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Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

• blindseer 5y ago
  Have people here used Chewy? I’m kind of amazed at their customer service. It’s SO good. You can reach a person via phone or chat, they are all technically savvy and extremely helpful. And fast. I’ve never spent more than a few minutes on the phone with them and have always been thoroughly satisfied.
• mrfusion 5y ago
  Maybe this should be the fourth law of robotics?
• yonixw 5y ago
  I don't see it as a solution because they will all just outsource it to humans from a country that cost less per hour, so your experience will be about the same. The only solution IMO is to spend more money on support, but that should be a public ranking and not a "right"/law. As an example, in my country, one of the big banks have ads with literally 2 sentences: "Talk to human, and we have a human branch in every city." No financial advantage what so ever so it looks like this is common enough issue that can move customers in some sectors.
  • crate_barre 5y ago
    The outsourced humans are still better than robots at customer service.
    • carpenecopinum 5y ago
      Often times, yes, but it still depends on the human. I've been in a situation before where an outsourced human decided the right course of action was to insult me and scream at me for an open-ended question along the lines of "I need X, (how) can your company help me with that?", which they apparently perceived to be extremely stupid. Needless to say, I decided not to continue doing business with that company. I feel like even a robot could've handled that situation better (especially from the perspective of the company, me not getting an answer at all would've probably been the more favorable outcome).
• ss108 5y ago
  I agree. You mentioned email, but to me the main issue is when one calls a support number. I absolutely despise calling a customer support number and having to listen to the "automated" response that gives one menu options that one navigates via numbers on the telephone (it's only automated for them, not the for the end-user, who has to manually chug through this process, with menu items that don't even necessarily correspond to their specific question). I absolutely abhor speaking to a machine via voice as well. From Alexa to saying dumb shit like "pay my bill" to a system over the phone, I will not do it. I think it's disgusting.
  • ironmagma 5y ago
    The sheer cardinality of ways they mess it up is impressive. 1. Long intro message with hours, location, website intro, email address and to hang up and call 911 if it’s an emergency 2. “Our menu items have recently changed” years after changing them 3. “We are currently experiencing higher than normal call volume” 100% of the time 4. No “other” option 5. Listing options 2, 3, 4, 5 and then the most common option “1,” last. 6. Following a huge phone menu and getting a busy signal at the end. I could go on. There need to be legal consequences at some point just to counteract the mental instability we undertake as a nation as a result of this insanity.
    • tomrod 5y ago
      The worst is when they won't accept new calls in queue, and just hang up.
      • inetknght 5y ago
        Aflac has recently (past year) 100% stopped their phone support. Calling their phone support tells you to log in to their website. I hope you don't have trouble with their website! I was able to get my issue sort-of resolved by making a complaint to a regulator -- I now have a direct line to someone capable of taking my phone call. But that's not an option for every company.
        • 5y ago
• emsy 5y ago
  “Scaling” a problem = Cutting down customer service and avoiding reputational damage through monopolies. A small corner shop could never get a away with the things the big players get away with.
• endisneigh 5y ago
  How much would you pay for that right?
  • edmcnulty101 5y ago
    The company profit, the executives, and the shareholders will take a share of paying for it as well.
    • lkxijlewlf 5y ago
      > will They won't. But they should.
    • brap 5y ago
      How are you going to enforce that? Are you going to force them to pay from their own salaries and dividends, by law? Well, they'll just bump up the salaries/dividends to offset the cost. The money is coming from customers. Either way, customers are the ones paying for support. Many companies let customers directly pay for support, if they want. No one's forcing you to buy from companies that don't offer this.
      • edmcnulty101 5y ago
        Get rid of the monopoly. The reason they can have such bad CR is because their marketshare is leaps and bounds beyond the competition so they CAN. They provided an amazing product until they hit monopoly status then started cutting quality.. Oldest trick in the book. Some solutions are to remove whatever government policies are giving them an advantage, or break up the monopoly via government, or provide government help to the competition. There's tons of ways.
        • drstewart 5y ago
          >Get rid of the monopoly. Which monopoly? >The reason they can have such bad CR is because their marketshare is leaps and bounds beyond the competition so they CAN. Defining monopolies by "has bad customer service" is certainly a unique and interesting take. Almost borders on the "no true scotsman" fallacy. Of course, the real irony that you don't understand is that this would entrench monopolies: they're the ones with the resources to hire peons in third world countries to provide bare minimum support. Forcing startups to do the same kills them right out the gate.
• sixhobbits 5y ago
  how would you define this so to get what you actually want? Companies would just react by employing humans who are not allowed to do anything but read from the machine-generated script?
• tvanantwerp 5y ago
  In my experience, companies value call center staff so little that turnover is extremely high. That means that you're unlikely to speak to someone with enough experience to solve your problems correctly. I can't count how many times I've had to call a company half-a-dozen times and received half-a-dozen different wrong or unhelpful responses. I'd like calling to be more available, but I don't believe it's a silver bullet solution.
  • edgyquant 5y ago
    My first job was a small e-commerce shop that had a one person on customer support. We couldn’t keep them and the owner would say your typical stuff like everyone’s lazy etc. Well one month we had trouble finding someone so I picked up the phones when I can and… It’s not just the company and it’s owners who think so little of CS. Almost every caller was obviously someone with an issue and they had no problem venting their frustration at the person on the phone. I began to dread every phone call and would do all of the things I hate when calling a place. I put people on indefinite holds, I let the phones ring a little more than I should hoping they would give up and hang up etc. Worst part was a felt for these people, a lot of their complaints were valid and a lot of the times they deserved a refund etc but there was nothing I could do to help. I’m an extrovert who loves talking with people and In my younger days I worked everything from a nasty bug ranch to construction, hard jobs that didn’t pay enough with unnecessarily mean bosses, and that month of answering phones was the worst working experience of my life. I know not every place is that level of bad but I’m not sure a number you could pay me that would be worth the stress.
    • the_snooze 5y ago
      > I put people on indefinite holds, I let the phones ring a little more than I should hoping they would give up and hang up etc. The people who call into customer service are those with issues they want to have addressed. By throwing up roadblocks, you're making it even harder for them to get to a solution. They expect the people on the line to provide help, but this behavior puts them in an adversarial mindset by the time they actually talk to someone. It does seem a like a tragedy of the commons situation here: people only have so much empathy to give, so we all individually pull back, which makes everyone worse off.
• sokoloff 5y ago
  That seems to preclude or seriously hamper someone trying to start a side hustle or anything small. Write an iOS app? Before you can ship it, you need to be able to take phone calls. Make a low-volume product in the evening and sell it to your fellow hobbyists, relying on your day job to pay the bills? Too bad; hope your boss understands that you'll need to take phone calls.
  • msandford 5y ago
    There are ways to handle that too. Specify a minimum customer size, revenue size, employee count, etc. Index it to GDP also so it's not an entirely different mandate in 100 years. It's not trivially easy but it's also not impossible.
  • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    I don't think anyone is suggesting that you need to have a call centre for your wordle clone.
• SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  I agree. My biggest gripe is these new pop-up financial institutions that provide insight into your credit history or loans. It's impossible to find the contact info of a real human being and in many cases the only obvious way to even open a ticket is by creating an account first. If I have evidence someone is trying to commit fraud by pretending to be me and signing up for your services do not force me to sign up for another just to contact you about it. You're trying to use identity theft as an enrollment tool.
  • mannykannot 5y ago
    I am not a lawyer, so I am posting this as a question in the hope that someone who knows the law will reply. In the situation described here, if you "sign up for another [service] just to contact you about it", are you potentially putting yourself in a worse situation than before, by accepting terms, such as arbitration clauses, that limit your options for redress through small-claims court or other legal action? If this is so, then there is an obviously exploitable dark pattern here.
  • xemdetia 5y ago
    This is something I see as a middle ground. I don't really think having the 'right' to a human fixes the problem. I just think the right to actually being able to get a conversation without becoming a member of the service to obvious bad behaviour from another actor or if the service decides to arbitrarily terminate service, and that to actually mean something. Right now it's clearly 'just sue' if you want things actually done. So many people are invested in social media or services in a way that a random misplaced ban can leave them stranded from actually getting help. On the other side the people in most orgs that deal with those category of issues are the janitors doing unwanted work, or that work is not prioritized. There's no fun catchall term like UX to even get people excited about fixing this class of problem. Example of weird semi-positive was from reporting a particular serial scammer using a YouTube+Cloudflare combo where I would get always a submission receipt but then seemingly arbitrarily feedback that the situation was dealt with.
• dematz 5y ago
  As ss108 said you mentioned email but for me the real challenge has always been calling customer support numbers (eg ISP) and dealing with unhelpful automated menus. What I found really useful is to ignore all the stuff they say and just say irrelevant English. Not gibberish necessarily - you can read the script of a play, or every comment in twitch chat, or whatever. The point is their system listens to you and goes ok they're saying something but I don't understand it, guess I have to connect them to a human person. I do agree with you though I would like a right to speak with a human or at least mandated transparency around what percent of callers speak to a human/how long it takes for them to get there.
• LarryMade2 5y ago
  The root problem here is getting an efficient solution to your problem. Even if the company provides a human to talk to there is no guarantee there will be an efficient solution (satellite ISP support come to mind here.) I think lack of competition is probably the crux, lately many companies are virtual monopolies in their markets or territory. Without adequate alternatives they don't see increased value in a happy customer or attracting customers (because there is no choice).
• PaulKeeble 5y ago
  I think its important to recognise that quite a lot of modern web based companies are running their business on the 0 cents model. That is they take the marginal cost of a customer and push it down to zero and rely on scale to make a profit from it. They can't add anything to their business that would scale with the number of their customers that has any real cost, computing resources even are heavily optimised for let alone having an actual human to speak to. What this means is that as a 0 cents customer (even if you pay them) you are completely disposable, no customer matters to them at all. This culture comes along with a cold disdain for customers and a desire to run everything off algorithms and if some people get caught up in error they just don't care. As a customer its annoying and you can loose a lot of data, but for the companies its their business model. The only way as a customer to not be in that situation is to avoid the businesses based on this model. If they were somehow forced to provide human customer support they may very well be substantially less profitable or not viable as a business anymore.
  • dustingetz 5y ago
    This is fundamentally about not being undercut by competition which means the costs a business can absorb are fundamentally relative to competitors' costs (especially so in high margin SAAS businesses). If everyone has to offer support and there's no way to cheat, the market will find a way to meet demand efficiently under new circumstances
    • Msw242 5y ago
      At a higher price level! It's important to write out and acknowledge that people cost money.
      • chii 5y ago
        exactly! I think the right should be there - but the cost must also be associated with it. For example, there should be a plan for which you pay an upfront cost and get a human.
        • 5y ago
• dforrestwilson 5y ago
  This week we had a disgruntled employee leave a 1-star Google review of our shop. They have never been a customer... I reported it as a Conflict of Interest PER GOOGLE'S OWN STATED POLICY and it was rejected almost immediately. Google could find nothing wrong with the review. We have no recourse to escalate. No way to even interact with a human about it. It's absolutely ridiculous. I have plenty of documentation and am happy to provide evidence that this is a former employee but I have no one to give it to or even a dropbox to submit documentation to. Sundar and Google should be ashamed.
  • Nextgrid 5y ago
    Threaten to sue for libel.
    • jeffwask 5y ago
      They would bury you in legal paper work and it would end up cost 5x the original problem.
  • criddell 5y ago
    Maybe try suing them in small claims court. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_172403 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_1...
    • webstrand 5y ago
      Google appealed and won, apparently. Frustratingly there appears to be no rationale for the reversal. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_213176 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_2...
  • ironmagma 5y ago
    Are the criticisms accurate? That should be the main concern. This is a free speech country after all.
    • 5y ago
• narag 5y ago
  This doesn't seem to be a very popular solution, but it's proven useful: limit contractual freedom for adhesion contracts. That would mean forbidding some kinds of clauses that are often abused, but also forcing the inclusion of some other clauses and automatic procedures for certain actions like cancelations, or in this case, support.
• thowway3445sd 5y ago
  With written communication you have proof and don't have to repeat over and over. If tickets can't solve then speaking definitely won't.
• softwarebeware 5y ago
  I would rather just scorch the business on social media then take my business to a competitor. Even talking to a human, you will find poor customer experience that amounts to the same outcome. But survival of the fittest will eventually kill off such companies
• GoToThePub 5y ago
  THERE IS ! See the GDPR rule on automated decision making and your right to speak to a human. The GDPR is your friend. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/automated-decision-making-and-profiling/what-does-the-uk-gdpr-say-about-automated-decision-making-and-profiling/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...
  • dahart 5y ago
    This is an interesting aspect of the GDPR that I didn’t know. But I don’t see anything at all in the article you linked about the right to speak to a human. It only talks about automated decision making, internal “processing” decisions of a business, and not customer support as far as I can tell. Did I miss it somewhere?
• alecco 5y ago
  An elderly relative keeps calling the mobile company about her line not working. We explained to her it was the charger. She keeps calling them. Same for her ISP. Same for the bank. Same for anything tech related. She won't budge. This costs a lot of money to companies and government offices. I think there should be different set of companies with support catered to this growing age group who struggle with new technology. Maybe a service middle-man support. Also, they are prime targets for things like "Windows Support" scams and all kinds of sleazy sales campaigns.
  • irvingprime 5y ago
    I used to work support desk. I hate to have to tell you this but it's not just old people who can't handle tech. Stupidity is an epidemic!
• nathias 5y ago
  This is by design, corporations have learned how to make anything that costs them into a lifetime of hassle for the customer so the customer is forced to give up. Reaching people doesn't help, they just forward you to other people and/or bureocratic procedures.
• hwers 5y ago
  I hope we'll see a return of libertarian values in tech culture in the future. There's been a ton of push to force every rule into law in the past few years. Not everything should be backed by force of violence. I hope this authoritarian trend reverses sooner rather than later.
  • wussboy 5y ago
    Interesting. I feel the exact opposite. The tech industry’s fascination with libertarian values have brought about the disastrous consequences of putting free speech on a pedestal, with utter disregard for the harms it has caused. And libertarianism has always required choice. Choice requires a free and vibrant marketplace. But that market place requires regulation to keep it free and vibrant. The circle cannot be squared.
    • hwers 5y ago
      We certainly disagree but I respect your opinion and appreciate describing an alternative point of view like this.
    • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      Well, can you point to any big tech company or otherwise tech industry segment that actually practices “libertarian“ principles? Because to me it seems they have been authoritarian left for at least the past ten years. The model seems to be come up in an unregulated market, take advantage of it to build a monopoly, desire regulation or actively influence politics to keep small competitors out. Well some of the people who started these companies may have originally talked about libertarian themes, I’m not seeing it.
• throwaway984393 5y ago
  Vote with your feet and your review. Leave the service, and leave a consumer review on a consumer review site.
• AlexDragusin 5y ago
  I agree and I've faced this situation as well and often wonder how do these companies accept operating in this manner. I personally run my business[1] with direct contact with my customers because I don't want them to feel the frustration I felt in these situations. If they have a need, they can always reach me, directly. I do agree that there should be some form of easily searchable/browsable FAQ/Knowledgebase for the common issues, but the speak to a human should always be an option, an option that should not require endless steps to reach. If a company cannot provide a good service to the customers, that includes being reachable for concerns related to the business, they should just not be in the said business altogether. [1] https://www.ypson.com https://www.ypson.com
• kube-system 5y ago
  If the same person answering those tickets answers the phone, do you think it would be any better? The medium doesn’t really make a difference. The issues is that some companies front line support is just an FAQ document regurgitated by a human, with no ability to deviate from those canned set of responses. If you have a problem that the front-line can’t handle, you have to escalate. If they can’t escalate for you, send a letter. If the letter doesn’t get a response, have a lawyer send it on their letterhead.
• tyingq 5y ago
  They would just find a way to outsource that to the cheapest possible source. And ensure that the human is not empowered to do anything for you that's useful. Platitudes as a service..."We're sorry this happened to you. Have your tried rebooting?".
• BlameKaneda 5y ago
  I was in an airport terminal where all of the restaurants and cafes had tables with iPads. I went to one of the restaurants and ordered a burger using one of them. From what I remember I was the only patron there. About 40 minutes later, I'm looking at the waiter walking around and it didn't seem like he was waiting on any food from the kitchen. He also didn't come over once, and probably assumed that I was just hanging out and watching the US Open on the TVs. I flagged him over and it turned out that my order did not go through at all. I then spent another 15 minutes waiting on my food to actually arrive. If I'd spoken to a human from the beginning, this probably wouldn't have happened. The burger wasn't that good, anyway.
• falsenapkin 5y ago
  I understand that companies get a lot of call volume around incredibly basic stuff, you can hear it in their menu design, but in the last ~10 calls I've made for support 1) I had to because the online ticket/chat option went nowhere and 2) the phone support was a several hour ordeal that usually went nowhere but in a few instances I got what I needed. I don't know what the solution is but it's unfortunate that the 95% who can't read their monthly statement have ruined the first 3 menu pages on phone systems and now no one wants to pay humans for the very real edge cases.
• ironmagma 5y ago
  For those in the know, do platforms like Twilio make it any easier to select some standard template that should make this more common? Like, assuming they have reps to begin with, does something like Twilio make doing the right thing easier or harder?
• 10x-dev 5y ago
  I bought a sump pump, and called their number to ask some question. 30 seconds and one menu option later I was speaking with someone who clearly had a lot of technical knowledge of the sump pump. I was very pleasantly surprised since I am used to expect no human interaction and if I get a human on the call, it would be someone who can only provide "common sense" level of support. I wish this were the case for more companies.
  • EvanAnderson 5y ago
    I have no need for a sump pump but I kinda want to give money to this company. If you wouldn't mind sharing the company name I'd love to have it. They may well make something else I do need and I'd love to reward a company who is such a good job.
• radarsat1 5y ago
  I recently had the experience of trying to do a banking operation that required an in-person visit. For some reason this bank required me to do this operation at the branch that I originally opened the account, which is not where I live anymore, and it's very inconvenient for me to go there. So, while I was in another city of that country, I decided to try and handle that problem. I went to a branch and asked them to do the operation, saying that there must be a way to do it without me having to travel hundreds of km. The person absolutely refused to even try to help me. "No, there's no way to do it, you'll have to go to your branch office." I begged, I got angry. (This was after leaving this issue for a couple of years -- travel has not exactly been easy, so there are reasons I didn't manage to do it yet, and was getting desperate.) All to no avail, the person just. could. not. help me. Fine, I left, very annoyed. The next day, I went to a different branch, told the same story, and explained how extremely inconvenient the whole thing is. I went in expecting failure. To my surprise, the person responded kindly, said "okay, I can send an inter-branch memo, I'll do the operation you pay this much, done and done." I signed something, walked out smiling, and the next business day, received a confirmation email from my branch in the other city. Moral of the story: I completely agree with the premise here, but just keep in mind that even if you talk to a human, your millage may vary greatly depending on who you speak to and what side of the bed they got up on.
  • rmellow 5y ago
    My partner bought some clothing in Brazil and wanted to exchange it at the store for something else. Unfortunately she lost the receipt, and the alternative which is providing your SSN is not available to her (not a citizen). The exchange was denied. We walked into another store location. They were sympathetic to the foreigner situation, and made an exception. Takeaway: Computers can't see that a process is flawed and go outside it when it makes sense to do so. Computers also can't provide feedback to the company that the process is flawed. Aside: Brazilian bureaucracies, even commercial ones are extremely unfriendly to non-brazilians: - Poor bilingual support (EN or ES). - Expectation of a SSN for all customers (this included booking pre-flight Covid tests). - In many situations a foreign credit card will not work for online purchases (SSN & brazilian zip code will be checked against your card). Fry's "shut up and take my money" meme was extremely relevant here, as many times I wanted to make a purchase, but it wasn't possible to do so.
• telesilla 5y ago
  Do your business with companies who offer human support. There exists one of these for everything you need.
• jdvh 5y ago
  I agree that companies have a responsibility to listen to and address customer complaints. The problem is that a small percentage of customers create the bulk of the customer support burden. With phone support this gets even more skewed. You can't have engineers do phone support or they won't be able to get any real work done with all the interruptions. You can have engineers investigate and address all complaints that arrive by email. I strongly believe email support that goes directly to the people most knowledgable to fix the underlying problem is the best approach. Companies that provide bad customer support just don't care. They'll provide phone support if they feel they have to, but they'll outsource it for cost reasons. Talking to people who are friendly but clueless is at least as frustrating for me as creating a ticket that doesn't go anywhere.
  • frereubu 5y ago
    > Talking to people who are friendly but clueless is at least as frustrating for me as creating a ticket that doesn't go anywhere. Me too. I think that extra frustration is partially because I know it's not the fault of the person I'm speaking to that they've been put in that position, so I feel like I have to keep my irritation to myself, which I find hard when it's the third person I've spoken to and they've asked me to describe the issue all over again. At least with written text it's easier to look back over the notes.
  • pitaj 5y ago
    Let alone customers who abuse support staff: cursing them out, treating them like idiots, being racist, etc
    • muttled 5y ago
      Finding someone skilled enough to fix complex technical issues and is willing to pickup the phone each time is incredibly difficult. By the time you're skilled-up, you're done dealing with the abuses of the general public.
• lucozade 5y ago
  I appreciate that this may be a curmudgeonly view but do we really need the inalienable right to not be mildly frustrated? Is this what we want our political representatives to legislate on? Can't say it does it for me. Now, if I have a paid relationship with some entity that includes a support agreement in the contract then, sure, I expect to receive that support. And some of the comments here appear to be for that sort of relationship. But in general? Nah.
• anthk 5y ago
  Spaniard here. What the banks here are doing with the elderly people it's outrageous, they are suggesting technologically handicapped people to manage their savings either over a smartphone or via internet while making in-person schedules very unsupportive. Spaniard HN users can relate, for sure. The pandemics made that much worse for oldies.
• indymike 5y ago
  Blackholes are terrible, and they become even worse based on the value being provided by the service. It's terrible when you have thousands or even millions in income from an app and it is removed from the app sotre and you are blackholed. It's terrible when someone loses their photos, documents and emails, with no recourse. For personal data (like emails, photos and documents), it should be required that a service has to let you get your data back. That should be a right, even if the service is free. Likewise, there should always be a mechanical identity process for personal accounts that would allow someone to retrieve control of their account regardless (even if there is a small fee here, that is ok) of control of things like phone numbers and email boxes? Why? Because emails and phone numbers are not really valid id's, they are just something with a reasonable expectation that the user is connected to at the time they register.
• dusted 5y ago
  * Right to speak with a human who has the authority to actually make changes in whatever system you're pinched in.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• PhileinSophia 5y ago
• bobro 5y ago
  Putting out some simple numbers: Let’s say you have a million users and once a month, 1% of them need to speak with a human for 15 minutes. That’s 30k hours of support per year, so like 15 full time employees just to be on the phone.
  • mdrzn 5y ago
    If a company has a million active users, they can afford 15 full time employees just to do customer support.
• jdavis703 5y ago
  In the US you have this right. It’s called small claims court. You need to write the corporation a demand letter. If they don’t respond to your demands within the deadline you can begin legal proceedings. You don’t even need a lawyer. You just need to research the relevant laws in your jurisdiction and the procedures of your local small claims court.
• GistNoesis 5y ago
  What about butler/concierge services that you pay to act as an intermediary to handle the small problems ? Or maybe even some personal assistant if you have more money (or Siri if you are poor). Companies often have solutions in search for problems, wouldn't it be a great way for them to get high-quality input to provide new services while filtering the miscommunications. Adding this intermediary could help reduce the friction to switch from an actor that refuses to do customer support or refuse to play the game, and would help shift the balance of power back to the consumer. Otherwise there is also the open-source/diy solution and reducing your dependencies on other, but until they have enough funding to be able to provide any services, there will always be some missing services.
• annoyingnoob 5y ago
  I'm not sure what the right answer is here. I've had multiple experiences where the customer service human I could talk to had only the same ability I had myself on the web site. "We've opened a ticket and someone will respond when your ticket pops out of the queue." You also want the humans you talk with to be empowered to actually help you.
• tomblomfield 5y ago
  You should direct your custom towards companies with high-touch human customer service. And you should expect to pay substantially more.
• giantg2 5y ago
  I agree that speaking with a human should be required to be supported. On the other hand, I can't get a straight answer from my medical/prescription insurances or HR, and I deal with them largely by phone. Massive incompetence and poorly defined business processes can still be an issue if you get a human on the phone. Just pointing out that getting a human isn't a replacement for poor business processes that is usually the root cause of the call.
• agilob 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_Don%27t_Argue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_Don%27t_Argue
• oxplot 5y ago
  Did you not know that the said companies didn't have dedicated support staff? Was this a surprise to you? Did they make you believe they had people you could call and talk to? If you knew and still chose to do business with them, that's on you. If they misled you, then sorry to hear that and you should take your business elsewhere and leave them thumbs down in as many places as you can. There are countless businesses without dedicated phone support that provide immense value, but can only do so in an environment where linearly scaling costs aren't forced on them. Phone support is such a cost. If such a requirement is mandated, a large portion of legitimately useful businesses will vanish and it'll be a net negative for everybody.
• tzs 5y ago
  I'd like to see something similar but for email. I see too many companies that only provide phone and/or text chat for support. I want to be able to email a detailed description of my issue, with more detail than can reasonably be done by phone, and then proceed from there. Also, I'd like to see a requirement that if the company is over some certain size and have multiple units or departments with separate support systems they have a support email address that you can mail to where someone will read your mail and determine which unit or department's support to forward it to.
• LinuxBender 5y ago
  I agree with this. There are websites that list all the undocumented ways to reach a human for many companies and government organizations but even that can become exhausting and daunting. Those sites may have trouble staying current. Even if one gets past the phone trees there are the issues of under-staffing. The current wait time for the CA FTB is 4 hours. My cell coverage is not good enough to stay on hold for that long. My personal solution while a bit heavy handed was to move from one of the most populated states to one of the least populated states. There are drawbacks but most of the time when I call a number I reach a real person and no phone tree. Of the two phone trees I came across I was able to reach a real person within seconds. Oh and not just a real person but a real friendly, polite and respectful person. I still occasionally run into an org that is understaffed but they are always willing to go out of their way for someone that is polite to them. This solution is probably not for everyone.
• nvarsj 5y ago
  I literally just spent an hour trying to cancel my internet service, 90% of this time was spent interacting with an automated whatsapp bot (Virgin Media for anyone wondering). Answering the same question, slightly rephrased, multiple times each in some insane dark patterns to get me to not cancel. This is basically what happens when consumer rights have completely eroded.
• kilroy123 5y ago
  Same here! I was a paying customer as well. My account was killed suddenly. I reached out to ask what was going on. Never heard back. Never got a refund. They didn't stop the subscription, of course. It's just unreal.
• LesserEvil665 5y ago
  It doesn't help much when the human on the other line is very much silo'd regarding what information they can discuss with you.
• dreadlordbone 5y ago
  One of the reasons I love WPEngine so very much is that everytime I use their chat support there's a person at the end with someone knowledgeable and who has the tools to help fix my problem. I wonder if focusing via chat support but with live, smart humans is more scalable and productive.
• unsupp0rted 5y ago
  This would not help, since humans are trained to respond like robots. They vaguely understand your support request and then copy-paste a knowledge base support blog post at you. Even by phone, they do this exact same thing. At least my bank does, until you get escalated to a supervisor, who is permitted to go off-script for a minute. You explain you've read the support info and it doesn't apply to your case, at which time they're trained to say "I am so sorry, but that is all the support I am able to provide at this time". I had this exact experience with Tinder, when I tried to renew my grandfathered Platinum subscription (and ensure it auto-renews) a few days before it expired and got lost forever. They wouldn't let me "add a card" or "manage my payments", so I contacted support, who told me I should go to "manage my payments" to "add a card". After tons of back and forth, Tinder went from having an eager Platinum (re)subscriber to somebody who angrily deleted their account. All because their support staff are essentially robots pretending to be humans (they eat, poop and go home to their families, but they're still robots while they're working for Tinder). I actually wrote a blog post with screenshots. https://papyrus.so/@support/how-tinder-support-turned-me-from-an-eager-tinder-platinum-renewal-into-an-angry-deleted-account https://papyrus.so/@support/how-tinder-support-turned-me-fro...
  • smsm42 5y ago
    The worst here is that there is no single person on this Earth - except you - that cares about this outcome and would do something to fix it. Support does not care - their job is to copy-paste answers from script. Finance does not care - they have millions of clients, it's much easier to let one go than to start making exceptions. Software devs don't care - they have hundreds of bugs, what's one more? They are paid the same anyway. It's big enough that the value of single subscriber - even with the most expensive plan - is indistinguishable from zero. So you get your worth of service - zero.
    • unsupp0rted 5y ago
      The only time it matters is if you get enough traction on social media. That's when the cost of losing you ($100, i.e. a number approaching $0) gets multiplied by the millions in revenue they might lose from bad publicity.
• lyptt 5y ago
  I had an issue yesterday where Comcast forced me to go through their chatbot before I could speak to a human. That drove me crazy, because what I wanted to do I couldn't do on their website at all. There needs to be some kind of escape hatch where you can get through to a real person. Companies that do stuff like this just make me want to stop dealing with them altogether.
• deleted 5y ago
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• pimterry 5y ago
  In the EU & UK at least, for many cases this already exists: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr. > the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her. In any case where that applies, the organization must include safeguards, including (as a minimum) the right to obtain human intervention, to express their point of view, and to contest the automated decision. This applies only to legal or significant decisions (more details & examples here: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/automated-decision-making-and-profiling/what-does-the-uk-gdpr-say-about-automated-decision-making-and-profiling/#id3 https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...) which means anything that could substantially affect your financial circumstances, health, reputation, employment opportunities, etc, or anything that affects your legal status or legal rights.
• notriddle 5y ago
  > Part of me thinks (perhaps naively) if I had the ability to speak with a real person over the phone, we could sort this out instead of constant emails or creating tickets that go into a black hole. Honestly, yes, I do think you’re being naive. Ask me about the time I tried to switch from a rented modem to one we own on COX phone support. They bounced me around through separate departments which gave contradicting information about how their own stuff worked, and when I finally gave up and just dumped them for a different ISP, tried to talk us into keeping them by offering a limited time offer for a cheaper price at half the speed (as if). Or about trying to get payment stuff worked out with my bank. The most pleasant experience I’ve ever had with them on the phone is debit card activation and the occasional fraud prevention notice. Neither of which involve humans. In short, if they need forced to offer phone support, it will suck. It’ll just be a poor sap sending the email for you anyway.
• blisterpeanuts 5y ago
  As AI and human-like synthetic voice tech improve, the whole "speak with a human" thing becomes more nuanced. In ten years or so, we might be saying "I'd like to speak with an irritable, marginally competent call center employee in South America or south Asia" in order to get an actual, identifiable human. The rest of the time, you'll get this pleasant, cheerful generated voice that pretty much understands your questions and answers competently and patiently. For some reason, this scares the daylights out of me.
• wutbrodo 5y ago
  The bar for "rights" isn't "I wish this was more common". Should there be a right to avocado on your burger, or a fifteen-second response time from waiters, or boiling-water taps in every home? Does it sound ridiculous to push those costs into prices for things that are unnecessary? What makes phone support so different?
  • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    Agreed. Rephrase this “rights are never anything someone should be forced to provide”. Rights are naturally given and cannot be taken away. You have the right to life and education and defense. no one can take those things from, but no one else to provide them either. because that would be infringing on their rights. Do I think it would be nice for companies to provide human assistance? Yes of course. But I could never support any policy that forced the company to do that. much less would I ever call it a “right”.
    • wutbrodo 5y ago
      I'm making a much narrower point, which is compatible with those who believe in positive rights. But "human support" is closer to "a right to a free taco a day" than it is to "a right to healthcare".
• kingcharles 5y ago
  I have to agree. When I got dead-ended on a ticket with my bank (Square/Block) I looked up numbers for their directors and called them. One seemed very empathetic and helpful. Then I got an email saying my bank account was terminated for contacting their staff outside the support system. LOL.
• mrfusion 5y ago
  On the flip side, put common operations on your website and let customers do it themselves. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to call a company and the employee easily clicks a button to do what I needed. Why not have that button on your website? (You could even set up a queue to have employees approve the action in the background if it’s a risky action.)
• carapace 5y ago
  > Voting with our dollars doesn't work when these companies are so integrated with our lives. Do you actually think that forming a political bloc and pressuring these companies with (more) regulation is easier than just disentangling them from your life? It seems like so much more work to me. Especially since there are plenty of companies that are eager to take your money and give you great service, e.g.:I pay for sr.ht for dev support and ddevault is literally an IRC comment away. I pay for Podia for a web store and when I wanted a different font on my (sub-)site they implemented it an hour. I pay for Tarsnap for encrypted backups and cperciva's customer support is stellar. I can't say enough about how good my experience with Tarsnap has been. I'm not against (or for) regulation on principle, but it seems to me that you're proposing to work hard, unpaid, to improve these companies, "against their will" as it were, through an indirect and unreliable method, rather than switching to a company that's already great.
• dsr_ 5y ago
  You'll need to get legislation passed, then. When a market decides something isn't worth providing, but the public good needs it, legislation is the answer.
• vivegi 5y ago
  My two cents. Why does this have to be a regulated force-fit? Companies can choose to offer a basic support tier (eg: kb forums, email) and a higher paid support tier or could bundle this as part of their pricing tiers. I don't see why this needs to be a customer right to be able to speak to a human when a customer has explicitly exercised the choice of a low touch support option at the point of purchase. Forcing this just makes it more expensive for everyone.
• Maxburn 5y ago
  You don't have the right to tell others how to run their business. You do have the right to take your business elsewhere. In a free market people vote with their wallet and there's plenty out there that accept the zero support model with a lower price, whether they understand what they are getting or not. That's assuming they even bother to ask about support options up front.
  • ip26 5y ago
    Not to mention, this also makes me think of (paraphrasing) you have a right to free speech, but that doesn't mean others are obligated to provide you an audience
  • vicarrion 5y ago
    In my case there wasn't. I had a fraudulent account opened in my name at Bank of America and it took over 5 hours of talking to different people, going into a local branch, and waiting on hold to get to someone that could actually do something about it.
  • pempem 5y ago
    I'm not sure I understand this comment. We do have the right to tell others how to run their businesses. Get food poisoning at a restaurant (btw, also a low margin business) there's protocol. Get in a taxi and it goes somewhere it shouldn't? protocol. Hotel spying on you? or maybe not having fire safety rules? or not having running water? We regulate where businesses go, how they operate, how big they can get and plenty more. Nearly every single limitation was paid for in misery, lost funds, or in blood.
    • drstewart 5y ago
      Exactly, this is why we need Comcast to have a monopoly in municipal broadband or a limited number of taxi medallions in cities. To prevent bloodshed.
      • pempem 5y ago
        Sure, I heard the sarcasm and agree. We have rules, they aren't well implemented. My response was to a comment that indicated there should be none. Additionally, here are the cases where taxis, unregulated, led to bloodshed. The policy is old but the fact that it was in response to violence is a repeating pattern: 1. Medallions introduced: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/11/nyregion/medallion-limits-stem-from-the-30-s.html https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/11/nyregion/medallion-limits...
• ilamont 5y ago
  There needs to be a technology bill of rights, not just for people dealing with Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, but also the myriad other technology operators which can disrupt our lives in an instant with some poorly programmed process or unanticipated edge case. Ultimately, the OP or my non-tech savvy employee or my mother should be able to get real answers and/or help from a human being when wronged by Google, a telco, or the local bank.
• ghastmaster 5y ago
  Forcing all businesses to maintain a human for the potential of interaction would be extremely expensive for them and the costs for almost every service would increase. A lot of companies would probably just hire one person and make a labyrinthine phone tree to get to that one person. Other companies would outsource it to ruby, take your info, and simply not respond. If you want to talk to a human, file a claim in small claims court. If your problem is not big enough to file, stop using the service and look for a company that will support your needs. Don't make me pay for your poor choice.
• kkfx 5y ago
  I support a more broad approach: a public body whose inside will be jailed for life if discovered taking payments from third parties, with enough tech to appear generic Citizens to the corporate surveillance, with funds to buy things regularly, and get donated to poor thereafter. If they found anti-user practice they have sanctioning power in the order of % of revenues, little the first time, hard the second, claiming personal executives responsibility a third breach. They not only check products but also services, software and hybrid stuff. Selling crap is subject to little sanctions, like if you sell thing that are clearly designed to break in very little time, you sell things to elicit more money forcing mandatory services etc you'll pay so much that's simply illogical trying to. Imposing just a phone number and a reachable human on the company side I fear is far from sufficient: these days is common arrive to a humans, but a powerless one, who can just open or "bump" a ticket. Again simple laws who take into account only one side fail for easy corruption, that's why a public and transparent, forced to be independent and only able to operate to a certain extent actor is needed. Most people is honest in a society because that's the best evolution behavior but most if far from all, so rules must be crafted on humans defects making bad behaviors disadvantageous from all side possible. It's hard, of course, but not impossible, and a real Democracy can control and block dangerous derives quick enough.
• ilaksh 5y ago
  This post reminds me of an interesting short film on HBO now called "Please Hold".
  • wyldfire 5y ago
    Just watched this the other day, it was interesting, I agree. It's a dystopian tale of automatons used for the criminal justice system.
• stonemetal12 5y ago
  >be told conflicting things by different people via email What makes you think phone support would be any different? I have been told different things by different people on the phone, do we demand in person support? What makes you think even in person support wouldn't lie to your face to get you out the door? The problem is quality not formfactor. As long as people buy the cheapest they can support will always be cut to reduce costs. I just wish there was more pay per incident support that actually got you world class support and was cheap enough to be worth it.
• kostyal 5y ago
  Scaling a customer support organisation is difficult. You need to find people to do a low-status job with unpredictable hours, in a tight labour market. Also, you probably don't just want to speak to any human. You probably want to speak to an intelligent, skilled human who can fix your problems. That pushes cost up further. If great support is a priority to you, I recommend being an early adopter of startup products. These companies get their edge from being customer-focused and will be happy to speak to you for whatever reason. Of course, there are tradeoffs to that approach too. As customers, we want it all: we want cheap products that add tons of value to our lives and never break. In reality it's necessary to make some tradeoffs
• fourseventy 5y ago
  There is so much anti-business rhetoric on this site lately. A regulation like this would severely hamper peoples ability to start and profitably run a business. My guess is that OP has never run a startup.
• andjd 5y ago
  "Right to speak to a human" seems tangental to the right you're actually asking for. It is just as possible to have a that human bound by a rigid set of policies that makes them as frustrating or useless as getting automated or slow emails or interacting with a chatbot. Any business that has a call center of any scale already does this, especially if they are at all adversarial to their customers. (think cable companies) What it sounds like you're asking for is that you can talk to a human, explain your edge case, and get an exception to their general policy on the spot. That is much harder to regulate. If the government says there must be a "talk to a human" button, if the company doesn't want to have it, they will train these humans to just say no to everything. Nobody benefits from this arrangement.
• robcohen 5y ago
  There's really no need for this. The solution is simple, separate the cost of the product from the cost of support. You need help with a product? ok, pay for it. Charge users for the cost of the employee they want to talk to. There are an unbelievable amount of users that have zero problem solving ability and refuse to attempt anything without a human telling them what to do. I have zero desire to have the price I'm paying increase to pay for the support for these idiots. I also don't like having to go through a byzantine path of phone options to get someone when I have a legitimate problem. Solve this easily by aligning incentives, users want support -- pay for it.
  • JonChesterfield 5y ago
    And when the support needed is because the vendor has broken their product? E.g. they've charged you multiple times for the same event, or they're constantly sending incoherent contradictory letters to your door?
  • em-bee 5y ago
    this is not a support issue, but a warranty issue. users being locked out of their accounts is not a lack of problem solving ability of that user. the product is broken, and the company needs to fix that. customers need the ability to reach a person that is able to assess whether the issue is a warranty issue or a support issue. if it is a support issue then by all means send them to paid support. but if the issue is the company's fault they better fix it without charge.
• mikequinlan 5y ago
  I think that paying customers should have a right to speak with a human.
• black_13 5y ago
• itintheory 5y ago
  I'm in exactly this situation. Someone signed up for a credit bureau service (Experian) with my information (e-mail address at least, though who knows?) and I can't reset the password. Attempts to reset the password are directed to call the customer service number but there's no way to reset the password through the automated system, and apparently no way to reach a person. I've spent hours trying to gain access to this account which is potentially leaking my personal information to a malicious third party, but to no avail.
• Khelavaster 5y ago
  You need an education on how to bring these companies to court. You DO have a right to speak with a human on court, or else there will be a default judgment in your favor.
• radu_floricica 5y ago
  I own a small SaaS. If such legislation passed, I'd instantly close it to small customers and set a much higher minimum subscription. Dealing with small clients is almost charity anyways.
• karaterobot 5y ago
  > Voting with our dollars doesn't work when these companies are so integrated with our lives. I don't think I agree with this. I don't know what product you're referring to, but thinking back to other times I've heard people say this, it's been for things like a streaming service, or a credit card, or a phone. These things are conveniences that can be replaced, and a better way to describe our relationships to them is "it would be a small to moderate inconvenience to find an alternative or do without them, and I don't want to do that". But I do feel strongly that, if we can't make good, informed decisions as consumers in a more or less free market, we're headed in a bad direction. Either we'll just keep buying things from whatever malevolent company has the market cornered, or we'll regulate so strongly that we have the choice made for us by a committee somewhere. The best alternative is that we do research before buying things, support good products, and starve the companies who make bad ones.
• minerva23 5y ago
  Humans won’t guarantee better results. It’s easy to get a human at Verizon, but due to mismanagement, you’ll get transferred from dept to dept. I spent about 20 hours with Verizon humans to get a bug costing me money sorted out (and I still need to follow up with them).
• effnorwood 5y ago
• robertlagrant 5y ago
  This doesn't need to be a right (of which there are necessarily vanishingly few). It just needs to be a choice. If you pay more, you will get better service.
• hexmiles 5y ago
  As someone what worked in the Customer service/care industry, my two cent: Honestly the ability to talk to a human will not solve much if anything, most problem could be solved by extremely automatic system, not even ticket system are really needed. The main problem is the lack of the ABILITY of solve a problem. A very simple example: one common problem that user have is not having access to some kind of documentation, like bills, contract, recepits etc... now this is very simple problem to solve, except that as operator i didnt have access to the system to recover this kind of documentation! So, i could not help them, keep in mind that i could see the documentation just we did not have the ability to send it to the customer. I wasn't even a security problem since we could verify the identity of the costumer (to the point that we could make administrative changes to their contract) simply the software did not have the button "Send copy to customer". This is just a very simple example, but i could write here an entire book of situation like that. Most of the time i know how to solve a problem but i can't. NOW, how we solve this? From my point of view we need two thing, the first one is more money put into the customer service/care department, right now is a race to the bottom to a unsustainable point. But also we need to rethink HOW we handle support from the ground up, right now is often a complete separate department, often outsourced, that cannot in any way "talk" to the rest of the company!! This make solving problems often impossible, since we don't have an "API"(way) to solve a specific problem, (i asked for MONTHS... to have the ability to see some configurations of customer account, i could already see every form of personal information, including numbers and the european-equivalent of a social security number, but not the language selected for the UI) the support functions need to be bake-in into the product from the initial design, not as an afterthought. Until we change how we think about support functionality and consider the support agent job with the same "respect" (i'm not sure this is the right word) as the one of an engineer the ability to talk with a human will not help you. edit: Also the number of times i was talked-down from the Engineering department that blame everything on the "stupid-user" is infuriating!! Sometimes user make mistake, YOUR software/service NEED to be able to handle that! edit: grammar
• throwbigdata 5y ago
  Your desire to speak with a human is nothing that should be right. You should always be able to send certified mail for these conversations. If you’re not happy with the service you are getting you should be able to take your business elsewhere. You can and should be able to write this into a contract if they want agree to it take your business elsewhere. It is immoral to suggest that the company is obligated to have a human on standby to talk to you whenever you define a desirable need.
• dllthomas 5y ago
  Definitely naive. Would a good customer service department get your problem solved quickly? Certainly! Is requiring a customer service department at a company that doesn't want one going to result in them implementing a good customer service department? Not on your life. At least with email you have a paper trail...
• irvingprime 5y ago
  Yes. We should push companies to have better customer service, including the ability to have a human look into things when needed. But don't think of it as a "right." So many humans are stupid, uncaring or incompetent that it's equally possible to demand the right to speak (interact) with a computer.
• newscracker 5y ago
  The issues with customer service have been terrible for a very long time. The introduction of phone IVR menus that have labyrinths to prevent the caller from reaching a real person is also somewhat common with many companies. Then come chatbots, which are universally stupid, totally useless, and a big waste of time (anytime I see a company with a chatbot I think that a CTO doesn't exist or is clueless or just got a nice commission from buying it from a vendor). There are sites that list phone numbers of companies and provide information on if or how one can reach a human. I'm not associated with this company in any way, but I've heard of it a long time ago and it's still around: https://gethuman.com https://gethuman.com . I'm sure there are other services that help with shortcuts on reaching a person who can help. In the worst case, do a "Tell HN" here with the name of the company and you'd more likely get a real human helping you out! :|
• spyc 5y ago
  My personal worst hit list in this space: - Companies that will not even listen to your (serious) bug reports if you don't have an account with them. Looking at you suddenlink.net. Failed big time, gave up. - Voice robots that do not understand users, despite being native speakers - Voice robots that do not understand non-native speakers
• billpg 5y ago
  "This is Bill. His job is answer the phone, type in to the computer what people say to him and read back to them what the computer says in response. He is not permitted to exercise any initiative and he's been told in no uncertain terms that he'll be fired if he tries."
• kansface 5y ago
  Lets start with the federal government! I recently had the experience of the IRS sending me progressively angrier letters via an obviously automated process claiming I didn't pay taxes last year. As it turns out, they had record of receiving the payment in the exact dollar amount, and had record of us filing in the exact dollar amount, but they did not apply the payment to the debt in question. We wrote several letters (which we know they received) and tried calling, but its not possible for citizens to actually talk to a human, via any channel, even when the IRS is imminently threatening to put a lien on your house! Of course, the IRS actually staffs a number specifically for attorneys! It cost us $980 to pay an attorney to call the number, conspicuously ~$20 shy of the retainer to convince the IRS to move the bits from one row to another. Naturally, we did not find that out until we had paid the retainer! TLDR: send payments to the IRS under the primary's SSN (first listed) when filing jointly
• ozim 5y ago
  I don't think ability to speak to a person over the phone is enough. You need ability to speak to a person who is knowledgeable and can do something about inquiry.
• PhileasNietzche 5y ago
• phendrenad2 5y ago
  This won't help. Companies will just make you wait 3 hours on the line before talking to a human, and then the human you get won't speak your language. I suggest the often-underestimated art of "voting with your wallet"* and using a different service. * - Or in today's online ad-funded world, "voting with your eyeballs"
• cupcake-unicorn 5y ago
  It shouldn't have to be this way but you can get pretty far using consumer advocacy hacks. Find out the CEO/board member/VP of customer service's name through the company page/linkedin and from there it's usually easy to guess an email address. I've been able to get an actual human to call me from companies that you wouldn't associate with this like Ebay, Google, and Mint.com/inuit. I've used it also with my insurance company and that awful shipping company that NewEgg uses when a laptop was stolen. I was able to talk to humans there but it didn't come to anything. I've also used it with bank issues, you can Google executive customer service plus your bank. The service was like night and day after this method. There can be discomfort in doing this because it feels intrusive but companies do deserve it if they don't offer consumers rights like this. Once you get past the discomfort it's so empowering. If you're with someone unhelpful on the phone you can ALWAYS hang up. That includes 911. You can set a limit for yourself, that you'll try the "normal" customer service route 1-2 times before escalating it but if you reach that wall with what the company is giving you do not feel bad for using the consumer advocacy strategies.
• smsm42 5y ago
  They are way, way ahead of you. Just in the recent months I've encountered the following models: 1. You can speak to a real person, but you'd need to navigate a phone tree in an exactly right way, many levels deep, and any wrong step would lead you to an automatic answer and disconnect. The exact options you need to press change frequently and are only partially supported by the voice prompts. 2. There's an option to speak to a person, but the call mysteriously drops each time you try to use it. Of course, to report the problem, you'd need to speak to some person there... you see how it works? 3. There's an option to speak to a person, but every time you try, they are on a meeting, or speaking to somebody else, or temporarily left their office, so you can leave the message. If you guessed you'd never get a followup, you're a smart person. 4. You can speak to a real person, but unfortunately not today, because we have exceptionally high call volume today. Try maybe tomorrow. Got this one from the IRS, for example. Guess what happens tomorrow. 5. You can speak to a real person. No, really. No kidding. Unfortunately, this person has no access to anything but filling up a request form that is filed into the internal tracking system. You do not have access to this system, and neither does the real person you're speaking to, except for filing requests. You don't know who, if ever, will be handling the problem, when it happens - the real person helpfully assures you it'll happen as soon as possible - and there would be no status update or feedback whatsoever. 6. You can speak to a real person, but this person is given a script - having things akin to "are you sure you computer is turned on?", "please restart your computer and see if it happens again", etc. - and will not deviate from it, and beyond that you're confidently told the problem is surely elsewhere and there's no way they can help you. There's no non-scripted persons to talk to. 7. You can speak to a real person, but your issue appears to be a bit complicated, so the real person will have to consult with the other people in the office and give you a call back tomorrow with the resolution. The call never happens. Next time you call you speak to a different person, which has no idea what happened before, so you have to repeat everything from scratch. There's no way to speak to a person you spoke before. Guess the outcome. If you want to be cruel, add to it poor line quality (I don't know how they achieve it, but I've never had worse call quality than on support calls), random call drops and support personnel with marginal command of spoken English. But that's just an icing on top.
• yoav 5y ago
  As an introvert I’d like the opposite. The right to not have to deal with a person. I usually know exactly what I want, eg: update my address, but most places force you to have to call, wait on the line, and then engage in a ridiculous game of sounding out numbers and names and hearing back if they heard it right, then having to do it all again when you check the next day and they got it wrong. Dealing with real people is the least efficient way of getting anything done.
• faangiq 5y ago
  Yes this would also help solve some of the tech displacement problem. But in clown world if this ever happened it would just be the subject of corporate capture.
• hackerfromthefu 5y ago
  Clearly companies are en masse externalizing the costs of support onto users, and plainly not supporting users in fixing real problems with systems that are now required to live in society. It's at the stage where it's breaking our well functioning civil society and turning the first world into a third world kafkaesque dystopia. I believe this is an economic race to the bottom and regulation is the answer to fixing it. Here's the basis of an idea for how to fix the power dynamics so the market works properly 1) an ombusdman that can fine companies for user abuse of wasting user time, and redistribute the fine to the users 2) regulations of how long a company can on average keep users on hold, such as no more than 10 minutes to speak to a human, otherwise the speak to a human option is useless as the company makes it take longer than the median user can afford 3) regulations of threshold of acceptable customer complaints against a company, otherwise the company will make the service operators unable to actually fix anything as you note 4) a process with the ombusdman where when the number of complaints exceeds a threshold the company is fined and the fine distributed amongst the complaining users 5) some sanity check here to prevent user abuse, such as checking the average wait times, and confirming the customer service actually never fixes issues from a number of tests. The tests could be made in collaboration with a subset complaining customers.
• bufferoverflow 5y ago
  I disagree. As far as possible new rights go, this would be pretty low on my scale. Right to (somewhat) clean water - sure. Right to be safe in a prison - probably, maybe. You're asking for a universal requirement for all corporations to provide human call centers. That's pretty radical.
• fattless 5y ago
  ISPs are a nightmare. I dread calling Comcast for any reason Bad automated system and often less than helpful employees, all while I’m already frustrated over my internet.
• silexia 5y ago
  I had to call the Washington State Department of Revenue (government office) yesterday. I DID speak to a human, but the human had no power to actually help. In my opinion, it is far worse when government has bad service than when a private business has bad service because I have no choice to switch. If I don't pay the Department of Revenue, they have the power to imprison me and steal my belongings. If I don't pay Google, then I just have my service cancelled. Tldr; we need to solve the problem of bad service in government more urgently than bad service in big tech.
• rjmunro 5y ago
  There is one advantage of no customer support for you as a customer that I haven't seen mentioned. If there is no customer support, there is no one for a fraudster to call and socially engineer, and less people with access to the databases who can easily be bribed. I've seen people cite this as an advantage of using Gmail, for example. I don't think this outweighs the fact that you can't contact anyone in most cases, though.
• adidahiya 5y ago
  Reminds me of one of the Oscar nominated live action short films this year, "Please Hold". It takes this dystopian concept to the extreme, where a man is subjected to an automated justice system and has very little rights to speak with humans in the process. Not my favorite of the nominations, but an interesting watch: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11383280/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11383280/