4 ms·

>The general trend of insulating the human customer away from human customer service is just a horrible thing that keeps spreading. A law is being debated in m

>The general trend of insulating the human customer away from human customer service is just a horrible thing that keeps spreading. A law is being debated in my EU country where companies can't put customers on hold more than 10 minutes before reaching an actual human for support. I hope it passes and that it spreads across the union and also applies to tech companies as well.

rkuodys 2y ago
Interesting. But I can already imagine how it's going to backfire - you will reach a person and plead to better speak with AI:)
hobs 2y ago
That's going to be spicy - things like product launches often have 100-1000x the call volume than a typical day, so training up 100x workers temporarily is going to suck - I used to train apple's tech support.
- jenscow 2y ago
  I guess they will work out on the average wait time over a period, or the company's can just drop the calls to keep it down.
  - hobs 2y ago
    Dropping calls is the worst case scenario for customer service - what they will probably do is just institute callbacks by default.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  They'll just work the cost of the fine into the product launch.
huppeldepup 2y ago
…so they’ll disconnect at the 9m59s mark?
RationPhantoms 2y ago
Already feels like they can work around that by having the "Don't wait on hold, we'll call you back when an agent is ready" feature.
- jjav 2y ago
  > Already feels like they can work around that by having the "Don't wait on hold, we'll call you back when an agent is ready" feature. I tried this recently with an airline (AA). The next callback time was like 10 hours later. A bit crazy but ok I took it. When the time came I get a call. From an agent? Nope. From the same automated system which cheerfully announced this was my callback, now please wait for the next available agent! After being on hold for 10+ minutes I gave up.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- GiveOver 2y ago
  I prefer that feature massively. Being on hold sucks, you can't fully commit to doing another task because you need to listen out for the fuzzy elevator music to switch to a human voice. Even worse when the fuzzy music switches to a recorded human voice every 30 seconds to remind you you're still on hold. Having a call back means I can forget about it and go on with my day until they call me.
  - danaris 2y ago
    While I 100% agree with this... ...I wonder if there's a meaningful way to prevent companies from saying they're going to do this, and then just "losing" 80% of the callbacks they're supposed to give. Or giving them at 1AM (hey, it's 10:30AM in Mumbai where the off-hours call center is!). Waiting for a callback is unquestionably way better than waiting on hold, but I would still need to make sure I'm in a position to be taking that call and actually handling whatever it requires at any given time during the waiting period, so things like going shopping or being in a place with poor cell signal (like my office!) aren't good options—and what happens if I'm not available the moment they call? Can they just say "oh, well, couldn't reach customer" and force me to start the process again?

rkuodys 2y ago

Interesting. But I can already imagine how it's going to backfire - you will reach a person and plead to better speak with AI:)

hobs 2y ago

That's going to be spicy - things like product launches often have 100-1000x the call volume than a typical day, so training up 100x workers temporarily is going to suck - I used to train apple's tech support.

jenscow 2y ago
I guess they will work out on the average wait time over a period, or the company's can just drop the calls to keep it down.
- hobs 2y ago
  Dropping calls is the worst case scenario for customer service - what they will probably do is just institute callbacks by default.
Workaccount2 2y ago
They'll just work the cost of the fine into the product launch.

huppeldepup 2y ago

…so they’ll disconnect at the 9m59s mark?

RationPhantoms 2y ago

Already feels like they can work around that by having the "Don't wait on hold, we'll call you back when an agent is ready" feature.

jjav 2y ago
> Already feels like they can work around that by having the "Don't wait on hold, we'll call you back when an agent is ready" feature. I tried this recently with an airline (AA). The next callback time was like 10 hours later. A bit crazy but ok I took it. When the time came I get a call. From an agent? Nope. From the same automated system which cheerfully announced this was my callback, now please wait for the next available agent! After being on hold for 10+ minutes I gave up.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
GiveOver 2y ago
I prefer that feature massively. Being on hold sucks, you can't fully commit to doing another task because you need to listen out for the fuzzy elevator music to switch to a human voice. Even worse when the fuzzy music switches to a recorded human voice every 30 seconds to remind you you're still on hold. Having a call back means I can forget about it and go on with my day until they call me.
- danaris 2y ago
  While I 100% agree with this... ...I wonder if there's a meaningful way to prevent companies from saying they're going to do this, and then just "losing" 80% of the callbacks they're supposed to give. Or giving them at 1AM (hey, it's 10:30AM in Mumbai where the off-hours call center is!). Waiting for a callback is unquestionably way better than waiting on hold, but I would still need to make sure I'm in a position to be taking that call and actually handling whatever it requires at any given time during the waiting period, so things like going shopping or being in a place with poor cell signal (like my office!) aren't good options—and what happens if I'm not available the moment they call? Can they just say "oh, well, couldn't reach customer" and force me to start the process again?