8 ms·

I get the feeling the researchers never worked in a call center and don't understand the realities involved in running one. The reason why you have a first lev

I get the feeling the researchers never worked in a call center and don't understand the realities involved in running one. The reason why you have a first level, and then levels after that, is so Level 1 can be focused on speed for simple issues, or routing for non-simple issues. Level 1 call work is not something the more expensive agents who can solve complex work should be doing. Another alternative is doing what Sprint did over ten years ago and firing their worst customers (https://www.cnet.com/news/sprint-breaks-up-with-high-maintenance-customers/ https://www.cnet.com/news/sprint-breaks-up-with-high-mainten...). It'd probably be better if more companies could do that, though there are companies where it is not possible (e.g. ISPs).

badrabbit 7y ago
That's so horrible. There should be laws to prevent companies from refusing to do business with "high maintenance" customers without proper documentation and regulation. What recourse does the customer have to contest their decision? What if sprint tells other carriers about this customer? Just like with employees, if you get to fire a customer then how you aquire customers and how you refuse to do business with customers should be subject to regulation. I would even say this should be public record so other customers can see exactly why they blacklist customers. FYI: I have worked in a call center type environment for a company well reputed for having bad customer service. I have faced horrible customers day in and day out until one reallybad customer pushed me off the edge and I quit. I still stand by my position that consumer rights and fair treatment of the public by businesses is much more important than a company's right to refuse to do business with anyone.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- leesalminen 7y ago
  Just yesterday one of my tier 1 chat agents received a death threat from a long time problem customer. I don’t tolerate threats from customers on my team, so we immediately terminated their service and contacted law enforcement.
  - markdown 7y ago
    That's a unique scenario that has no place in this discussion. Of course you fired them.
    - bearcobra 7y ago
      Having worked in a couple of TelCo call centers, I can say that it's common enough to be included in training.
      - BubRoss 7y ago
        The discussion was about terminating customers that are more trouble then they are worth, threats of violence are separate from that discussion.
      - hyperman1 7y ago
        Chances are it is in training because they have to demonstrate they have 'done something', so the problem is 'taken care off'
  - badrabbit 7y ago
    What's your point? That's a valid reason and any regulatory review will clear your right to refuse to do business with that customer.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      Do you think that this review is free for the business or the citizens whose tax money is paying for this? Don't you think most cases will be a little more subjective. If the asshole in question hasn't made death threats yet do you have to wait until he assaults someone to stop serving him?
      - badrabbit 7y ago
        Again,you misunderstand what I said. Yes,tax payers foot the bill for the government body and just like a company can draft a policy telling employees what criteria to use when refusing business to a customer,the regulatory body can do the same. Example: raising voice,using specific phrases,making personal comments about the support staff that's helping them,threatening they'll get them fired,refusing to follow official troubleshooting guides,etc... For example,you can't do the reverse which is firing an employee for being an asshole to a customer when they were being polite and doing their job. If that is your readon and that reason is based on untrue facts then you are liable for a wrongful termination suit.
- nickodell 7y ago
  >There should be laws to prevent companies from refusing to do business with "high maintenance" customers without proper documentation and regulation. Would requiring documentation significantly change what happened here? Suppose that in addition to the letter about termination of service, the Sprint customers also got a spreadsheet showing the times that they called customer service and how long those calls took. Would that help customers? I am somewhat skeptical of the value of this regulatory scheme.
  - badrabbit 7y ago
    Documentation serves two purposes: for the public to review them so that they know how they and their fellow citiznes might be treated. And also, for any regulatory body to review their practices. So yes,if their reasons are purely based on customers complaining or seeking support for a service then they would ideally be fined or their business license revoked.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  From what principal do you derive the right to buy cell phone service despite being a pain in the ass? Asshole is not a protected class. As someone who has worked in customer service let me tell you that people already make ridiculous demands. People start with their nonsensical demands, proceed to threatening to explicitly or implicitly cease future business, move on to threatening to get the employee in trouble, move on to speaking to a manager, to threatening to go to the company about the manager that told them no. You want to add another layer after the company also tells them to pound sand where they can go to a government bureaucrat and make the company litigate the case for why they don't want to do business or what face a fine? There is already maximal incentive to make any reasonable accommodations possible because any amount of hassle that costs less than losing the customers business is already a net gain. If the cost of responding to for example a lawsuit because you declined to do business with someone is thousands of dollars then the equation changes substantially and not for the better. This only makes sense from a social standpoint if the service you are denied is something one can't do without and then THAT becomes the issue rather than requiring every trivially replaceable company enumerate why they didn't do business with every asshole.
  - badrabbit 7y ago
    > You want to add another layer after the company also tells them to pound sand where they can go to a government bureaucrat and make the company litigate the case for why they don't want to do business or what face a fine? Sort of,if you ban a customer then you will be forced to provide documentation. The regulation I spoke of will clearly establish when a company crosses the line. This actually saves the company lawsuits because the consumer will not have merit for a suit if the regulatory body cleared the company. If it didn't clear the company then the customer's service will simply be restored and the company will be fined a standard well established fine. I don't know why you and others are misunderstanding my position. I am not advocating for companies to put up with abusive customers. I am simply stating a company that provides services or goods to the general public should not be allowed to refuse to do business with specific individuals without documenting their defensible reason where a customer being clearly rude,abusive,threatening or acting in bad faith would be a good and allowed reason. By what right does a company that relies on a business license from a govetnment of the people gets to unfairly treat the public? The peoplr decide what allowed reasons to refuse business are,not companies. A BBB complaint is nieither sufficient nor effective. Oh and... > From what principal do you derive the right to buy cell phone service despite being a pain in the ass? The same principal that allows revocation and issuance of a business license. I don't think a "pain in the ass" customer should be tolerated,but rather government bodies overseen by publicly elected officials get to set a standard of what a "pain in the ass" customer constitutes not the company. You can see how a legitimate complaint can be construed as "pain in the ass" because fixing the problem or assisting the customer was a cost too high for the company.
- wisty 7y ago
  A lot of these customers are so abusive that they should be facing civil or even criminal action. These are not customers who annoyingly ask for a discount or need a little hand-holding to get through some forms. These are customers who scream abuse, make threats of various kinds, insult people, and are generally just horrible.
  - badrabbit 7y ago
    I don't care. All I am asking for is due process,documentation and govermental review of their practices.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      Why do you think you deserve your day in court at someone else's business? If you invite someone to your house for a party if they happen to get drunk do you think you need to ought to be required to consult a tribunal of your friends so people can decide if you had a right to kick them out?
      - badrabbit 7y ago
        Because unless a party at someones house,a business provides goods and services to the public and is subject to the public's approval to operate. Forexample, a restaurant needs to meet public health standards but a private party's kitchen doesn't. You can discriminate based on age and race who enters yout private party but you can't refuse business based on that criteria if you offer services to the public. If you think that's crazy then you'd be stoked to hear I think moderation in for profit sites that ban user generated content (twitter,reddit,news comments,youtube,facebook,etc...) Should also be subject to similar requirements. Your ability to profit from doing business with the public is a privilege not a right. Your ability to peacefully assemble in private with no economic profit or with profit between prople you have an exisiting well established relationship with (without a public place of business or advertisent) is private activity and should not be subject to public approval.
    - wisty 7y ago
LorenPechtel 7y ago
Lets look at that Sprint you mentioned. I was attempting to purchase a phone and take advantage of a promo offer. The saleswoman categorically would not sell me a phone without the insurance package. I asked for a supervisor and was transferred to a line that wasn't going to be answered until the next day.
- shostack 7y ago
  Is there an incentive structure possible such that they could lose money selling you a phone without it? Not as familiar with that industry.
  - Hydraulix989 7y ago
    Possibly -- if it is only profitable to sell the phone WITH the expected value of the insurance. I also think the salespeople are evaluated on their conversion rate for things like warranties, insurance, etc.
    - LorenPechtel 7y ago
      I'm sure that's what was going on. She was being evaluated on her upsell rate and so she simply ensured her upsell rate was 100%.
PavlovsCat 7y ago
I did work in one for a bit, for an ISP. There was no expensive level 2 support that interacted with customers, for starters, level 1 was the buffer between customers and level 2, either helping them fix their problem directly, or writing technical tickets, upon which level 2 acts however it pleases. The call center was outsourced and paid to care about what the ISP cared about, and the ISP cared about upselling customers, and those not cancelling their contracts. One day a woman called who had a flakey phone and internet connection for months. She was on the edge of crying, and told me she felt like nobody really took her problem seriously because she is a woman. I knew it was because she was a customer, but oh well. I went through everything with her, and wrote a ticket, in it I just mentioned that she had checked her equipment. Then I did what was absolutely verboten, I wrote down her customer #, and looked at the status of the ticket a week later. Just as I had expected, just as I had seen countless of times, and just like what had happened to her tickets from previous calls as well: they had just remotely measured the connection once, saw it was okay at that moment in time, and closed the ticket. So I called her back, also rather verboten, and asked if the problem still existed. Of course it did. This time we didn't talk long, but took my time writing a really detailed ticket, explaining she had already and gotten a new phone and paid for an IT dude to come over and check her modem, cables, everything. I also mentioned that she was a widow and had to take care of her heavily disabled son who was prone to seizures. All of that she had told me the first time, where I had checked the checkbox for such emergencies because of that, just like had already wrote in the forst ticket that she had "thoroughly checked her equipment". I just put the same much more verbosely, contrary to everything we were incentivized to do, gladly ruining my already bad KPI further. I looked again a week later, saw that the ticket had actually resulted in a visit by a technician, and just because I wanted the fuzzy feels for myself, I called her a last time. She said the technician had been very friendly and had really taken his time, and that since then the connection was rock solid. Yes, that whole thing took longer than the intended average call, but it also was less time than all the previous calls and tickets combined. It also just took a few weeks to solve something for good that had been an issue for nearly half a year. And no, there was nobody to escalate to, it was fully within the scope of the agents, and team leaders would only call customers back if they could tell them something we couldn't, which didn't apply here. Yes, at some point the repeated tickets could have triggered someone at level 2 to take another look, or even call the customer and other such fancy things, but that was as rare as what I did. I wouldn't have gotten much solid work done without a dose of insubordination and applying common sense and empathy. Instead of going home happier than I arrived each day, I would have gotten ulcers. But I only could do it that way because I knew I knew it was just a temporary job. Many people can't afford that, keep their head down, and it's ultimately the customers who end up holding the bag. In this case, it could have been her holding her son having seizures, while she is unable to call emergency services. As for annoying customers, ironically, being firm but fair to people who were all sorts of terrible or stupid was the other main source of pride I had in that job. I never was petty to them, I never jumped at excuses to cancel the call, like them calling me a name or something, I knew they meant the company. Many ended up realizing that I wasn't trying to get rid of them, I just wasn't taking their shit, and became much more cooperative. Few people wait 30-60 minutes to annoy a customer service rep for 5 minutes, then get hung up on. I'm convinced from what I saw where I worked that the worse someone is at customer service, the more they will tell you about "impossible" clients... yes, they exist, clinically insane people exist, too. But the average person is actually very decent, much more so than the people devising the incentive structures for call centers, or the kind of customer service rep who just looks at their script, points to the TOS, and gets snarky with customers at the drop of a hat because they hate their job, of which I've seen more than I care to remember.
noobermin 7y ago
On the one hand, when it's your thingamajig, you want it fixed and fast. Nonetheless, the sheer sense of entitlement some people think they have as a customer in the US really grates me, even when it's like for something as meager as a $6 burger. I actually like the "firing the worst customers" although I could see how that can easily be abused.

badrabbit 7y ago

That's so horrible. There should be laws to prevent companies from refusing to do business with "high maintenance" customers without proper documentation and regulation. What recourse does the customer have to contest their decision? What if sprint tells other carriers about this customer? Just like with employees, if you get to fire a customer then how you aquire customers and how you refuse to do business with customers should be subject to regulation. I would even say this should be public record so other customers can see exactly why they blacklist customers. FYI: I have worked in a call center type environment for a company well reputed for having bad customer service. I have faced horrible customers day in and day out until one reallybad customer pushed me off the edge and I quit. I still stand by my position that consumer rights and fair treatment of the public by businesses is much more important than a company's right to refuse to do business with anyone.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
leesalminen 7y ago
Just yesterday one of my tier 1 chat agents received a death threat from a long time problem customer. I don’t tolerate threats from customers on my team, so we immediately terminated their service and contacted law enforcement.
- markdown 7y ago
  That's a unique scenario that has no place in this discussion. Of course you fired them.
  - bearcobra 7y ago
    Having worked in a couple of TelCo call centers, I can say that it's common enough to be included in training.
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      The discussion was about terminating customers that are more trouble then they are worth, threats of violence are separate from that discussion.
    - hyperman1 7y ago
      Chances are it is in training because they have to demonstrate they have 'done something', so the problem is 'taken care off'
- badrabbit 7y ago
  What's your point? That's a valid reason and any regulatory review will clear your right to refuse to do business with that customer.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    Do you think that this review is free for the business or the citizens whose tax money is paying for this? Don't you think most cases will be a little more subjective. If the asshole in question hasn't made death threats yet do you have to wait until he assaults someone to stop serving him?
    - badrabbit 7y ago
      Again,you misunderstand what I said. Yes,tax payers foot the bill for the government body and just like a company can draft a policy telling employees what criteria to use when refusing business to a customer,the regulatory body can do the same. Example: raising voice,using specific phrases,making personal comments about the support staff that's helping them,threatening they'll get them fired,refusing to follow official troubleshooting guides,etc... For example,you can't do the reverse which is firing an employee for being an asshole to a customer when they were being polite and doing their job. If that is your readon and that reason is based on untrue facts then you are liable for a wrongful termination suit.
nickodell 7y ago
>There should be laws to prevent companies from refusing to do business with "high maintenance" customers without proper documentation and regulation. Would requiring documentation significantly change what happened here? Suppose that in addition to the letter about termination of service, the Sprint customers also got a spreadsheet showing the times that they called customer service and how long those calls took. Would that help customers? I am somewhat skeptical of the value of this regulatory scheme.
- badrabbit 7y ago
  Documentation serves two purposes: for the public to review them so that they know how they and their fellow citiznes might be treated. And also, for any regulatory body to review their practices. So yes,if their reasons are purely based on customers complaining or seeking support for a service then they would ideally be fined or their business license revoked.
michaelmrose 7y ago
From what principal do you derive the right to buy cell phone service despite being a pain in the ass? Asshole is not a protected class. As someone who has worked in customer service let me tell you that people already make ridiculous demands. People start with their nonsensical demands, proceed to threatening to explicitly or implicitly cease future business, move on to threatening to get the employee in trouble, move on to speaking to a manager, to threatening to go to the company about the manager that told them no. You want to add another layer after the company also tells them to pound sand where they can go to a government bureaucrat and make the company litigate the case for why they don't want to do business or what face a fine? There is already maximal incentive to make any reasonable accommodations possible because any amount of hassle that costs less than losing the customers business is already a net gain. If the cost of responding to for example a lawsuit because you declined to do business with someone is thousands of dollars then the equation changes substantially and not for the better. This only makes sense from a social standpoint if the service you are denied is something one can't do without and then THAT becomes the issue rather than requiring every trivially replaceable company enumerate why they didn't do business with every asshole.
- badrabbit 7y ago
  > You want to add another layer after the company also tells them to pound sand where they can go to a government bureaucrat and make the company litigate the case for why they don't want to do business or what face a fine? Sort of,if you ban a customer then you will be forced to provide documentation. The regulation I spoke of will clearly establish when a company crosses the line. This actually saves the company lawsuits because the consumer will not have merit for a suit if the regulatory body cleared the company. If it didn't clear the company then the customer's service will simply be restored and the company will be fined a standard well established fine. I don't know why you and others are misunderstanding my position. I am not advocating for companies to put up with abusive customers. I am simply stating a company that provides services or goods to the general public should not be allowed to refuse to do business with specific individuals without documenting their defensible reason where a customer being clearly rude,abusive,threatening or acting in bad faith would be a good and allowed reason. By what right does a company that relies on a business license from a govetnment of the people gets to unfairly treat the public? The peoplr decide what allowed reasons to refuse business are,not companies. A BBB complaint is nieither sufficient nor effective. Oh and... > From what principal do you derive the right to buy cell phone service despite being a pain in the ass? The same principal that allows revocation and issuance of a business license. I don't think a "pain in the ass" customer should be tolerated,but rather government bodies overseen by publicly elected officials get to set a standard of what a "pain in the ass" customer constitutes not the company. You can see how a legitimate complaint can be construed as "pain in the ass" because fixing the problem or assisting the customer was a cost too high for the company.
wisty 7y ago
A lot of these customers are so abusive that they should be facing civil or even criminal action. These are not customers who annoyingly ask for a discount or need a little hand-holding to get through some forms. These are customers who scream abuse, make threats of various kinds, insult people, and are generally just horrible.
- badrabbit 7y ago
  I don't care. All I am asking for is due process,documentation and govermental review of their practices.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    Why do you think you deserve your day in court at someone else's business? If you invite someone to your house for a party if they happen to get drunk do you think you need to ought to be required to consult a tribunal of your friends so people can decide if you had a right to kick them out?
    - badrabbit 7y ago
      Because unless a party at someones house,a business provides goods and services to the public and is subject to the public's approval to operate. Forexample, a restaurant needs to meet public health standards but a private party's kitchen doesn't. You can discriminate based on age and race who enters yout private party but you can't refuse business based on that criteria if you offer services to the public. If you think that's crazy then you'd be stoked to hear I think moderation in for profit sites that ban user generated content (twitter,reddit,news comments,youtube,facebook,etc...) Should also be subject to similar requirements. Your ability to profit from doing business with the public is a privilege not a right. Your ability to peacefully assemble in private with no economic profit or with profit between prople you have an exisiting well established relationship with (without a public place of business or advertisent) is private activity and should not be subject to public approval.
  - wisty 7y ago

LorenPechtel 7y ago

Lets look at that Sprint you mentioned. I was attempting to purchase a phone and take advantage of a promo offer. The saleswoman categorically would not sell me a phone without the insurance package. I asked for a supervisor and was transferred to a line that wasn't going to be answered until the next day.

shostack 7y ago
Is there an incentive structure possible such that they could lose money selling you a phone without it? Not as familiar with that industry.
- Hydraulix989 7y ago
  Possibly -- if it is only profitable to sell the phone WITH the expected value of the insurance. I also think the salespeople are evaluated on their conversion rate for things like warranties, insurance, etc.
  - LorenPechtel 7y ago
    I'm sure that's what was going on. She was being evaluated on her upsell rate and so she simply ensured her upsell rate was 100%.

PavlovsCat 7y ago

I did work in one for a bit, for an ISP. There was no expensive level 2 support that interacted with customers, for starters, level 1 was the buffer between customers and level 2, either helping them fix their problem directly, or writing technical tickets, upon which level 2 acts however it pleases. The call center was outsourced and paid to care about what the ISP cared about, and the ISP cared about upselling customers, and those not cancelling their contracts. One day a woman called who had a flakey phone and internet connection for months. She was on the edge of crying, and told me she felt like nobody really took her problem seriously because she is a woman. I knew it was because she was a customer, but oh well. I went through everything with her, and wrote a ticket, in it I just mentioned that she had checked her equipment. Then I did what was absolutely verboten, I wrote down her customer #, and looked at the status of the ticket a week later. Just as I had expected, just as I had seen countless of times, and just like what had happened to her tickets from previous calls as well: they had just remotely measured the connection once, saw it was okay at that moment in time, and closed the ticket. So I called her back, also rather verboten, and asked if the problem still existed. Of course it did. This time we didn't talk long, but took my time writing a really detailed ticket, explaining she had already and gotten a new phone and paid for an IT dude to come over and check her modem, cables, everything. I also mentioned that she was a widow and had to take care of her heavily disabled son who was prone to seizures. All of that she had told me the first time, where I had checked the checkbox for such emergencies because of that, just like had already wrote in the forst ticket that she had "thoroughly checked her equipment". I just put the same much more verbosely, contrary to everything we were incentivized to do, gladly ruining my already bad KPI further. I looked again a week later, saw that the ticket had actually resulted in a visit by a technician, and just because I wanted the fuzzy feels for myself, I called her a last time. She said the technician had been very friendly and had really taken his time, and that since then the connection was rock solid. Yes, that whole thing took longer than the intended average call, but it also was less time than all the previous calls and tickets combined. It also just took a few weeks to solve something for good that had been an issue for nearly half a year. And no, there was nobody to escalate to, it was fully within the scope of the agents, and team leaders would only call customers back if they could tell them something we couldn't, which didn't apply here. Yes, at some point the repeated tickets could have triggered someone at level 2 to take another look, or even call the customer and other such fancy things, but that was as rare as what I did. I wouldn't have gotten much solid work done without a dose of insubordination and applying common sense and empathy. Instead of going home happier than I arrived each day, I would have gotten ulcers. But I only could do it that way because I knew I knew it was just a temporary job. Many people can't afford that, keep their head down, and it's ultimately the customers who end up holding the bag. In this case, it could have been her holding her son having seizures, while she is unable to call emergency services. As for annoying customers, ironically, being firm but fair to people who were all sorts of terrible or stupid was the other main source of pride I had in that job. I never was petty to them, I never jumped at excuses to cancel the call, like them calling me a name or something, I knew they meant the company. Many ended up realizing that I wasn't trying to get rid of them, I just wasn't taking their shit, and became much more cooperative. Few people wait 30-60 minutes to annoy a customer service rep for 5 minutes, then get hung up on. I'm convinced from what I saw where I worked that the worse someone is at customer service, the more they will tell you about "impossible" clients... yes, they exist, clinically insane people exist, too. But the average person is actually very decent, much more so than the people devising the incentive structures for call centers, or the kind of customer service rep who just looks at their script, points to the TOS, and gets snarky with customers at the drop of a hat because they hate their job, of which I've seen more than I care to remember.

noobermin 7y ago

On the one hand, when it's your thingamajig, you want it fixed and fast. Nonetheless, the sheer sense of entitlement some people think they have as a customer in the US really grates me, even when it's like for something as meager as a $6 burger. I actually like the "firing the worst customers" although I could see how that can easily be abused.