering techniques. Companies can’t stop this that easily. If they do, they basically have to try to call bullshit and confront them. Any system that counters this will end up harming normal customers who are generally angry.

crankylinuxuser 7y ago
The last time I got counterfeit goods from Scamazon (was not on prime), I called them up and they gave me a line about how I'd have to ship it back on my dime and I might get a refund. Once I started yelling, the situation drastically changed and suddenly they were offering free shipment. I demanded a ship box delivered, since I shouldn't have to go out of my way for counterfeits. More yelling and... And they sent a ship box to my house, and included 3 months of prime. Literally, the more I abused someone on behalf of shitty corporate policy, the more I got.
orev 7y ago
Which is basically what everyone has been doing with cable companies for years to get lower bills, until recently when they started calling everyone’s bluff. If you try to cancel now, they’ll mostly just say “fine” and send you right through the process.
- psim1 7y ago
  YMMV. My method has been working well with Comcast. When it's renewal time, I call and ask for the retention department immediately (say "cancel" to the interactive voice response system). When the agent comes on the line, I say that my rate is going up and I just want to keep the same rate and same service. No threatening, no anger, no actual statement that I want to cancel. Just, "I want to keep the same service and the same rate. Can we do that?" It has worked for about five years so far. I switched to Comcast from Verizon DSL. With Vz, there was no negotiation, and besides, their service was actually terrible and I did want to cancel.
- yardie 7y ago
  Which is why. Some friends rotate accounts by using their name, their partner’s name, and even their kid’s name in an annual dance of getting the new user introductory rates.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

crankylinuxuser 7y ago

So as much as it angers and creates a horrible atmosphere for all involved, screaming and cursing at a customer rep does indeed work. The faster you escalate, the quicker you will get what you want.

dazc 7y ago
My niece worked for the mortgage arrears dept. of a major bank one time and, apparently, it was common for people to make death threats and such because she would have to ask they brought their payments up to date. All this achieves is a high rate of staff turnover and a lot of bad feeling on both sides of the fence.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  Oh, I completely agree. It makes me feel terrible, and I'm sure it creates an even more terrible work environment for the CSRs. I know. I've been an IT helpdesk employee. And we only got a sliver of nasty complaints. The distinction from the article, is that the big companies whom can afford this tech, are doing analytics and reporting to the CSR when to not offer solutions, and when to offer. And unfortunately when doing voice analytics, the louder you are and the more 'power words' you use, the better you're treated by the company. I in no way said this was good or ethical. It's abhorrent, and I'd rather steer clear with companies that use this. But in the bigger scheme of things, if I deal with a handful of mega-conglomerates that have phone lines, I must use this tactic in order to be made whole. And then, I help create the horrible work environment... Sigh.

thrav 7y ago

The Effortless Experience says the opposite, and all kinds of industries are working very hard to make issue resolution as effortless as possible. That said, those are definitely not long term contract type situations, where resolving the issue often means losing long term money. When you look at the industries with the best and worst customer service, it’s mostly just a difference between low and high switching costs.

mikeash 7y ago

The technology isn’t why. Idiot businesspeople focused on the short term who think it’s good business to piss off their customers as long as they don’t switch to a competitor is why.

bogwog 7y ago
That's not what it is either. It's just the effects of monopolies. If the telecom giants had to worry about real competition, they'd actually need to make customers happy to stay competitive. The only way I was able to escape Comcast's dogshit service was by moving to a different house.
- whyenot 7y ago
  There is what appears to be "real competition" in the airline industry. It doesn't seem to help.
  - nyolfen 7y ago
    you can fly southwest
    - chrischen 7y ago
      You can fly Singapore airlines, the #1 rated airline, only except you probably can't because airline routes are highly segregated.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    If you look through lists of companies with the worst customer service, there doesn’t seem to be any correlation with competition. For example, Best Buy frequently appears, and they have tons of competition. Other retailers show up, and banks are another big category.
  - d-sc 7y ago
    Airlines price discriminate their support. If you fly first class frequently, you will get much better service than if you always choose the cheapest tickets.

ryanmarsh 7y ago

When I started traveling more frequently for business I learned from a veteran traveler, “always fill out the surveys they email you and nit pick anything and everything they did wrong”. This, she said, would result in more upgrades, shorter hold times, etc. From what I’ve been able to gather it’s true. I’m upgraded almost every time after I complain. I do this for hotels too. I’m regularly gifted extra points and meals. Being a sophisticated programmer I thought complaining too much might weight my feedback. Seems the airlines and hotels aren’t that sophisticated.

lowercased 7y ago
it's also going to bring down the scores of every human employee that was part of your experience, meaning they may not get bonuses or raises, even if they were generally good at their job. :/
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- isoskeles 7y ago
  They get bonuses?
  - jaclaz 7y ago
    Anyway they try to avoid maluses.
    - clairity 7y ago
      "maluses" doesn't seem to be a real word (in american english, anyway), but i like it!
      - jaclaz 7y ago
        I don't know but in Latin there is both bonus and malus, and if we accept the anglophone plural (like one virus, two viruses) it seems fine to me (in Latin it would be mali but it originally is only an adjective). Anyway: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/malus https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/malus >Noun >malus (plural maluses) > (business) The return of performance-related compensation originally paid by an employer to an employee as a result of the discovery of a defect in the performance.

dfee 7y ago

Question: the article cites a lady who was frustrated with AT&T customer service - she’s from Illinois. How do newspapers find anecdotal stories like this? I mean this could have been anyone, anywhere - we all have these sorts of frustrating stories. Is there a sort of marketplace or broker who has a list of on-demand anecdotes? I just can’t imagine it’s worth it for WSJ to fly a reporter halfway across the country to get a head shot and a one paragraph statement.

EVdotIO 7y ago
HARO is mostly the answer.
- eclipxe 7y ago
  Help A Reporter Out
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  https://www.helpareporter.com https://www.helpareporter.com "Help A Reporter Out (HARO): Your PR Agency's Worst Nightmare" https://www.forbes.com/sites/zalmiduchman/2015/11/27/haro/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/zalmiduchman/2015/11/27/haro/ "Help a Reporter Out (HARO): Ultimate Guide 2019" https://fitsmallbusiness.com/help-a-reporter-out-haro/ https://fitsmallbusiness.com/help-a-reporter-out-haro/
diyseguy 7y ago
AAAS: Anecdotes as a Service I think I found my new startup idea
- siphon22 7y ago
  No, you need to do a ML-powered "This Anecdote Doesn't Exist" instead. Could provide a lot of amusement for HN.
wp381640 7y ago
If I was writing this story i'd scour social media replies to the major telco's and then get in touch with people. Likely picked telco's since they rank so low on customer satisfaction, ditto with banks Large part of being a good reporter and getting the story right is networking and finding where the story leads you This is certainly right in this case - if you count the sources in the story you'll see the reporter spoke to at least 9 people and cited a few reports and previous reporting edit: it's also possible the reporter didn't fly to IL - she may have done the interview over the phone/video and the editor sent in a local freelance or bureau photographer

dazc 7y ago

'It was only when Ms. Robey was in the act of switching phone numbers to Verizon from AT&T that the wireless carrier buckled, she said.' Often the only people empowered to help are those in the customer retention department. The standard response of 'before I can help you I need to ask you a few questions...' is another way of saying 'I am going to offer you no help whatsoever but keep you on the line anyway...'

isoskeles 7y ago

Instead of solving their customers' problems immediately, they have a computer analyze the tone of your voice and decide whether or not you really need to be helped. We're one step closer to life being a "simulation" where very little that is real matters. Your position as a customer and customer service's position as an agent are irrelevant, what matters is whether or not the computer has decided you are worth helping (until then, the agent "cannot" help you). I think the worst part is, people will adapt and start to treat customer service with more anger, as they'll learn it solves their problems more frequently. Some of them will take this behavior out into meatspace instead of just doing it over the phone. Of course, people already do this, but even more people will do it as a result of this sort of treatment.

rapind 7y ago

This just makes me want to automate the customer end. Bot wars.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

kilburn 7y ago

I won't deny many companies are playing this game of skimping as much as they can get away with, and I despise this practice. There's also the other side of the fence though: customers who are just a resource drain. I've recently been involved in some customer support efforts, and there are customers who are just unreasonable. They'll demand to have their cake, eat it too, and even get a new one. For the nuisance that a completely made up problem caused them. A problem that wouldn't even be your fault if it had been real. They are a vast minority, but they spoil it for everyone. They consume your time and especially your team's morale. There is only so much bullshit a support agent can take before getting fed up with it and degrading their service to subsequent customers. Now the organization has to figure out a way to detect those customers early enough to prevent them from screwing up everything for everyone. But false positives are very expensive: get one wrong and it becomes a PR nightmare. Furthermore, if you try to give the best possible support, you must empower your agents to act. They can now screw up and even get your company in legal trouble. Good training reduces this risk, but humans making calls means errors will be made eventually. In the end, reducing support to the bare minimum possible appears a reasonable option for many companies: it is the easiest to implement, it reduces legal/PR risks, and it has a very measurable and consistent effect (how many people stop buying/using your service after failing to get support). If that number is low enough, it just doesn't make economical sense to try to provide good support, which is a very hard endeavor for the reasons mentioned above.

kartan 7y ago
> In the end, reducing support to the bare minimum possible appears a reasonable option for many companies: it is the easiest to implement, it reduces legal/PR risks, and it has a very measurable and consistent effect (how many people stop buying/using your service after failing to get support). I agree that this is the best short interest for corporations. And that is why it is so important laws to protect consumers. "Salmonella sickens 1.2 million Americans every year and causes 450 deaths ... But there’s a loophole when it comes to salmonella: It isn’t on that prohibited list of adulterants." https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/10/4/17936714/beef-recall-2018-salmonella https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/10/4/17936714/be... Corporations act in completely selfish economic interest. Mandatory customer support and hefty fines and regular inspections are the only protection for consumers. Also, it creates a fair environment where having good customer support is not an extra cost because of all companies having to provide it. Corporations have a social responsibility that needs to be enforced. Corporations are going to optimize their extractive capacity until we humans are just reduced to production machines that survive another day to feed corporations profits. Our society goal should be human wellbeing, not corporate profits.

dep_b 7y ago

Customer service got so much better over the years it's almost unbelievable that we accepted where we came from. It used to be that companies needed to be shamed on national TV before they would even consider to change their attitudes to paying customers. In the 21st century so many companies really rely on good ratings by consumers they go out of their way to get a negative review, or to compensate you to take one away if you do post one. Maybe the companies stuck in the 20th century or the ones that think they'll just hold on to their monopoly forever still believe they'll get away with it but those are businesses most likely to be disrupted in the next 10-20 years.

droithomme 7y ago

Given they are playing the game of abusing the customer until they push back or crack, all validated by studies, it is morally right and sensible for customers to play the game on their terms. Get angry quickly, abuse customer service, yell, and make threats. According to this article that is how you get taken seriously by customer service and escalated to reps who will treat you fairly and resolve your problem. > Some companies now equip call centers with software that analyzes a caller’s tone of voice and pace of speech to determine how upset the person is. Angrier callers get routed to agents skilled at de-escalating conflict

js2 7y ago

Let me provide a counter-anecdote. I purchased a utility sink/cabinet combo from Home Depot last year for $200. The same product is sold by Lowes and all over the Internet in various styles. The OEM is this company called Conglom, but Home Depot markets all its plumbing products as "Glacier Bay" and has its own support system for those products. So anyway, I install the sink and the faucet has a small leak. So I call the Glacier Bay number expecting terrible service. The call is answered immediately. A lady takes my information and says she'll contact the OEM and get a new part sent to me and puts me on hold. She picks back up a minute or two later to say the OEM is closed for the day but she'll contact them the next day. I think that's the end of it, but then I get a call from her the next day to confirm she's reached the OEM and the replacement part is on the way. HD can't make but a few dollars if anything on this product. Aside, Moen also provides insanely good customer service. And I've heard Delta faucets does too. Maybe it's a plumbing thing. :-)

mikeash 7y ago
I think this sort of support has to be good because your alternative is to return it to the store, and this costs them way more. In the past few years, I’ve noticed a proliferation of material included in the box that attempts to preempt this. “Don’t return this to the store! Call us at 1-800-WHAT-EVER for help.” Where the customer’s remedy isn’t so easy and costly for the business, it’s much more hit or miss.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  An incentive may be process improvement, combined with competitive products. Faulty items returned to the store may or may not be returned to the manufacturer. In trying to suss out what went wrong, having the actual failed hardware in hand is useful. And certain sectors (especially manufacturing) face numerous other competitors. A few bad reviews can have a large impact on purchases.
  - yardie 7y ago
    The defect rate for a lot Of big box stores is something like 1:100000. Which seems really low but when you move millions/year it can be volumes. And once you reach a threshold they can cancel and even clawback money.

GuB-42 7y ago

Interestingly, Amazon, one of the champions in analytics and automation, is known for its good customer service. Personally, I called them, sent them messages, etc... And every time I had a helpful human (or an incredibly advanced AI) within a reasonable time. So companies less profitable than Amazon that skimp on customer service using analytics should learn something here. Particularly ironic if they run their system on AWS.

tzs 7y ago
I recently contacted Amazon for customer service and was shocked at how fast it was. I entered the phone number they could reach me at on their site, submitted it, and before I could even read the thing telling me that they would call soon my phone was ringing. That was an automated call to tell me that a human would be with me soon and the current wait time was one minute. As soon as the message ended, a human picked up. Unfortunately, they could not do anything about my issue. Briefly, I ordered something on Prime Day that is normally available in 3 colors. My first choice was not available, my second choice was listed as taking a week, and my third choice could ship immediately. I went for my second choice. A week later, they admitted that it was not actually going to be available for something like three weeks. Meanwhile, my first choice color was now available. I wanted to change my color choice to that. Alas, apparently customer service does not have the ability to change the color option on an existing order. All they could suggest was cancel the order and re-order, but that would lose Prime Day pricing, which had been $22 on an item whose normal price was $49. (Yesterday, I got a notice that because of the delays they were canceling the order, and they gave me a coupon code to get the $22 price if I wanted to re-order, along with a $5 gift card to help make up for the inconvenience. The color I originally ordered was listed as being back on stock on Aug 9 for Aug 12 delivery. My first choice was listed as being back in stock on Aug 9 for Aug 9 delivery...not sure how that works. My third choice was listed as in stock for 2 day delivery. I decided that the third color would work with my decor after all, and ordered that just to get this whole thing over with. It's been shipped and I'll get it tomorrow).

manjana 7y ago

The thing that scares me though is at what point, if not already, will they start to use training data on individual customers.

kazinator 7y ago

That's really no different from a child figuring out how far it can take various mischief before pissing off its parents. Why wouldn't corporations do what children do?

cultus 7y ago

The magic of capitalism is that the full resources of the planet's human minds are devoted to increasing the wealth of the owners of capital.

dredmorbius 7y ago

The problem with pushing right up to borders of tolerance is that borders shift. Sometimes suddenly and violently. As I'd commented a few days ago[1], Google's then-CEO Eric Schmidt said "The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it". The problem with such a policy is in thinking that cultural and legal boundaries are fixed and inviolate. The very process of repeatedly pressing up to a border may trigger the backlash which moves it, and can leave the fate-tempting party in deep water -- with its own culture, processes, amd institutions unable to adapt, or with goodwill so badly burnt it never recovers. In particular, the resource most being burnt is trust, a commodity that's expensive to acquire, quick to burn, and that big business in particular has had in short supply for most of the past 50 years[3]. Trust, once earned and deserved, hugely reduces costs of business in that counterparties -- not just customers, but vendors, employees, regulators, and even competitors -- tend to be inclined to cooperate and assist. And when squandered, makes every interaction (including customer service) a scorched-earth battleground. The topic is something of an evergreen in the business field, I'd posted an item recently on it.[4] There are numerous places where customer service gets it wrong, but breakdowns of trust across multiple boundaries is hugely evident: the company doesn't trust its customers, or CSRs, marketing doesn't trust manufacturing, sales doesn't trust service, engineering doesn't trust sales, and more. Combine this with monopoly-sector practices and you've got huge problems. Add in elements of James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State and much more. ______________________________ Notes: 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20507894#20511372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20507894#20511372 2. https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-googles-policy-is-to-get-right-up-to-the-creepy-line-and-not-cross-it-2010-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-googles-policy-... 3. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.as... 4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531236

malcolmwhat 7y ago

Ironic that trying to scroll down immediately floods me with a ridiculous full page message that is not the article...

anon4242 7y ago

> “People want to deal with someone who is smarter than they are and who will fix their problem,” This is exactly the worst kind IMHO. I once had a support person telling me to listen to him telling me what my problem was as I was describing it to him. Me: "The device doesn't work..." Him: "Listen. Listen! LISTEN! Your device isn't connected." Me: "Uhm, no it's ..." Him: "Listen. Listen! LISTEN! You haven't plugged the cable in." Me: "If you would please LISTEN to me maybe we can get somewhere?"

a1369209993 7y ago
That person in your transcript is neither smarter than you nor will they fix your problem, so the quoted quote seems spot on in this case.
cannonedhamster 7y ago
On the flip side I watched a poor tech person at Walmart trying to explain to a customer that while he was having an issue with an application, it was not grounds for return. It was also apparently not an issue he could work to fix.

Waterluvian 7y ago

It's like why people hate police. When you're dealing with them, you're already having a bad day. And we tend to hire mediocre people for the job because all the better candidates are doing better work.

cannonedhamster 7y ago
I've got a great friend who's in the police service. They aren't all mediocre, but there's an awful lot of them and bad apples rightly get a lot of attention. I think the problem with policing is that it's been disproven that it's just a few bad apples, and that they forget the adage is that a single bad apple spoils the bunch. There's also very little public accountability for bad policing, which is the opposite of what it should be, punishments should be public just like their promotions and commendations are. If people were seeing actual bad policing getting punished appropriately there would be less outcry. You also can't take back killing someone.
pmiller2 7y ago
It also helps that police can legally end or ruin your life with no real repercussions if they’re wrong.

aalleavitch 7y ago

A lot of customers treat customer service like a psychological outlet, someone who is paid to take their abuse. I have seen and heard some pretty horrible situations of a customer who is clearly taking out their own emotional problems on a poor CS rep time and time again. I don't know many CS people who haven't ended up in tears at work at least once. It's a psychologically hazardous job, and it gets no fanfare. It doesn't help that the relationship between customers and businesses is so often just directly antagonistic, customer service isn't something that businesses want to do, it's something they have to do. CS people end up being the meat shield between the customer who knows they are being exploited or manipulated and the people in the company making decisions for little bits of profit or to cut costs here and there and never directly has to face repercussions for all the shortcuts they take just to bolster their personal KPIs. There's a reason people hate working CS and retail; it can be legitimately traumatic, and they often have to find themselves being the friendly face pasted over an uncaring machine. For all the hate that open offices get, I appreciate the fact that my desk is within earshot of CS taking phone calls. As a developer it's a hell of a lot easier to see what the downstream effects of the things you do and the changes you make are when you can hear the repercussions of them directly. It also definitely motivates me to try to find ways I can ease the burden on them. These stresses ought to be distributed as equally among a corporation as possible.

nitrogen 7y ago
I've worked for a couple of companies where engineers shadowed the people on the phones (both sales and support) periodically. It can definitely help build empathy for the users of internal tools and the end customers, but it doesn't do much if the rest of the company doesn't prioritize fixing the problems found by those shadowing.
awakeasleep 7y ago
It's interesting that you see the relationship as existing between the customer and the customer service rep. I think the relationship is actually between the company, which abuses its customers, and the CSRs, which are hired as a meat shield.

cannonedhamster 7y ago

I run a support group and the amount of terrible it is to get people not in support to recognize that taking care of our customers is not trivial. We ship a lot of software releases and at one point took to QAing the software before release as best we could become it would mean we'd get less support calls. Then they started shipping the software regardless of bugs because shipping bad software to meet the promised release dates was more important than releasing good code.

lovich 7y ago
I can't really think of any company I've worked at or seen that cares about good code. They care about making money today. Good code helps in a few years but shipping a useableish product helps make money today