8 ms·

Lots of "customer support" is literally just lying people to get them off the phone and hope they give up. It's pretty clear that's what this is. They have no i

Lots of "customer support" is literally just lying people to get them off the phone and hope they give up. It's pretty clear that's what this is. They have no incentive to help, so they dont.

Simulacra 3y ago
annnd "customer support" is usually someone working in a boiler room warehouse somewhere and paid low wages, so an even bigger incentive to not help.
bluedino 3y ago
It's not lying, it's ignorance or not having the time/resources/ability to find the correct or more helpful answer.
- ydlr 3y ago
  The individual service rep may not be lying, but the company is. They intentionally put someone in front of the customer without the correct information and without the ability to find it so that they will have no option but to follow a script without any regard to whether the words they are saying are true.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    The company is "lying" in the sense that their computer system has the wrong information caused by a human error. And you can certainly argue that this should have been special cased sooner rather than later. (On the other hand, like it or not, I assume that a lost piece of luggage is also written off as unfindable well before mountains are moved to try to find this item which is apparently out of the computer system's knowing. I've certainly experienced something similar with deliveries from time to time.)
- whstl 3y ago
  There are definitely lies in some of the interactions in the article itself. First saying that it is in the wrong place, then saying that "the baggage team will take care of it". Not to mention mistakes made and not admitted. Not to mention they told CNN the woman would get her money back for the travel, but not contacting her. If you're talking about support in general, they don't say "I don't have the time/resources/ability to handle that". They instead flat out lie to you (how many times I got the "your cancellation was requested" only to be charged again), shift blame often back to customers, ask customers to re-do procedures because of their own mistakes, transfer to phones that often disconnect, or even refuse to perform support by some channels ("please fax this form for cancelling you account"). Not to mention transferring the call and then disconnecting you, very common with cable/telecom. Often the individual person is not to blame, as they're following orders, but they're also not saying the real reason for the problems, so you can definitely say they're paid to lie. All of this has a reason. It's rarely lack of time, though. Cancelling some subscription sometimes takes several unnecessary minutes, sometimes hours when you put together days. This time could have been used to do actual support.
lqet 3y ago
I once had a package delivered to a small local post office. App said it arrived there, and the next day I went to pick it up. The guy there couldn't find it and did not allow me to search the pile of packages myself, because "he had a system for ordering them", and it was impossible that my package was in there. When I called customer support, they were overly supportive and outraged. It was very suspicious and obviously feigned. The guy there said that he would contact the post office immediately and get back to me! No worries! My package would turn up soon, it was clear that it was delivered to the post office! He could understand my frustration and would get to the bottom of this! Etc. Nothing happened. A few days later I had an idea and went to the post office again. The same guy was there, remembering my case. He still insisted that the package never arrived there. Nobody from customer support or package tracking had ever contacted him, and the package wasn't even marked as missing. When I asked him to check if he had placed it in his "system" not based on my name, but on the name of the sender, he condescendingly laughed it off. But sure enough, that was exactly what happened.
- throwaway2990 3y ago
  I ordered some stuff off Amazon many years ago, it never arrived. Contacted Amazon and they replaced my order. It arrived in about 1 week. 7 months later the original order arrived, box was beaten to hell. Dropped, torn, retaped multiple times. Everything inside was intact and undamaged.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - cbozeman 3y ago
    That's actually an amazing story. I ordered some things some year ago, maybe 5-7 years ago now, and they never arrived. Amazon said they did, and they didn't reimburse me at all. I was pretty frustrated for quite some time about that, especially given my Amazon account goes back to 1996. I did get invited to Vine about five months ago though, so I guess I can forgive them that $50 worth of stuff, given all the things I've ordered from Vine thus far.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Broken_Hippo 3y ago
That's a really horrible take on the employees - you should probably place the blame clearly on the company itself. I worked at a phone company call center, back when landlines were more common (20+ years ago). I worked in an inbound call center, where everyone was late on their bill or already had service turned off. We literally didn't have the tools to help with a billing dispute, if that's what wound up causing the issue. We had limited ability to even discuss bills with customers. Pretty much, we had the ability to help with their late phone bill. And as frustrating as that is, I figure other companies are the same. It isn't "no incentive" to help, but they are probably stuck without any tools nor abilities to actually help. It isn't even lying, just a crappy way of running a company. And it is very common. It does mean that it is easier to train folks: We already had a decent amount of training at that job, both classroom and non-classroom, but it was just enough to do our jobs and follow various state & federal laws. No point in throwing the masses of low-level employees under a bus and crap on them when the likely culprit is corporate policy.
- sneak 3y ago
  Lying and dishonesty is a personal matter, not one of corporate policy. Sure, the corp can create incentives, but it's always the individual's fault if they choose to lie.
  - zztop44 3y ago
    No it’s not. If the shitty company at your shitty job pays you to lie to people it is a matter of corporate policy. Of course the individual has some responsibility, but the corporation has more.
    - sneak 3y ago
      Would you lie if your boss told you to lie?
      - zztop44 3y ago
        I mean, it depends? Is there a good reason? How bad is the lie? Who am I lying to? Am I at risk of being fired if I don’t? Do I really need the job or not so much? Why? Do you never ever lie?
MuffinFlavored 3y ago
> Lots of "customer support" is literally just lying people to get them off the phone and hope they give up. How many people earn their living (it's their primary and only job full time job) in America doing this? How large is the "customer service" sector? How many of those people are happy having to deal with nothing but complaints every single day?
ghaff 3y ago
In fairness, this was something of an edge case where there was apparently a baggage tag mixup. The airlines' computerized systems have gotten much much better at tracking bags in real-time than the old days when a missing bag would pretty much require a very manual someone setting eyes on the bag process. (Which I've personally experienced.) Today I can look at the United app to see where my bag is in the process. Of course, that does no good if the computer has the wrong info. I do toss an AirTag into my luggage to give me some backup to the airline's system. I do understand some skepticism on the airline agent's part. On the other hand, if they genuinely can't find it, I'd expect them to act on the AirTag suggestion whatever their skepticism because they should realize something is amiss with their tracking system at that point. As far as I know, checked luggage thefts are very rare in the US.
jacknobody 3y ago
So in the end, the customer finds that she is expendable. It's just so much easier to shift the blame, and it's not like anybody actually makes friends through good service in this anonymous world. With no penalty for a low rate of failure, and insufficient incentive for people to be kind, failures like this are unavoidable.
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  One of the most striking understanding gaps in the modern world is that consumers still willingly believe they aren't interchangeable, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
mathewsanders 3y ago
I had an order from Floyd (online furniture retailer) and on day of delivery the delivery company said the order was damaged and to contact Floyd for replacement. Amazing run around where every week I would email Floyd customer support, they’d said they would order a replacement in a ‘few days’. Six weeks of that and I submitted a complaint though BBB and I immediately got a reply that the items were now out of stock, and would be likely in stock in 6 months or so. I ended up accepting the damaged items (at full price, no compensation) rather than wait so long. A few years ago online-only startups distinguished themselves by providing better than brick-and-mortar customer service but I see this has flipped. I think this is what Cory Doctorow calls enshittification.

Lots of "customer support" is literally just lying people to get them off the phone and hope they give up. It's pretty clear that's what this is. They have no incentive to help, so they dont.

Simulacra 3y ago

annnd "customer support" is usually someone working in a boiler room warehouse somewhere and paid low wages, so an even bigger incentive to not help.

bluedino 3y ago

It's not lying, it's ignorance or not having the time/resources/ability to find the correct or more helpful answer.

ydlr 3y ago
The individual service rep may not be lying, but the company is. They intentionally put someone in front of the customer without the correct information and without the ability to find it so that they will have no option but to follow a script without any regard to whether the words they are saying are true.
- ghaff 3y ago
  The company is "lying" in the sense that their computer system has the wrong information caused by a human error. And you can certainly argue that this should have been special cased sooner rather than later. (On the other hand, like it or not, I assume that a lost piece of luggage is also written off as unfindable well before mountains are moved to try to find this item which is apparently out of the computer system's knowing. I've certainly experienced something similar with deliveries from time to time.)
whstl 3y ago
There are definitely lies in some of the interactions in the article itself. First saying that it is in the wrong place, then saying that "the baggage team will take care of it". Not to mention mistakes made and not admitted. Not to mention they told CNN the woman would get her money back for the travel, but not contacting her. If you're talking about support in general, they don't say "I don't have the time/resources/ability to handle that". They instead flat out lie to you (how many times I got the "your cancellation was requested" only to be charged again), shift blame often back to customers, ask customers to re-do procedures because of their own mistakes, transfer to phones that often disconnect, or even refuse to perform support by some channels ("please fax this form for cancelling you account"). Not to mention transferring the call and then disconnecting you, very common with cable/telecom. Often the individual person is not to blame, as they're following orders, but they're also not saying the real reason for the problems, so you can definitely say they're paid to lie. All of this has a reason. It's rarely lack of time, though. Cancelling some subscription sometimes takes several unnecessary minutes, sometimes hours when you put together days. This time could have been used to do actual support.

lqet 3y ago

I once had a package delivered to a small local post office. App said it arrived there, and the next day I went to pick it up. The guy there couldn't find it and did not allow me to search the pile of packages myself, because "he had a system for ordering them", and it was impossible that my package was in there. When I called customer support, they were overly supportive and outraged. It was very suspicious and obviously feigned. The guy there said that he would contact the post office immediately and get back to me! No worries! My package would turn up soon, it was clear that it was delivered to the post office! He could understand my frustration and would get to the bottom of this! Etc. Nothing happened. A few days later I had an idea and went to the post office again. The same guy was there, remembering my case. He still insisted that the package never arrived there. Nobody from customer support or package tracking had ever contacted him, and the package wasn't even marked as missing. When I asked him to check if he had placed it in his "system" not based on my name, but on the name of the sender, he condescendingly laughed it off. But sure enough, that was exactly what happened.

throwaway2990 3y ago
I ordered some stuff off Amazon many years ago, it never arrived. Contacted Amazon and they replaced my order. It arrived in about 1 week. 7 months later the original order arrived, box was beaten to hell. Dropped, torn, retaped multiple times. Everything inside was intact and undamaged.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- cbozeman 3y ago
  That's actually an amazing story. I ordered some things some year ago, maybe 5-7 years ago now, and they never arrived. Amazon said they did, and they didn't reimburse me at all. I was pretty frustrated for quite some time about that, especially given my Amazon account goes back to 1996. I did get invited to Vine about five months ago though, so I guess I can forgive them that $50 worth of stuff, given all the things I've ordered from Vine thus far.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Broken_Hippo 3y ago

That's a really horrible take on the employees - you should probably place the blame clearly on the company itself. I worked at a phone company call center, back when landlines were more common (20+ years ago). I worked in an inbound call center, where everyone was late on their bill or already had service turned off. We literally didn't have the tools to help with a billing dispute, if that's what wound up causing the issue. We had limited ability to even discuss bills with customers. Pretty much, we had the ability to help with their late phone bill. And as frustrating as that is, I figure other companies are the same. It isn't "no incentive" to help, but they are probably stuck without any tools nor abilities to actually help. It isn't even lying, just a crappy way of running a company. And it is very common. It does mean that it is easier to train folks: We already had a decent amount of training at that job, both classroom and non-classroom, but it was just enough to do our jobs and follow various state & federal laws. No point in throwing the masses of low-level employees under a bus and crap on them when the likely culprit is corporate policy.

sneak 3y ago
Lying and dishonesty is a personal matter, not one of corporate policy. Sure, the corp can create incentives, but it's always the individual's fault if they choose to lie.
- zztop44 3y ago
  No it’s not. If the shitty company at your shitty job pays you to lie to people it is a matter of corporate policy. Of course the individual has some responsibility, but the corporation has more.
  - sneak 3y ago
    Would you lie if your boss told you to lie?
    - zztop44 3y ago
      I mean, it depends? Is there a good reason? How bad is the lie? Who am I lying to? Am I at risk of being fired if I don’t? Do I really need the job or not so much? Why? Do you never ever lie?

MuffinFlavored 3y ago

> Lots of "customer support" is literally just lying people to get them off the phone and hope they give up. How many people earn their living (it's their primary and only job full time job) in America doing this? How large is the "customer service" sector? How many of those people are happy having to deal with nothing but complaints every single day?

ghaff 3y ago

In fairness, this was something of an edge case where there was apparently a baggage tag mixup. The airlines' computerized systems have gotten much much better at tracking bags in real-time than the old days when a missing bag would pretty much require a very manual someone setting eyes on the bag process. (Which I've personally experienced.) Today I can look at the United app to see where my bag is in the process. Of course, that does no good if the computer has the wrong info. I do toss an AirTag into my luggage to give me some backup to the airline's system. I do understand some skepticism on the airline agent's part. On the other hand, if they genuinely can't find it, I'd expect them to act on the AirTag suggestion whatever their skepticism because they should realize something is amiss with their tracking system at that point. As far as I know, checked luggage thefts are very rare in the US.

jacknobody 3y ago

So in the end, the customer finds that she is expendable. It's just so much easier to shift the blame, and it's not like anybody actually makes friends through good service in this anonymous world. With no penalty for a low rate of failure, and insufficient incentive for people to be kind, failures like this are unavoidable.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago
One of the most striking understanding gaps in the modern world is that consumers still willingly believe they aren't interchangeable, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

mathewsanders 3y ago

I had an order from Floyd (online furniture retailer) and on day of delivery the delivery company said the order was damaged and to contact Floyd for replacement. Amazing run around where every week I would email Floyd customer support, they’d said they would order a replacement in a ‘few days’. Six weeks of that and I submitted a complaint though BBB and I immediately got a reply that the items were now out of stock, and would be likely in stock in 6 months or so. I ended up accepting the damaged items (at full price, no compensation) rather than wait so long. A few years ago online-only startups distinguished themselves by providing better than brick-and-mortar customer service but I see this has flipped. I think this is what Cory Doctorow calls enshittification.