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Probably, every time you see some crazy customer service story like this, the culprit is an ill-considered rule pushed down on service staff. Telemarketing (ou
by iigs 18y ago
Probably, every time you see some crazy customer service story like this, the culprit is an ill-considered rule pushed down on service staff.
Telemarketing (outbound sales or inbound sales or support) is the standard I-don't-want-to-bag-groceries job for kids and young adults in a lot of midwest cities, and I did my time. The truth of this is not to be underestimated. It varies from company to company (and number to number within a company), but very often the call center employees are given rigid, obsolete support systems, scripts, and no latitude to do anything to help. In fact, it's also common for the care reps to not be employed by the company you're intending to call for support, rather a telemarketing firm that specializes in grinding out phone calls. I worked for one agency, representing three or four big name companies (names anyone in tech would recognize) and I don't think I ever met an employee of the companies we were representing.
I also don't get too wound up about international support for this reason. If these companies wouldn't give any power to people three states away with no language barrier (upstream or downstream) there's no reason whatsoever to expect that a company has given someone in another hemisphere the ability to flex in any way at all.
- derefr 18y agoYou know, I think, if I ever became a millionaire, I might pay myself into a tech support job and do it the "right way," telling people what they actually need to know to help them, and ignoring my superiors (because I was paying their superiors.) That would be quite fun. Actually, rethinking that, is there a company right now doing phone support the "right way?" Might be lucrative.
- iigs 18y agoI think the rigid support is a symptom and the malady is corporate bureaucracy. In order to fix this I think you'd have to find a company worth fixing and attack it from the top down. If someone was really passionate about this it might be possible to fix it in one large company and use that as a halo case to sell their services to additional companies.
- collision 18y agoZappos' support staff have a very good reputation. Slicehost too, but I don't think they do phone support.
- dcurtis 18y agoZappos has amazing phone support. They require all employees from all departments to spend time talking to real customers. Even Tony, the CEO, does customer support calls.
- tptacek 18y agoThe counterexample for bad rules in "The Knack" was the CEO of JetBlue, who served as the author's flight attendant on one of his flights; apparently, he used to do that a lot.
- lukas 18y agoWe use slicehost, and their phone support has been fantastic.