4 ms·

A friend of mine worked for one of those companies that automates company phone calls, where you talk to a robot voice and select numbers on the keypad. They sa

by bArray 4y ago

A friend of mine worked for one of those companies that automates company phone calls, where you talk to a robot voice and select numbers on the keypad. They said that the company did research into customer satisfaction, and found this is achieved by minimizing the number of key presses to reach a human. They advise(d) all of their customers new and old, gave them templates for their customer service process, and _all_ of them (big names) chose to make speaking to a human as difficult as possible. They then of course complained that customers were having a negative interaction with the system, but refused to make it easier to speak to a human. This seems to be the way things are going now - and for this reason I favour smaller, local companies and people over larger services, even if their offerings are not as good and the prices higher. I know that I can at any time contact these people and they will try to help me. That's worth a lot.

asoneth 4y ago
I've worked on IVR systems and everyone involved was already acutely aware that most customers prefer speaking to a human as quickly as possible. The problem is that call center time is crazy expensive, especialy competent call center reps who can actually solve problems. So businesses have a choice: charge a premium to cover support costs or minimize their call center costs and compete on price. (Or somewhere in between.) Personally I like working for and dealing with companies that go the former route even if things cost more. But for the companies that choose to be price competitive it's not necessarily a bad business decision to make your most demanding and expensive customers unhappy and send them to your competitors.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  Yeah broadly speaking there are two classes of customer: 1) ones who want to talk to a human as soon as something goes wrong 2) ones who try literally everything possible to avoid talking to a human, and only reach out when there is absolutely no programmatic exit from whatever weird edge case they are in If you make the experience good for (2), you spend an enormous amount of money on (1). If you cut down on the wasted money for (1) (ie, the people whom automated phone trees actually help), you make life miserable for (2). There's no automatic way to differentiate the two types... yet. But I can dream.
  - supertrope 4y ago
    Before I permanently cancelled cable TV in 2009 I remember the TV remote had instructions printed on the back for first line troubleshooting. It said make sure your TV and the cable box have power cables plugged in, and that the TV is set to the right input. That was probably their #1 phone call.
  - asoneth 4y ago
    I think more companies will start charging for human support and troubleshooting in order to incentivize customers to stick with the IVR phone tree unless they really need a human. That could be a subscription, warranty, price per call minute, or something else. (And if they don't charge they'll make you pay with your time by keeping you on hold.) That would allow people who know they need a human to just choose it up front, but it will mean paying more.
  - logicalmonster 4y ago
    I think yours is a very key point. People are not all nice: they're either easy or difficult to work with. Having done some customer support for various businesses, many customers (even the ones experiencing legitimate problems that aren't their fault) are reasonably polite, don't waste time asking pointless questions that can easily be answered with 30 seconds of looking at our site, and are relatively pleasant to serve. It's a handful of customers that have contributed the majority of pointless customer service headaches. > They call and ask the most trivial questions that are available right on the homepage without even trying to get the info themselves. > They call us from a loud area and complain vigorously when we can't hear them or they can't hear us. > They want to talk about their life and tell us stories from their day. In some cases, I sympathize if they're older or something that they want to have a couple of minutes of smalltalk, but there's younger people who think nothing of trying to occupy half an hour or more of a business's time for their own ego and pleasure. > They outright lie about things that happen to try and get free stuff. > They threaten with chargebacks to try and get free stuff (especially when they namedrop that they purchased on an American Express card). > You'd be surprised how many people contact businesses they never even purchased from, confusing us for some other company they used, and being irate that we never delivered their goods and occupy a lot of our time providing incomplete information trying to look up their account. Better UX and business processes can help to a point, but certain people are incompetent and/or think they're the center of the world and will be displeased almost no matter how well you serve them. To some extent, I understand why in some cases mega-corporations try and make it confusing and friction-filled to contact them. If they actually did offer good support to everybody the way most of us are adult enough to handle, they'd drown under the weight of dealing with the confused morons and difficult people.
- bArray 4y ago
  I don't disagree there is a cost trade-off. I still can't help but feel there should be a solution. Of course as tech people we think "AI". I know there has been some work on chat bots to "help" with this, but they end up in infinite loops when the topic become too complex. Still I think this is a little better than listening to queue music in the hope you get through to somebody. When it comes to human time, cost per hour is fixed, a human can only process so many calls an hour and decision making is mentally taxing. I don't think the answer comes from trying to make these people more productive. You can look for "cheaper humans", i.e. non-local labour, but that comes with other issues. Language barriers, working hours, etc. There's just no nice ways out of this mess.
  - asoneth 4y ago
    I think in the medium-term timeframe AI will handle talking with the customer as the first tier of interaction to collect the basic details of the problem and provide initial troubleshooting steps -- the kind of stuff where you can tell a rep is reading off a script. Then a more skilled human support rep will be on hand for cases where escalation is necessary. I think it'll be generations before the second tier is replaced by AI.

by bArray 4y ago

asoneth 4y ago

I've worked on IVR systems and everyone involved was already acutely aware that most customers prefer speaking to a human as quickly as possible. The problem is that call center time is crazy expensive, especialy competent call center reps who can actually solve problems. So businesses have a choice: charge a premium to cover support costs or minimize their call center costs and compete on price. (Or somewhere in between.) Personally I like working for and dealing with companies that go the former route even if things cost more. But for the companies that choose to be price competitive it's not necessarily a bad business decision to make your most demanding and expensive customers unhappy and send them to your competitors.

bpodgursky 4y ago
Yeah broadly speaking there are two classes of customer: 1) ones who want to talk to a human as soon as something goes wrong 2) ones who try literally everything possible to avoid talking to a human, and only reach out when there is absolutely no programmatic exit from whatever weird edge case they are in If you make the experience good for (2), you spend an enormous amount of money on (1). If you cut down on the wasted money for (1) (ie, the people whom automated phone trees actually help), you make life miserable for (2). There's no automatic way to differentiate the two types... yet. But I can dream.
- supertrope 4y ago
  Before I permanently cancelled cable TV in 2009 I remember the TV remote had instructions printed on the back for first line troubleshooting. It said make sure your TV and the cable box have power cables plugged in, and that the TV is set to the right input. That was probably their #1 phone call.
- asoneth 4y ago
  I think more companies will start charging for human support and troubleshooting in order to incentivize customers to stick with the IVR phone tree unless they really need a human. That could be a subscription, warranty, price per call minute, or something else. (And if they don't charge they'll make you pay with your time by keeping you on hold.) That would allow people who know they need a human to just choose it up front, but it will mean paying more.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  I think yours is a very key point. People are not all nice: they're either easy or difficult to work with. Having done some customer support for various businesses, many customers (even the ones experiencing legitimate problems that aren't their fault) are reasonably polite, don't waste time asking pointless questions that can easily be answered with 30 seconds of looking at our site, and are relatively pleasant to serve. It's a handful of customers that have contributed the majority of pointless customer service headaches. > They call and ask the most trivial questions that are available right on the homepage without even trying to get the info themselves. > They call us from a loud area and complain vigorously when we can't hear them or they can't hear us. > They want to talk about their life and tell us stories from their day. In some cases, I sympathize if they're older or something that they want to have a couple of minutes of smalltalk, but there's younger people who think nothing of trying to occupy half an hour or more of a business's time for their own ego and pleasure. > They outright lie about things that happen to try and get free stuff. > They threaten with chargebacks to try and get free stuff (especially when they namedrop that they purchased on an American Express card). > You'd be surprised how many people contact businesses they never even purchased from, confusing us for some other company they used, and being irate that we never delivered their goods and occupy a lot of our time providing incomplete information trying to look up their account. Better UX and business processes can help to a point, but certain people are incompetent and/or think they're the center of the world and will be displeased almost no matter how well you serve them. To some extent, I understand why in some cases mega-corporations try and make it confusing and friction-filled to contact them. If they actually did offer good support to everybody the way most of us are adult enough to handle, they'd drown under the weight of dealing with the confused morons and difficult people.
bArray 4y ago
I don't disagree there is a cost trade-off. I still can't help but feel there should be a solution. Of course as tech people we think "AI". I know there has been some work on chat bots to "help" with this, but they end up in infinite loops when the topic become too complex. Still I think this is a little better than listening to queue music in the hope you get through to somebody. When it comes to human time, cost per hour is fixed, a human can only process so many calls an hour and decision making is mentally taxing. I don't think the answer comes from trying to make these people more productive. You can look for "cheaper humans", i.e. non-local labour, but that comes with other issues. Language barriers, working hours, etc. There's just no nice ways out of this mess.
- asoneth 4y ago
  I think in the medium-term timeframe AI will handle talking with the customer as the first tier of interaction to collect the basic details of the problem and provide initial troubleshooting steps -- the kind of stuff where you can tell a rep is reading off a script. Then a more skilled human support rep will be on hand for cases where escalation is necessary. I think it'll be generations before the second tier is replaced by AI.