4 ms·

I do find I can act ruder when talking to a customer service agent after frustratingly trying to get through a dumb chat bot who keeps asking me question after

I do find I can act ruder when talking to a customer service agent after frustratingly trying to get through a dumb chat bot who keeps asking me question after question before I can finally talk to a human

prmoustache 3y ago
There are no human anymore in customer service according to my last interactions with them. Nowadays if no choice provided by the chatbots fit your problem or the solution given is not satisfying to you the bot just hang up. Unless you are a public person who can shame them on social medias you are better of trying to find someone who works there on linkedin.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  This is pretty clearly recency bias. I’m sorry that you had a bad experience when seeking customer support. But let’s be honest, this is deeply exaggerated and you have an axe to grind.
  - ponderings 3y ago
    The customer merely thinks she is having a bad experience. The employee is the one having the bad experience. It's kinda fascinating how people pretend some help desk person hired 3 days ago created the company and should be held responsible for their wrong doings.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      Maybe we should mandate that private number of CEO or board members are always present on company site. Then people who are having problems could directly contact these people who are at fault at any time.
      - ponderings 3y ago
        Imagine how impressive that would be if it's a really large company. The CEO wouldn't have to be very bright, as long as he gets to work with the issue it would be fkn revolutionary. Now imagine the LLM is the CEO. Running the company might be harder than doing phone support. Then again it might not be if one could some how be in 1000 places and have 1000 conversations simultaneously 168 hours per day. It wouldn't have to get back to you on that. It can explore hiring a company, acquiring and cloning it in real time and bring the figures into the conversation while simultaneously talking with their competitors. With other LLM CEO's it can draw up a 1000 page contract with many angles covered and triggers for renegotiation.
    - wruza 3y ago
      Otoh, it's very convenient for a company if you stay humble before a real person and choose okay-sad route. It can then only escalate really bad situations and ignore those who are calm all day. So as a clever lifehacker you know that you have to be the loudest to get the service.
wizerdrobe 3y ago
How do you respond to a customer service agent acting like a robot? I had to call in on hold for two and a half hours last week to be told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for approval for your application.” When I asked if there was an upper limit on how much time I was told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for your application.” When I asked if, based on that fact, could this theoretically take forever or never be approved I was told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for your application.” Never thought I’d say it but just give me a chat bot!
- ponderings 3y ago
  I understand. This regrettably happens 0.04% of the time. The average time to resolve it is 5 work days. In 22% of the resolved cases it took one day, 3% took a month, 1.5% is never resolved and the last time that happened was 16 months ago.
- jameshart 3y ago
  There are going to be things you might like to know, or do, or to have happen, that sometimes, due to corporate policy, or laws, or the nature of reality, are just not going to be allowed. You are going to have to be told ‘no’. It is one of the cruellest parts of employing customer service agents, that we ask these people to do the emotionally draining work of saying no to customers, repeatedly. Even if the customer begs. Even if the customer start to cry. So yes, absolutely: having chat bots do that job would be a mercy.
woliveirajr 3y ago
The human that you're talking to isn't culprit that the company made it impossible to talk humans except after typing too much with a chatbot. The company _is_, and it's also their responsibility to minimise the stress from the customer service agents.
- albert_e 3y ago
  I got through to a senior bank officer on email after normal website features failed me. He replied by pasting a piece of text from their website that i already saw in first instance and had already explained how that doesn't solve my issue. It took a lot of effort on my part to stay polite in my reply and reiterate how that doesn't help at all and he needs to actually read my original email.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    From the bank officer's angle, the strategy they used (find some info on the site and send it to the customer) probably works well over half the time, because people just don't read. That you did, and got rightly annoyed by the response, probably makes you an exception from the bank officer's escalation experience.
steveBK123 3y ago
The most moral and also advantageous way to deal with big company customer service is to express that you are annoyed at the company/problem, understand its not the CS reps fault, and that you hope they can help. Ie - get them on your team. From there if you aren't getting resolution you can modulate the % annoyance vs % thankfulness and eventually demand escalation, which once you've been on the line long enough they are all fairly willing & obliged to do. Once you get escalated the manager is generally ready to put the fire out and move on. I dealt with something along these lines with a VZ fraud issue where someone ordered 5 iPhones & new phone lines in my name and then VZ refused to cancel the bill even after being given the police report number.

prmoustache 3y ago

There are no human anymore in customer service according to my last interactions with them. Nowadays if no choice provided by the chatbots fit your problem or the solution given is not satisfying to you the bot just hang up. Unless you are a public person who can shame them on social medias you are better of trying to find someone who works there on linkedin.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
This is pretty clearly recency bias. I’m sorry that you had a bad experience when seeking customer support. But let’s be honest, this is deeply exaggerated and you have an axe to grind.
- ponderings 3y ago
  The customer merely thinks she is having a bad experience. The employee is the one having the bad experience. It's kinda fascinating how people pretend some help desk person hired 3 days ago created the company and should be held responsible for their wrong doings.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Maybe we should mandate that private number of CEO or board members are always present on company site. Then people who are having problems could directly contact these people who are at fault at any time.
    - ponderings 3y ago
      Imagine how impressive that would be if it's a really large company. The CEO wouldn't have to be very bright, as long as he gets to work with the issue it would be fkn revolutionary. Now imagine the LLM is the CEO. Running the company might be harder than doing phone support. Then again it might not be if one could some how be in 1000 places and have 1000 conversations simultaneously 168 hours per day. It wouldn't have to get back to you on that. It can explore hiring a company, acquiring and cloning it in real time and bring the figures into the conversation while simultaneously talking with their competitors. With other LLM CEO's it can draw up a 1000 page contract with many angles covered and triggers for renegotiation.
  - wruza 3y ago
    Otoh, it's very convenient for a company if you stay humble before a real person and choose okay-sad route. It can then only escalate really bad situations and ignore those who are calm all day. So as a clever lifehacker you know that you have to be the loudest to get the service.

wizerdrobe 3y ago

How do you respond to a customer service agent acting like a robot? I had to call in on hold for two and a half hours last week to be told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for approval for your application.” When I asked if there was an upper limit on how much time I was told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for your application.” When I asked if, based on that fact, could this theoretically take forever or never be approved I was told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for your application.” Never thought I’d say it but just give me a chat bot!

ponderings 3y ago
I understand. This regrettably happens 0.04% of the time. The average time to resolve it is 5 work days. In 22% of the resolved cases it took one day, 3% took a month, 1.5% is never resolved and the last time that happened was 16 months ago.
jameshart 3y ago
There are going to be things you might like to know, or do, or to have happen, that sometimes, due to corporate policy, or laws, or the nature of reality, are just not going to be allowed. You are going to have to be told ‘no’. It is one of the cruellest parts of employing customer service agents, that we ask these people to do the emotionally draining work of saying no to customers, repeatedly. Even if the customer begs. Even if the customer start to cry. So yes, absolutely: having chat bots do that job would be a mercy.

woliveirajr 3y ago

The human that you're talking to isn't culprit that the company made it impossible to talk humans except after typing too much with a chatbot. The company _is_, and it's also their responsibility to minimise the stress from the customer service agents.

albert_e 3y ago
I got through to a senior bank officer on email after normal website features failed me. He replied by pasting a piece of text from their website that i already saw in first instance and had already explained how that doesn't solve my issue. It took a lot of effort on my part to stay polite in my reply and reiterate how that doesn't help at all and he needs to actually read my original email.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  From the bank officer's angle, the strategy they used (find some info on the site and send it to the customer) probably works well over half the time, because people just don't read. That you did, and got rightly annoyed by the response, probably makes you an exception from the bank officer's escalation experience.

steveBK123 3y ago

The most moral and also advantageous way to deal with big company customer service is to express that you are annoyed at the company/problem, understand its not the CS reps fault, and that you hope they can help. Ie - get them on your team. From there if you aren't getting resolution you can modulate the % annoyance vs % thankfulness and eventually demand escalation, which once you've been on the line long enough they are all fairly willing & obliged to do. Once you get escalated the manager is generally ready to put the fire out and move on. I dealt with something along these lines with a VZ fraud issue where someone ordered 5 iPhones & new phone lines in my name and then VZ refused to cancel the bill even after being given the police report number.