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Frontline support is oftentimes outsourced to firms like Arise Virtual Solutions [1] and workers typically have very little authority to escalate or fix more co

Frontline support is oftentimes outsourced to firms like Arise Virtual Solutions [1] and workers typically have very little authority to escalate or fix more complex issues. Social media people usually have channels to marketing and other teams and are explicitly instructed to escalate the "trending" cases [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-customer-service-reps-for-disney-and-airbnb-who-have-to-pay-to-talk-to-you https://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-customer-service...

marcosdumay 4y ago
Well, that's the explanation, and yeah, most people here knew it already. But every thing with that is wrong. That part in particular "workers typically have very little authority to escalate or fix more complex issues" is a plain and straight refusal to solve any problem the company may cause.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  What fascinates me is that companies obsessed with KPIs don't seem to independently count unfixed issues. Firewalling customer support behind another company or division is okay, but at least make sure you have a parallel feedback mechanism to know how they're doing! Social media support seems like the shitty version of this, but it's not rocket science to be able to regularly independently audit a random subset of issues by your CSR contractor. Internal audits have been standard practice in similar healthcare scenarios for decades.
  - TAForObvReasons 4y ago
    Customer support, at a company that is not obsessed with customer support and satisfaction, is typically "check the box". They have to provide some sort of support. It is seen as a cost center rather than as a face of the company. "number of unfixed issues" isn't relevant if you perceive customer support as perfunctory. As a result, for many companies obsessed with KPIs, the only KPI for customer support is "price". In that lens, they are optimizing. Obviously this situation is awful for customers.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      Granted in practice, but my point is that engineering should care. If you've got nice insulation from your customers, how do you even know what you built is working? I've seen too many bizarre real-world failure cases and complex systems-on-systems to trust that my metrics are capturing everything that breaks.

marcosdumay 4y ago

Well, that's the explanation, and yeah, most people here knew it already. But every thing with that is wrong. That part in particular "workers typically have very little authority to escalate or fix more complex issues" is a plain and straight refusal to solve any problem the company may cause.

ethbr0 4y ago
What fascinates me is that companies obsessed with KPIs don't seem to independently count unfixed issues. Firewalling customer support behind another company or division is okay, but at least make sure you have a parallel feedback mechanism to know how they're doing! Social media support seems like the shitty version of this, but it's not rocket science to be able to regularly independently audit a random subset of issues by your CSR contractor. Internal audits have been standard practice in similar healthcare scenarios for decades.
- TAForObvReasons 4y ago
  Customer support, at a company that is not obsessed with customer support and satisfaction, is typically "check the box". They have to provide some sort of support. It is seen as a cost center rather than as a face of the company. "number of unfixed issues" isn't relevant if you perceive customer support as perfunctory. As a result, for many companies obsessed with KPIs, the only KPI for customer support is "price". In that lens, they are optimizing. Obviously this situation is awful for customers.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Granted in practice, but my point is that engineering should care. If you've got nice insulation from your customers, how do you even know what you built is working? I've seen too many bizarre real-world failure cases and complex systems-on-systems to trust that my metrics are capturing everything that breaks.