Customer “help” is getting worse
In recent years it often feels that it’s not even worth it to try to get help for most products or websites. The instructions can be so arcane and convoluted that it seems that they were designed by programmers talking to other programmers. Everything is complex, and simple operations aren’t even covered. The “chats” are manned (a misnomer) by AI bots, and when you are bumped up to supposedly human level it’s hardly any better.
Last night I had a frustrating forty-five minute back-and-forth with a website, trying to get a very simple and basic question answered. It was no go, although they bumped me up to two levels of human interaction. Not only did no one know the answer, but they couldn’t even understand the question. Language barrier? Stupidity? Being told to stick to the manual and never go outside it? All of the above? None of the above?
I finally gave up and went to another site that offered a similar service. There were glitches there, too. I spent about four nearly-fruitless hours in this endeavor, and that’s not unusual.
Have you had the same experience?
Ages ago I actually supervised a phone room. IMO, the problem is almost certainly lack of any training. The geniuses who run companies (a) don’t want to invest the time to train people, and (b) absolutely won’t emphasize that training must be continual. That was true back in the day; I cannot believe it’s gotten any better. And my experience agrees with yours. Except I noticed it starting to decline (from an already low level) about 20 years ago.
Our grandparents would never have put up with what we do. And it’s not helped by the ever lower standards of education.
Yes.
I believe there should be a federal law that every CEO/Business Owner whose firm has a customer service function should be required to attempt to navigate his or her company’s online and/or phone help at least once a year. These episodes should be recorded and filed with the BBB and televised on live television.
Maybe suspend the CEO 30′ over a piranha infested pool, lowering him an inch every second that ticks by without receiving an adequate response.
Oh sure, another federal law. Government regulation and oversight.
Seriously?
A variation on this is when you talk to someone and they seem to really know their stuff and give what seems like great answers only to find out that later on nothing they said was actually helpful or worse made the problem worse.
This is a very common occurence when dealing with billing issues where you have to wait some time to actually see if what the customer service person said was going to happen actually happened.
Neo asks, “Have you had the same experience?”
Yep, just last week. Adobe used to notify users of Adobe Reader whenever they were releasing a new version, which usually started up the next time the user restarted the computer. Well, last week I opened a PDF in order to copy edit it, only to find some godawful new version of the Reader that appeared without warning and was difficult to figure out. After I finally figured out how the new markup tools are supposed to work, I got about halfway through the document when the software went into some kind of meltdown. I went to the Adobe website and couldn’t find any answers on any page related to my problem. I finally got the new version to work after rebooting my computer a couple of times, but I can’t say I like it. I belong to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school of thought when it comes to software, but I suppose the geniuses at Adobe have to give their engineers something to do every so often, including making changes that complicate using their products. For my money, the Adobe website is one of the worst when it comes to looking for information– the Food and Drug Administration website running a close second.
IrishOtter49,
You seriously think I’m proposing a federal law requiring people to be suspended 30′ over a pool of piranha?
Seriously?
Yeah, I’ve given up on tech support. I google, but avoid the official websites like Microsoft, which only provide answers to simple questions with simple answers. User groups are a better bet.
Today’s hardware is more complicated, the software is more complicated, the interfaces are more complicated, and development/QA cycles are shorter.
Once I get an app to work well enough for my needs, I put off updates until I must do so.
I actually had a good experience this week. I bought a piece of exercise equipment, and materials with it recommended using their app. I downloaded the app and couldn’t figure out how to work it. So I sent an email to the company, and got a response which was clear and helpful, including links to You Tube videos showing me exactly what to do. Of course, I think they should have included this information to begin with, but they were very helpful when asked.
I also find hardware is less reliable.
I usually buy premium brands like Lenovo and felt I could forego insurance, but I’ve been stung several times now, so I buy a couple years of insurance.
Outsourcing? It doesn’t necessarily mean cultural barriers, but once the person who provides help with the product is not the one whose livelihood depends on the product’s viability, there is no incentive to be invested in the quality of the response anymore. The problem is no longer what the customer is facing, but the (annoyed, but, most importantly, annoying) customer him- or herself.
Also, overall job security, I believe. It’s getting harder to fire people even if they mess things up. (The flip side is, of course, the growing demand for new legally and socially acceptable excuses to fire an employee.)
Well, you hit a nerve. I have been dealing with a couple of different companies in the past few days.
The first issue is accent. My hearing is not good, and I really have a problem with accents. Some “agents” become a bit hostile if you are having difficulty understanding them. On the other hand, it is not infrequently the case that they cannot understand what you are trying to convey.
Two positives. In one of the more frustrating experiences, I tried to get a Manager on the line without success. Then later in the evening I received an email from the Customer Service Manager. She asked for some specific detail that others had ignored, and used that to resolve the problem the next morning. (I had just drafted an email with the very information that she requested)
The other, and I will mention the company, it is a small, budget, cell provider–Tello. Their service has met my fairly basic needs quite well. I have, however, had occasion to reach out on a few occasions. The call center that I reached is in Bolivia. Excellent English is spoken; and the issues I called about were resolved without any bother. A breath of fresh air.
Absolutely. Especially with chat functions and foreign call centers. I’ve gotten to where I just start insisting to speak with someone in the USA. There are trained responses that the call centers are given, and when you start insisting, they start to get rolled out. Often the first hurdle is to speak with someone that (a) understands English and (b) can actually carry on a conversation. This might sound absurd, but some of the Asian call centers (India mostly) have people with very thick accents and very little English comprehension. I’ve worked all over the world and accents don’t bother me. I draw the line at viable communication, though.
You know you’re getting on their nerves when they start to challenge you with questions like “well, who do you want to speak with?”, when you keep pointing out the problem is not getting resolved, and insisting that the call be escalated.
Part of the problem is the intentional compartmentalization of these customer service functions. Very often these call workers are not authorized to actually perform many actions, especially those involving money – I guess because of corruption likelihood in their native country. So that’s the rub – I just keep pointing out that, if they are not authorized to correct the problem, then I need to speak with someone that has that authority. Usually if you can get through to someone in the US, they’ll be able to resolve it. Takes patience, though, often there’s a supervisor coaching them in the background, using the call as a training session.
We’re not THE ‘customer’. The “stakeholders” are the customer.
Public ownership of companies transfers the category of the customer from the consumer to the stockholder. The larger the amount of stock held, the bigger the ‘stakeholder’ and the more importance for the company officials is serving the real ‘customer’. The decision makers, the CEOs and VPs i.e. management’s compensation is driven by stock appreciation, so customer ‘service’ is decidedly of a distant importance. Marketing/Sales reign supreme because that commonly determines stock appreciation. Stakeholders are concerned with R.O.E. not getting help on the phone. That’s for us peons who don’t have the ‘right’ people’s contact info on hand.
Privately held companies don’t have public ownership issues, their productivity, the perceived value of their products of which after sales support is critical to customer loyalty determine company management success.
BTW, my mobile carrier (US-Mobile) has so far been a happy exception to the rule. They maintain a staff of absolutely, so to say, organic customer service representatives; no AI and no external contractors. Most present themselves as Shukri, Leila or Daud. Not a single one has ever made me think, even for a second, that he or she didn’t care.
I can only pray God that things don’t go south when they scale up, though, or are acquired by a bigger player.
In my experience it is increasingly rare, these days, to get someone on a “customer service” “helpline” who is a native English speaker, someone who genuinely seems to be interested in helping me, who knows what he or she is doing, and can be of some actual, practical help.
Apparently that’s asking a lot.
I find that, more often than not, if I manage to successfully navigate a godawful, sadistic phone tree (lotta wasted time there, yesiree, and a lotta choice curse words too), and I finally manage to get an actual person on the line, their English is sometimes so poor that I can’t understand them, or, their comprehension is so bad they can’t understand me.
Or, alternatively communication is OK, but these “help” people sometimes apparently don’t really have a very deep knowledge about their own products or policies; they’re “one trick ponies” when it comes to advice.
Or, sometimes they deny that their “guarantee” actually is a guarantee that is applicable to your particular problem. So, I guess from their perspective, problem solved!
It appears that from the background noise of their children running around in the background that I often notice, many of these “customer service/help people” are working from home (and being paid by the call?).
P.S. I absolutely hate “chat,” and never use it if there is any other alternative.
I type, wait for a response,and then we always get out of sync, and I’m asking a question and the help person is still discussing my last question, etc., etc.
It’s a mess.
I had an interesting experience with Amazon about 3 weeks ago. As a Prime user I had been playing with their free music, second tier, service. Then later they offer me a free 1 or 2 month trial of their premium service, which I did. On Aug. 15th, they would charge me the monthly fee, so I wrote that down.
Then about 14 hours before the 15th, I noticed the deadline and canceled the service which wasn’t super easy, but easy enough. But wait, … they already charged me for the subscription. Argh!
After about 30 min. of searching around the website I went back to the chat system for the second time which was operated entirely by a bot. Oh, this will never work I thought, but continued to plow thru question after question. Lo and behold I eventually got to a human. And he refunded me in a flash.
My 12-year-old HP computer with Windows had reached the point where it couldn’t handle the MS upgrades. I finally decided, very reluctantly, to buy a new machine.
Bought a very simple tower with a large screen so I could see it better. I knew it was going to be a task to get it set up the way I want it. And it has been.
I spent more than four hours trying to figure out why my printer wouldn’t work with the new computer. I use a cord connection. In the past, all I had to do was set up the printer in Windows settings and voila. Not this time. It turns out that Epson has put an algorithm in their printers that will not work with a new computer until you go through Epson and install a proper driver for the new computer. Aaaaarrrgghh!
The computer keeps trying to sell me stuff. I’ll be typing along and suddenly an ad appears. They’re constantly bombarding me with adds for games. Grrrrr!!
Outlook will no longer connect remotely an ISP’s e-mail. So, now I’m stuck with Comcast’s e-mail format, which I hate, hate, hate. I may change to Outlook eventually, but that means updating my e-mail address with umpteen different places and transitioning gradually from Comcast.
There have been other challenges that I’ve solved or given up on too lengthy to go into.
All this was learned through spending a lot of time asking questions of Microsoft, Epson, Comcast, watching how-to videos, etc.
I know I’m not the sharpest tool when it comes to tech, but this has been a stressful four weeks.
I could fill up the comment section twice with my “Sad” experience with Verizon. I finally bought my way out of their phone system. Nothing I was originaly told was true. That left me with internet after getting two paper quotes with differing fees I called, was told that was all wrong and wound up with two more quotes. So four quotes alltogether. No longer will have anything to do with Verizon.
Comcast is the one that gets me and since I have everything through them it’s not a small problem. I use them for cable TV, internet, email, cell and I even still have a landline. I joke that if I don’t pay my bill I’m gone from the world. But dealing with them is such a hit or miss thing. Some of their customer service people are awesome and some are worthless but even more concerning is they have so many that seem like they know what they are talking about until you find out later that they had no clue.
They are actually the worst especially in billing issues because it’s usually weeks down the line before you find out if they did what they said they were going to do.
Don’t get me started! A “techie” is the last thing I have ever wanted to be. The hours I have spent going in circles of frustration with tech issues make me cringe to think of them.
“…the official websites like Microsoft, which only provide answers to simple questions with simple answers”: not sure how you are getting any kind of answers. MS seems designed to do everything BUT answer simple questions. Ask one and they are off and running into the most complex “explanations” imaginable (which usually don’t work anyway).
Recently Amazon had somehow tricked me into “signing up for a free month of Prime”, which I have studiously avoided for years because (1) I don’t need any of it and (2) I think it now costs $180/yr ($15/mo). They said “will end on 8/31/23 and you can cancel it before then, anytime”. Well, I was very busy and tried to cancel it early in the month. Nothing they said to do “worked”. Later I called “customer help”, maddening menus/etc, finally pushed “0” repeatedly, jumped thru some more hoops, finally got a human. I asked said human to cancel it and to send me an email confirming that (which she did). BUT it’s a good thing I did it by 8/30 because they do start charging you–not ending your “free trial”– on the 31st!
At a new dr’s office recently, they had a web portal (ID and password) and an app (also ID and password). Turned out that there was no connection between the 2 entries into the portal. It took my son (an IT guy) going into their office (with me) with my phone to finally figure out what the problem was and fix it. Their front desk basically knew nothing.
Worst is that it never ends. They lie awake nights trying to figure out how to complicate our lives. I also have an old HP computer and monitor, either of which could die at any time, probably when I most need them. I don’t have the luxury right now of making replacements a priority. I have a tablet for emergencies but almost never use it otherwise. First-world problems are still big problems.
@J.J It’s not an “algorithm in their printers”. It’s simply that hardware these days has become complex enough to need algorithms to handle it period. Those algorithms (or, more accurately, programs implementing those algorithms) are called “drivers”. (The analogy is, when you buy a car, you need to either be or hire an experienced driver to operate it.)
Typically, vendors provide drivers for Windows and Mac OS, two most popular desktop operating systems. Some basic functions are covered by “generic” drivers shipped with Windows or Mac OS themselves; also, some kinds of hardware (keyboards, mice) are simple enough to only need those basic functions. Graphic chips, printers and scanners typically need more, thus the need for downloading and installing specific drivers.
Linux is rarely covered by vendors (though it gets more popular and thus better covered over time), so on Linux, “generic” drivers are far more capable than anywhere else. E.g. I had most of my phones working with Linux out of the box, while on Windows I needed a specific driver. (OTOH, Linux is itself harder to maintain for a nontechnical person. It’s not a more laborious task, but if bits and pieces occasionally come off, you need to spot where and how.)
TL;DR sad state of affairs in the industry, but nothing particularly evil with Epson.
Amazon’s supposed “help” is especially maddening. The only way to get anything done is to connect with a person instead of a bot, and they make it almost impossible to do that.
On the other hand, I’ve had some remarkably good experiences with customer support folks at Asurion (which provides device repairs, tech support and such for computers, phones etc.) and Paperless Post (an online invitation service.) The Paperless Post tech responded at about 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning to a message I’d sent late the previous night, with a thorough email that not only explained and fixed my problem but added a small service I hadn’t asked for. As for Asurion, I cracked the screen on my brand new, very expensive cell phone and filled out an online claim. The next day, a friendly young tech showed up at my house (in a remote country location nowhere near the city she’d come from) at precisely the time she said she’d be there, took about 15 minutes to replace the screen while sitting in the front seat of her car, handed me the fixed phone with a smile and drove off to help the next customer. I was impressed!
Yes, I have found “customer help” to be decidedly worse than it used to be.
I am not going to spend 5 minutes writing about my trying to use Angie’s chat service to find a drywall pro. Suffice it to say that I spent a half hour and still hadn’t gotten any recommendations. Just an abject “sorry” from a poorly trained customer service rep.
One good word about customer service. Three years ago I stopped AT&T’s landline and Internet service. Too expensive. The customer service rep didn’t try to persuade me to keep anything, but accepted that I was going to stop using AT&T. “Retired” is apparently sufficient reason for cutting out an expensive service. (I found cheaper alternatives.)
I was out of town when AT&T service was supposed to stop. When I got back to town, I noticed that my landline was still working. I informed AT&T, who quickly terminated the service it should have terminated a week ago, and didn’t charge me for that extra week.
Another good word about customer service. I had trouble with my Internet connection. I got on Spectrum’s chat line, and got a technician scheduled to come out in two days. I told Spectrum that was super fast. (As it took Lowes SIX WEEKS to get a plumber to install my toilet, Spectrum impressed me. Very bad customer service at Lowes, I would add.) The Spectrum technician came, and used nearly three hours of the 1-3 hours that Spectrum had predicted.
Another bad word about Lowes. The drywall pro I found from Angie’s couldn’t get ceiling-thickness drywall at Lowes. Not to mention it being very difficult to find a Lowes employee.
Rufus T. Firefly:
You seriously think I’m proposing a federal law requiring people to be suspended 30? over a pool of piranha?
Seriously?
That’s the part I liked.
Geoffrey Britain….”he decision makers, the CEOs and VPs i.e. management’s compensation is driven by stock appreciation, so customer ‘service’ is decidedly of a distant importance. Marketing/Sales reign supreme because that commonly determines stock appreciation.”
I don’t think giving bad customer service is, in most cases, a conscious and economically rational decision. In almost all industries, it costs a lot more to acquire a new customer than to keep an old one. Customers getting sufficiently pissed off and going away is definitely harmful to the top and bottom line and hence to the stock price.
“The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent in fishing.”
Would that it were true of dealing with customer service.
I don’t have the patience to have that experience 🙂
Had a problem with Best Buy and a warranty. Didn’t get much help over the phone, so went to the store. Fixed in moments.
But, aside from some extended hold time, not many problems. When they finish up with “is there anything else I can help you with?”, I usually think of something. Once it was, I need some help with my wood pile. You got half an hour? The other end thought that was hysterical.
Or, my wife is sanding the porch railings before painting them. Can you get over here {was a time zone away}. Laughed generously and said, “I love painting.” Better you than me. Point is, it seems to make their day.
But, on the whole, no problems.
IrishOtter49,
Feeding CEOs to piranha is undue cruelty.
To the piranha.
LXE, thanks for the explanation about the drivers. My printer is fairly new (2years old), but it’s the lowest cost Epson I could buy. I didn’t think it would be different than previous printers which I had been able to install easily. Epson has been fairly helpful once I figured out how to tap their info.
On the other hand, like Griffin, I’m a prisoner of Comcast (Internet, land line, e-mail, and TV). I hate them, but they’re the only option. And the beat goes on.
The real issue is not that nearly every instance of “customer service”- via phone, online, and in person – is a horror story, but that it’s steadily getting worse and there is less than zero interest in improving it.
I’ve been wondering when we’ll reach the tipping point, where people simply stop buying things that we know will wind up costing more time and effort than they’re worth to get operating properly. I know I’ve avoided products – and companies – that I know will turn into a PITA to deal with.
There appears to be a rather lucrative business opportunity for an independent contractor to build an “expertise business” around highly knowledgeable individuals who can also communicate very effectively in English, all for a reasonable fee. Time is money, and while we intensely dislike the idea of paying someone for a support function – we spent money on the product that was advertised as meeting certain performance standards, why should we have to pay more to get the help necessary to get it to perform at the advertised level – but investing 1-2 hours to obtain “free” but worthless product support is a poor deal when a FEW dollars – note the emphasis on “few” there – and 10-15 minutes would solve the problem.
(Which will create another problem – once Fred’s Support Business LLC succeeds and grows to a certain point, Brainless Conglomerate, Inc. will buy it for $7 million and turn it into worthless garbage within a year with illiterate non-English speaking overseas employees who are 60% cheaper).
Lather, rinse, repeat, ad infinitum
I actually had two or three such interactions today. After a few minutes of trying to tell the bot on the other end of the line what I want or am trying to find out (since it is invariably not in the options offered), I start pressing zero over and over again and yelling into the phone in the hopes that I will eventually end up speaking with a human. Of the three humans I eventually managed to speak with, only one was helpful, but even she said she would call back later to follow up, and of course she never did.
RTF: perhaps 6 minutes above the piranha pool is too short to achieve a proper response, but extend it to 10 minutes and you probably do have a serious and viable law!! 🙂
8th Amendment precludes “cruel and unusual punishments”; but what if you make it either cruel or unusual, but not both? [Hang the condemned criminal upside before the firing squad? Let the to-be-electrocuted person select either a chair with AC or DC current? Etc.?]
Besides, who decides just what that means or entails? What is the purpose of punishment? Deterrence? Reform and minimal recidivism?
How many times have we heard of a punishment that seemed rather extreme when the offense happened to someone else, but would have been inadequate if the crime had been committed against us?
Some phone trees and web site help functions do classify as cruel punishments, but this thread shows they are far from unusual.
I calculate that I spent about 30 hours of my time over 10 weeks dealing with Samsung to be refunded for a TV and that with Costco Concierge Service. Today culminated 10 hours of my time beginning mid-May dealing with the realtor provided home warranty policy, declining coverage for the issue. Sent off a complaint through U.S. mail as the fax number failed and no email address is available–just operators that spout nonsense between long holds. Never did receive my refund for the wrong item sent by an Amazon provider last Prime Day. So yes, customer service has taken a dive.
When I call a compnay and hear the rep talking with an accent, I immediately ask what country they are in and then ask to speak to someone in the U.S. I have always been transferred to an American.
For the last few days I have been trying to get a replacement battery for my iphone. Working with Apple has been like pulling teeth.
I made a reservation at the Apple store on the phone and I asked the rep to call the store to make sure there was a battery in stock. I was told there was one in stock.
When I drove to the store in a nearby city I was told they didn’t have a battery and it would take 3-5 days to ship a battery in. I would have to return to drop off the phone again then and make a third trip to pick up the repaired phone.
Frustrated that I had wasted a trip to the store, I tried to order a battery via the phone. No dice. A battery can only be ordered by going to the store.
I could have Apple send me a box, mail my phone to them, have the battery replaced and then mailed back. For an extra charge of under $20 for shipping. Mailing an empty box to me costs the same as mailing the phone. They won’t mail to the store for free.
When I originally called Apple support to ask about the cost for battery replacement, they wouldn’t tell me until I gave them my Apple ID info. No info given out until they verify who is calling.
I called Ubreak Ifix and they told me the cost, how long it would take and when I could the phone off. Totally different experience.
I went through the same mess in March when I had 2 batteries replaced at the same time—3 trips to get it done. I was trying to avoid 3 trips to the Apple store by having the rep verify stock or ordering the battery via phone beforehand, but that is against policy.
I spent almost 2 hours with a supervisor on the phone complaining about the bad policies and bad customer service but I know nothing will change.
If I didn’t have 4 iphones, I would tell them to take a flying leap.
Computers and programs get more and more complex, and I gather that good computer tech support people put together their own loose leaf binders with general information, plus the details of what they did to solve particular problems in the past.
Doing the kind of very wide-ranging research which I used to do, if I got a question over and over again (I was doing this kind of research for 25 years, and it is amazing how frequently the same general question will come up) ) I created a file, and while, the first time, it might have taken me hours or even days to find the answer to a particular question, the next time I got the same general question I had a great head start on finding the answer, and it might be as easy as five minutes to just copy from my file.
Same thing if it was particularly hard to find the answer to a question–that answer went into a file.
I retired out of that position, and briefing my replacement–a female recent college graduate (hey, she didn’t seem particularly knowledgeable or enthusiastic, but they hired her at a really low GS rating compared to mine)–she was looking around and not paying much attention, totally bored that she had to listen to this old man talk, and rolled her eyes when I explained about all of the desk files that I had created, which I told her would be of great help in answering repetitive or very unique/hard questions.
I have no doubt that the first thing she did was to throw out all of those carefully created files.
Yes, it seems to be getting worse almost everywhere.
Comcast is amazingly bad. I spent two hours on the phone with them recently, and they never did figure out how to fix the problem. We had purchased the “Max” app to watch a certain show. After a few weeks, it stopped working. The first Comcast support person I spoke with was in the Philipinnes. I learned that when we started chatting about the weather, as we were waiting for something to happen. That person did a good job pretending she knew what she was doing, but eventually the mask slipped. She kept muting the call and I wondered why, thinking maybe it was just a loud room. At the end, I could hear someone telling her what to say. Eventually she gave up and said the “advanced” expert would be helping me, and that she had sent all the info along to him. The advanced expert was, apparently, in India. He seemed a little better at first, although he annoyed me by first saying he had gone over all the notes from the previous call and then demonstrating that he hadn’t in fact learned anything from those notes. So we basically started over again, and he suggested something that sounded like it might work. It was definitely more advanced — settings! We cleared the cache or something, woo hoo! But it did not fix the problem and he had no idea why. He wanted to do the reset thing, which we had already done twice with the other people, so I said no, let’s give up, I’ve had it.
What’s funny is that while I was on the phone with this guy I checked to see if the show we are watching was available on any other app. They have it on Amazon, through Max. We have Prime so I signed up for Max on Prime. It worked. It cost less than Max via Comcast, too, so I just cancelled the Comcast version. Which was remarkably easy; anything that can be reduced to an online transaction seems to go smoothly, but anything that requires exception handling is getting to be almost impossible.
The kicker of course was that when I was ordering the thing I wanted on Prime, I had to re-enter all the passwords and things, since, yeah, we (needlessly) cleared that cache…
It’s not just phone or online assistance that’s gone downhill. Customer service across the board has declined dramatically in recent years.
Employees just don’t seem to care any more whether the customer is satisfied. Every industry seems to be struggling with this. We’ve basically just given up on getting decent service from restaurants. Even the small family run ones that used to be great are terrible these days and the chain places are just intolerable. You’d think that as expensive as everything’s gotten they’d be more careful to provide a pleasant customer experience so we’re more willing to pay the money and come back.
Nope…it’s like they don’t even care any more. And if you complain, they make it clear that they think you’re the problem.
And then they wonder why they struggle to keep customers coming back.
There are “experts” and, then, there are experts.
At the large research organization I worked at, we absolutely had to have the use of our computers.
The large overall organization had a computer unit, our particular organization’s HQ had it’s own computer unit–which was supposed to support us–but neither one of these units “experts” seemed to be able to really do the job.
So, we finally had to end up setting up our own dedicated computer group to keep our computers running.
One of the main ways they did this was by making sure that our very reliable plain Jane computers had only a very basic setup, with only a few tried and tested, rock solid programs installed. Thus, we were behind the times in terms of fancy new computers, programs, and capabilities.
Great for stability and reliability, but a pain when you wanted to get something from a website which did have all of the latest bells and whistles, but which our setup would just not work with.
P.S. Love it when tech support people (or sometimes scammers) in India or some other foreign location–natives of those countries who don’t speak very good English–tell you that their names are things like Jack or Jill, Bill, or Joan, in an attempt to build “rapport.”
Rufus T. Firefly @11:15 pm:
Totally agree.
I really have a problem with accents. Some “agents” become a bit hostile if you are having difficulty understanding them. On the other hand, it is not infrequently the case that they cannot understand what you are trying to convey.
–OldFlyer
There is something about an Indian accent which drives me crazy and not in a good way. Many tech support people are Indian, so it’s a problem.
I’ve done tech support. It’s a hard, unpleasant work which doesn’t pay well. I wish I didn’t have this reaction to Indians, but there it is.
The two hardest parts of learning a foreign language IMO are listening and pronunciation. You can drill vocab and grammar until you get them down, but listening and pronunciation develop gradually.
Pronunciation at the native speaker level is an unrealistic goal for adult learners unless they are willing to devote years of serious practice.
Steve Kaufmann, one of my language gurus, recommends shooting for an accent that is “not annoying to a native speaker.” 🙂
I had a similar experience with Charter/Spectrum last week. I noticed that they were charging an extra hundred plus dollars a month for services I didn’t need or want. So I spent over 2 hours on the phone with them in order to cancel these services. Of course most of that 2 hours was on hold. When I finally got through to a human, it took her about half an hour to cancel the services. She explained that since I had a “legacy” account (meaning one that was establised with Time Warner Cable before the merger), she had to log on to an old system to make the changes.
I notice a growing answer to tech support are YouTube videos.
Blech.
Having to watch a 5-10 minute video full of throat-clearings and handwavings, then to discover it doesn’t apply to my specific problem drives me crazy too.
I would love to see a lot more well-written answers to tech support questions. I’ve been a tech writer as well. Good, useful tech writing is hard.
For difficult tech support questions one must have some understanding of how a system works, beyond what appears in the tech support answer books.
J.J. FWIW, if I understand your email problem correctly you may find that the fix lies in updating the POP, IMAP or SMTP settings for the problem email accounts.
“If you use Outlook.com to access an account that uses a domain other than @live.com, @hotmail.com, or @outlook.com, you might not be able to sync your accounts using IMAP. To resolve this, remove the connected IMAP account in Outlook.com and reconfigure it as a POP connection. For instructions about how to reconfigure your account to use POP, contact your email account provider.”
ref: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/pop-imap-and-smtp-settings-for-outlook-com-d088b986-291d-42b8-9564-9c414e2aa040
I had a similar problem with Thunderbird until I updated account info. Hope it helps, otherwise disregard.
“Have you had the same experience?”
Oh, yes, and it’s been very hard to get used to.
For years, I worked at a Fortune 100 company that had a policy of answering every customer inquiry — every last one, by mail or by phone. (This was before e-mail.) A staff of dozens made sure of it.
But from the beginning of the World Wide Web, Internet-based operations seem to have been constructed on the “build it and forget it” model, with the ideal being passive income.
Granted, some of what comes in through the customer-service complaint channel is useless. Dumb ideas, trivial complaints, pen-pal wannabes. But even these come from actual customers. Snub them at your peril.
Perhaps the fact that so many Web-based businesses offer “free” services has enabled founders to think of customers as freeloaders. Why spend money answering their calls? If one actually quits, another will take his place in an instant.
And yet I feel like a reactionary complaining about this.
Neo
I have had that experience at work and whenever I call up my bank, my former cable provider, my credit card company, compuagter help, and cellphone company. I think the IT Departments are the very worst they send you (this is at work) insgtrucitons that only a person with a Masters in Computer Science and Coding might be able to figure out. AI is the absolute pits!!
Snow on Pine…”The large overall organization had a computer unit, our particular organization’s HQ had it’s own computer unit–which was supposed to support us–but neither one of these units “experts” seemed to be able to really do the job.”
I took a machining course at my local community college, just for fun. One of the other students was a woman who was a PhD researcher at a government lab. She often needed to have custom experimental equipment made—the lab had a centralized machine shop that would make things for the scientists, but the schedules usually ran something like Six Months to The Twelfth of Never.
They told her she could use the shop after hours and make her own stuff if she would get trained. So that’s what she was doing.
This is a general problem with centralized ‘service’ groups in organizations of all types.
Maybe my standards are lower, but my experiences have in general not been all that bad. Over the past few years, starting with a hurricane, I’ve had occasion to deal with AT&T’s customer support a good deal, and all in all it was…not bad. My main complaints had to do with their web site, not with personal interactions, which is indicative of my bias toward looking online rather than calling.
My absolute worst customer service experience however was in person. It was also AT&T, at the local store. Voice mail on my phone had stopped working. I know enough about the technology that I knew the problem was on AT&T’s end. I went to the store because in this case I couldn’t find a path either online or by phone to the help I needed. I was met by a slovenly, snarky young woman who first wanted to see my phone, which I already knew was not the problem. No sooner had I pulled it out than she tried to tell me that it was too old, which I knew was baloney. Then she looked my messages and pronounced the problem to be that I had too many. I knew I had no more than several dozen undeleted voicemail messages, which would not be a problem.
“I don’t think so. I don’t really have that many messages.”
She held up the phone with a sneer and said “I’m looking at them.”
She obviously thought I was just a clueless old guy, too stupid to have a smart phone. Little did she know that she was spared some harsh language only because I thought she was too stupid to argue with.
I went to another AT&T store ten miles away, where it took all of two minutes for the person to hear me out, tell me she couldn’t fix it there, and write down the phone number I needed to call. Which I did, and got a prompt answer and a prompt fix.
She obviously thought I was just a clueless old guy, too stupid to have a smart phone. Little did she know that she was spared some harsh language only because I thought she was too stupid to argue with.
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I’m hoping after your problem was solved, you memorialized the resolution and added a description of the service you’d received from her, dated and timed. Then hand delivered it to the manager of the store which employed her.
Years ago I ditched cable for AT&T UVerse. It was a good product, and I was happy with it, but twice over the period of two years they snuck an expensive sports package onto my bill. Both times I had to go to an AT&T store to get the charges removed and they could not provide a reason for why the packages had been added. I’m fairly confident they were running incentive promotions giving staff bonuses for each customer they signed up and some staff member was surreptitiously adding the additional services to customer’s accounts to earn extra money. Like me, some percentage noticed, but how many did not?
About 5 years ago I ditched UVerse for Sling and will probably cut the cord completely soon and ditch Sling.
Earlier this year, I had an issue with transferring my license for Norton Antivirus from my old Mac to my new one. I reached out to Norton for online help via their chat function. I granted them control of my computer to run their uninstall script on the new computer… and it completely shut down access to the internet on that computer. Which also severed my connection to Norton Help via their chat function. I did a complete backup restore. Norton called me back and said “we can fix this, let us try again.” They tried and again completely shut down internet access on the computer. I did ANOTHER backup restore. They called again and elevated me to second tier support. I asked him what he was going to do and when he said “run the uninstall script” I hung up. After a week’s worth of experimentation, I discovered that their uninstall script was deleting their own files in the wrong order, thus locking up internet access. I taught myself how to manually remove Norton Antivirus, and then downloaded a competitor product. I will never look back.
Art Deco: No, I didn’t, I’m half-sorry to say. I thought about it but just didn’t want to bother. I was in the store once some months later and she was not there, and I suspect it wasn’t just because it wasn’t her shift.
Postscript, regarding my use of the word “slovenly”: I have pretty low standards about dress and such and wouldn’t have thought much about it if the girl (I can’t help calling her that–not sure she was past twenty) had been tattooed (up to a point), pierced (up to a…point), wearing decidedly non-dressy clothes, etc. But she somehow managed to look almost dirty. “Slovenly” is the best word for it. Surly vibe didn’t help at all.
I spent many years in our corporate technical services. Usually by the time the trouble ticket got to me there was a very, very upset internal customer. One of my bosses called me the “designated spear catcher”. One wise guy hung a picture over my desk of General Custer stuck full of arrows. Har har.
Come on, cut to the chase, Chases.
Did you get the girl?
Or not…
One of the most important processes is AOG (Aircraft on Ground). Parts are supposed to be en route within two hours. Any technical issues interfering with that got people hot and spun up pretty quickly.
Strongly advise everyone to somehow some way keep track of when all these subscriptions and contracts end because that is how they get you when the promotion ends and suddenly your bill is much higher than before when you did not asked for any of it.
Cell, cable, streaming, satellite radio among others do this all the time. Precautions need to be taken to avoid this.
I’ve got my whole ‘I don’t know if I can afford to continue’ spiel down pat for when I call these people right before the contract is set to end and voila suddenly my ‘promotional’ plan is renewed for another year.
On the other hand:
Sent an email to local govt regarding tree service.
Guy knocked on my door less than an hour later and took care of the problem. He happened to be in the neighborhood.
Full disclosure, when I contacted them earlier this year, took a month or so to respond.
Used to be a chain of big stores around here, Fry’s electronics. Similar to Best Buy, but better.
Anyway, calling them would always get a real person answering the phone. Kind of un-nerving, actually. Sometimes momentarily at a loss for words due to surprise.
Postscript, regarding my use of the word “slovenly”: I have pretty low standards about dress and such and wouldn’t have thought much about it if the girl (I can’t help calling her that–not sure she was past twenty) had been tattooed (up to a point), pierced (up to a…point), wearing decidedly non-dressy clothes, etc. But she somehow managed to look almost dirty. “Slovenly” is the best word for it. Surly vibe didn’t help at all.
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Again, a proper supervisor would have sent her home and put a letter in her file.
My guess is that part of it is companies trying to get away from phone support in favor of online or chat/text etc.
“Anecdotal” example: I have a subscription to satellite radio and found out I had been mistakenly overpaying for years. I tried calling and faced the same problems, long hold times, accents etc. But one of them suggested I go through the website. I did so and soon got a full refund, a not inconsiderate sum.
Not suggesting this is a panacea but phone support is probably the least, um, “cost-effective” from the corporate POV.
Consumers used to be a respected group. Now we’re all just pawns to be played with and discarded.
Art D: “Again, a proper supervisor would have sent her home and put a letter in her file.”
Supervisor did not know of the incident. She and I were the only people in the store. As for appearance and attitude, I’d be very surprised if the company put up with that for very long. I’d be even more surprised if she didn’t provoke complaints from people who aren’t as easygoing as I am.
Not exactly customer support, but today I called to make an appointment for a referred procedure my primary care physician ordered (a routine colonoscopy screening). Called the provider at about 4:10pm. Was routed to the “Scheduling Team” almost immediately where I was placed on hold for the next available scheduler. At precisely 4:30pm the hold music ended and I heard a recorded message that normal business hours are 8:30am to 4:30pm and that I should call back during those hours. The call then ended. Which is nice.
The hardest thing in the world is trying to set up political ads on Facebook.
I am running for office in a small NY town and need to run ads for my campaign as they are the cheapest and one of the only ways to advertise hyper locally.
I am not a tech dummy. I buy and sell stuff online and have been doing so for years. I have never experienced anything like the problems with FB political ads.
At one point you have to upload your driver’s license and then they SNAIL MAIL you a secret code so you can get to the next step.
There is ZERO help. It’s like dealing with the nastiest, most FU robots in the universe.
If anyone out there knows the secret of FB political ads, please tell me.
Thanks.
I put Epson on my do-not-buy list after my printer stopped working because it was programmed to do so after a set number of prints, supposedly because the waste ink tank was full. I installed (non-Epson) software which I found online, which let me keep printing. I also found (non-Epson) instructions on emptying the ink tank (which I never did). Eventually the printer died completely. The ink tank never overflowed.
It seems that there is “Indian English” and “American English.” Indian English literally puts the accents on different (wrong) syllables. And sometimes they talk fast and act like you are slow if you don’t understand them.
I like the idea of asking for American agents. I once had an Indian Dell agent who didn’t seem too hot, so I asked for an American. He said there would be a longer hold time for that, but then his service improved and he solved my issue.
I recently spent way too much time with Amazon, trying to do something which took five minutes to do in the past. (Someone gifted me e-books, which I wanted to return for credit without them knowing.) I like to use chat, because it’s all in writing. After being passed around like a hot potato, I gave up and told them off. The worst thing I said was calling them bastards, but I told them I wouldn’t say what I wanted to, because it was obscene.
It occurred to me after I disconnected, that if you ask for a supervisor you should verify that the person they give you *is* a supervisor.
Also had an experience many years ago, the first of three incidents where AT&T tried to cheat me. They finally did what they were supposed to do, after I yelled and swore at them.
Some of the bad service does seem to be on purpose. My husband had a lot of issues getting rid of WinZip. He cancelled it but they billed him anyway. He had a cancellation confirmation and everything. I looked this up online and found that it happens all the time. I got in touch with the credit card company, told them what happened, and mentioned that apparently this happens a lot. They took the charge away immediately and it hasn’t happened since.
I found a photo of the store clerk with whom Maclin Horton had a run in:
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https://www.tvguidetime.com/people/hannah-gutierrez-age-birthday-wikipedia-who-nationality-biography-132019.html
She and I were the only people in the store.
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Her entire shift?
but today I called to make an appointment for a referred procedure my primary care physician ordered (a routine colonoscopy screening). Called the provider at about 4:10pm. Was routed to the “Scheduling Team” almost immediately where I was placed on hold for the next available scheduler. At precisely 4:30pm the hold music ended and I heard a recorded message that normal business hours are 8:30am to 4:30pm and that I should call back during those hours. The call then ended. Which is nice.
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See Mr. Griffey on his adventures with his GP during COVID.
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https://davidgriffey.blogspot.com/2022/01/what-our-doctors-office-said.html