Over the past few weeks I've been in five separate instances where I needed a company to help me something, and I could not reach a human. Instead, I had to open tickets that went nowhere, reply to tickets via email, be told conflicting things by different people via email... It's so frustrating, and I'm sure there are others who experience this.
Part of me thinks (perhaps naively) if I had the ability to speak with a real person over the phone, we could sort this out instead of constant emails or creating tickets that go into a black hole. As more companies outsource, automate, or severely cut their customer service department, there needs to be some kind of pressure to stop these frustrating experiences from happening. Voting with our dollars doesn't work when these companies are so integrated with our lives.
What this means is that as a 0 cents customer (even if you pay them) you are completely disposable, no customer matters to them at all. This culture comes along with a cold disdain for customers and a desire to run everything off algorithms and if some people get caught up in error they just don't care. As a customer its annoying and you can loose a lot of data, but for the companies its their business model. The only way as a customer to not be in that situation is to avoid the businesses based on this model. If they were somehow forced to provide human customer support they may very well be substantially less profitable or not viable as a business anymore.
Well, that's their problem.
There should absolutely be a "right to speak with a human", like a restaurant must pass health inspections, and other such things.
If they can't afford it as a basic cost of doing business, they can always close.
> If they can't afford it as a basic cost of doing business, they can always close.
If you're not paying for a service, are you even really a customer?
Hacker News is free. Do you really expect to be able to pick up the phone and call someone at Y Combinator to discuss your Hacker News account? Do you really think it's a good idea to make this a legal right?
Or how about GitHub? If they were obligated to provide phone support to anyone with an account, their only option would be to disable all free accounts. If you wanted to use GitHub, you'd have to get a paid account.
The whole idea is ridiculous. Unless you want most of the free internet to disappear completely (or move overseas) then it's a non-starter.
Applying it to all businesses sounds like a bad idea, however. Financial institutions? Certainly. Healthcare companies? Makes all kinds of sense. But I don't see an ethical imperative for, say, Giphy (pre-acquisition) to provide that kind of support.
Why do you choose such a company to do business with at the first place?
> Part of me thinks (perhaps naively) if I had the ability to speak with a real person over the phone, we could sort this out instead of constant emails or creating tickets that go into a black hole. As more companies outsource, automate, or severely cut their customer service department, there needs to be some kind of pressure to stop these frustrating experiences from happening.
Look at Dell or HP customer service. Google, Github or Digital ocean will become the same. Yes, you will never get the product designer or systems or devops engineer from those companies. The customer service will repeat the same thing million times over. (I lost Apple account, and unlike Google, I could reach Apple but they just repeated the same thing. (i.e) password is wrong; not our problem).
Also note that if there is direct connection to devops or dev, people ask silly questions to waste time. (i.e) These companies pay just $5000 per year to run their entire business with profits 100X and expect $10,000 per month DevOps will troubleshoot their problems.
> Voting with our dollars doesn't work when these companies are so integrated with our lives.
Example please. As long as it is not w e a p o n s all is wide open market.
This 100%. It reminds me of the similar issue of zero-hour contracts and living wages. One person I know complained that putting restrictions on zero hour contacts, and upping the amount that he would have to pay workers, would mean he couldn't hire any (for his extremely early-stage startup with no investment(!)).
In a similar vein, the answer is the same -- if you can't afford to pay employees, don't hire them.
And this applies more generally than either of our examples -- if a company cannot afford to do something ethically, then it shouldn't do it at all. A business that cannot survive when forced to comply with the bare minimum of ethical practices deserves to fail. You cannot simultaneously believe in a capitalist market without embracing with open arms, the failure of companies that couldn't stick it.
So long story short he created a supply company with dedicated customer support, but his prices were correspondingly higher (those extra salaries have to come from somewhere). Most people just went with the cheapest option every time, one of the reasons that business failed.
Guaranteed.
Would the people championing this idea be willing to pay $10/month for their Hacker News account because the company was obligated to provide real human support to everyone?
Or $10/month to GitHub just to be able to have a GitHub account?
Or if you plan to start a website or internet company, do you really want to have to put your personal phone number on the project to comply with such a law?
Because when it comes down to it, people don't care about speaking to a human when they can get a product or service for less than the competition. Both corporations and consumers min/max their expenses, at the cost of service or humans.
It's one reason why I'm in favor of nationalizing things or keeping things nationalized; take away the drive for min/maxing profits and change things into a public service, and (in theory anyway) things will improve for the better.
Obviously, we need to avoid abuse especially automated abuse, and this in turn becomes difficult.
So... perhaps it makes the most sense to roll this issue into regulation against dark patterns.
Or... fund an organization exposing dark patterns and helping consumers choose companies that avoid them.
It's important to write out and acknowledge that people cost money.
You mean the zero fucks model. What they really want to do is build a money-making machine that requires no humans to operate and somehow generate MRR for them. Hey we all would like to retire some day which requires low effort MRR, but a business serving people often requires a bit more than some fancy infrastructure and a drink on the beach.
However most services you use (ISPs, consumer internet products like gmail, consumer electronics) are making a fair share of profit and attempting to a zero human approach through other major CRM/CX players to keep growing that margin.
The amount of reliance on poorly installed, and still nascent technology is staggering and leaves many consumers in endless automated loops with no hope for resolution.
Now that offices are also harder to come by, we have created our own kafka-esque situations.
It's a bit like what I imagine being inside the total perspective vortex is like.
> The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
> Trin Tragula – for that was his name – was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. She would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.
> “Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.
> And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex, just to show her.
> Into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
> To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot have is a sense of proportion.
This summarizes well why the only solution out of this growing nightmare (of accounts and data being disappeared left and right, no recourse anywhere) is through legislation. It is not possible for the companies to fix this of their own initiative.
So, while I was in another city of that country, I decided to try and handle that problem. I went to a branch and asked them to do the operation, saying that there must be a way to do it without me having to travel hundreds of km. The person absolutely refused to even try to help me. "No, there's no way to do it, you'll have to go to your branch office." I begged, I got angry. (This was after leaving this issue for a couple of years -- travel has not exactly been easy, so there are reasons I didn't manage to do it yet, and was getting desperate.) All to no avail, the person just. could. not. help me.
Fine, I left, very annoyed. The next day, I went to a different branch, told the same story, and explained how extremely inconvenient the whole thing is. I went in expecting failure. To my surprise, the person responded kindly, said "okay, I can send an inter-branch memo, I'll do the operation you pay this much, done and done." I signed something, walked out smiling, and the next business day, received a confirmation email from my branch in the other city.
Moral of the story: I completely agree with the premise here, but just keep in mind that even if you talk to a human, your millage may vary greatly depending on who you speak to and what side of the bed they got up on.
We walked into another store location. They were sympathetic to the foreigner situation, and made an exception.
Takeaway: Computers can't see that a process is flawed and go outside it when it makes sense to do so. Computers also can't provide feedback to the company that the process is flawed.
Aside:
Brazilian bureaucracies, even commercial ones are extremely unfriendly to non-brazilians:
- Poor bilingual support (EN or ES).
- Expectation of a SSN for all customers (this included booking pre-flight Covid tests).
- In many situations a foreign credit card will not work for online purchases (SSN & brazilian zip code will be checked against your card). Fry's "shut up and take my money" meme was extremely relevant here, as many times I wanted to make a purchase, but it wasn't possible to do so.
That doesn't mean it's ok for stores to require it. It's not ok.
I would much rather open a ticket than wait on hold for hours to speak with a human in a call center in a low wage country half way around the world, with whom I can't easily communicate either because they have a limited mastery of English, or just because we speak very different dialects with very different accents and have limited shared cultural context with which to understand my problem, and who has no ability to solve any problem not contemplated by their script.
Humans don't solve problems. Thoughtful humans who can understand your problem, and put in a genuine effort to get it solved, and are empowered to actually do so - those are the things that solve problems, and they're much much more rare.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXzJR7K0wK0
It goes even deeper than this. Often times when you "speak to a human", the capabilities of that human are essentially limited to just putting things into an internal ticket system. A lot of companies set up their systems this way - front end support who talks to customers and really isn't empowered to do anything, and a back office that acts on those requests (iff a request is well-formed).
Even traditional businesses like brick and mortar banks can operate this way, with your local rep at a desk calling into a call center to straighten out account issues. Regional banks seem to be the worst offenders here, having gotten large enough to implement a system but not large enough to address it's failings. So don't think that simply talking to a "person" will save you!
The other day I tried to return a Verizon Home Internet modem that I initially signed up for online. I was told after 20 minutes of waiting that they couldn’t process the return in-store and I’d have to contact online support to get a shipping label made. Keep in mind that I’ve already spent 4-6 hours with support at this point to try to get it to work.
I’m sure it’s just some marketing tactic to increase the friction of returns.
In fact, I believe flexibility can ultimately lead to even greater safety than bureaucracy, which is, as Graeber put it, active stupidity. And while aiming for stupidity might rule out some classes of errors, it definitely introduces even more of them.
Now if medical-coops would just become a thing :p
Companies that provide bad customer support just don't care. They'll provide phone support if they feel they have to, but they'll outsource it for cost reasons. Talking to people who are friendly but clueless is at least as frustrating for me as creating a ticket that doesn't go anywhere.
Me too. I think that extra frustration is partially because I know it's not the fault of the person I'm speaking to that they've been put in that position, so I feel like I have to keep my irritation to myself, which I find hard when it's the third person I've spoken to and they've asked me to describe the issue all over again. At least with written text it's easier to look back over the notes.
It’s not just the company and it’s owners who think so little of CS. Almost every caller was obviously someone with an issue and they had no problem venting their frustration at the person on the phone. I began to dread every phone call and would do all of the things I hate when calling a place. I put people on indefinite holds, I let the phones ring a little more than I should hoping they would give up and hang up etc. Worst part was a felt for these people, a lot of their complaints were valid and a lot of the times they deserved a refund etc but there was nothing I could do to help.
I’m an extrovert who loves talking with people and In my younger days I worked everything from a nasty bug ranch to construction, hard jobs that didn’t pay enough with unnecessarily mean bosses, and that month of answering phones was the worst working experience of my life. I know not every place is that level of bad but I’m not sure a number you could pay me that would be worth the stress.
The people who call into customer service are those with issues they want to have addressed. By throwing up roadblocks, you're making it even harder for them to get to a solution. They expect the people on the line to provide help, but this behavior puts them in an adversarial mindset by the time they actually talk to someone.
It does seem a like a tragedy of the commons situation here: people only have so much empathy to give, so we all individually pull back, which makes everyone worse off.
As do governments. No email address responses, no phone callback options. Messages that say “high call volume, call back next business day”.
I assume evil intent because any reasonable person would offer to respond to emails or return a phone call.
I absolutely abhor speaking to a machine via voice as well. From Alexa to saying dumb shit like "pay my bill" to a system over the phone, I will not do it. I think it's disgusting.
1. Long intro message with hours, location, website intro, email address and to hang up and call 911 if it’s an emergency
2. “Our menu items have recently changed” years after changing them
3. “We are currently experiencing higher than normal call volume” 100% of the time
4. No “other” option
5. Listing options 2, 3, 4, 5 and then the most common option “1,” last.
6. Following a huge phone menu and getting a busy signal at the end.
I could go on. There need to be legal consequences at some point just to counteract the mental instability we undertake as a nation as a result of this insanity.
Obviously it's not a perfect analogy, but having people wait in line on the phone does serve an important function for the CS department in the sense that it gives those folks an extended opportunity to either solve it themselves some other way, or give up. Neither of these are great for long term brand loyalty, and the cost of the added frustration is probably mostly borne by the hapless agents who do finally end up taking those calls. But from the point of view of short term bean-counters, I would guess that it's unlikely any of these dark patterns are an accident (even if they don't implement the patterns themselves, they would hire the consultant who "streamlines" the after-sales experience to optimize for cost).
I wish more companies did this so that I can actually get on with my day without spending it on hold.
Fortunately, for some of these systems, ignoring the menu and stating "Operator" over and over does lead to a human, when there appears to be no path through the menus to otherwise reach one. I've heard that cursing at the automated system also leads to a redirect to a human, too.
The results of this are that delivery companies still occasionally "lose" my address and tell me it's invalid and cannot be reached, despite having previously done so numerous times! I have no way to get through to the proper resources to fix their system after over a year.
Recently I had to type a number when I thought I'd been prompted to speak it, for example. Then when I did type it, there was no way to correct an error (account number & DoB, seemed like it might be critical), so I had to hang up and try again.
I reported it as a Conflict of Interest PER GOOGLE'S OWN STATED POLICY and it was rejected almost immediately. Google could find nothing wrong with the review.
We have no recourse to escalate. No way to even interact with a human about it. It's absolutely ridiculous. I have plenty of documentation and am happy to provide evidence that this is a former employee but I have no one to give it to or even a dropbox to submit documentation to.
Sundar and Google should be ashamed.
How do we or google know if he was disgruntled vs fired, how do we know if he didn't come in as a customer after he was fired and was treated like shit?
I'm imagining the situation where in your world where every business who got a bad review would be calling google. Imagine the number of bullshit calls they would get? And how much all of us would have to pay to support that?
If you want a real person to help you, pay for it. Plenty of companies are willing to sell you a service contract, even google, if you're willing to pay.
Vote with your dollars (even if the original poster preemptively tried to say why that won't work ... it's the ONLY thing that ever has in my experience)
I was recently in charge of hiring various contractors for several repairs needed on a house being prepped for sale, and in almost every case, clearly non-technically-inclined people were practically begging me to leave them a positive Google review. I don't think they would've been doing that if they hadn't experienced a direct impact on their business from those reviews in some way, and I also don't think they would've chosen this situation voluntarily.
Where did the poster say/claim this? Your entire argument is based on if they are a user of Google services or not?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_1...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_2...
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Is there a country I can go to make someone legally disappear due to an online review they posted, I have a list. Let me know
The only solution IMO is to spend more money on support, but that should be a public ranking and not a "right"/law.
As an example, in my country, one of the big banks have ads with literally 2 sentences: "Talk to human, and we have a human branch in every city." No financial advantage what so ever so it looks like this is common enough issue that can move customers in some sectors.
I've been in a situation before where an outsourced human decided the right course of action was to insult me and scream at me for an open-ended question along the lines of "I need X, (how) can your company help me with that?", which they apparently perceived to be extremely stupid. Needless to say, I decided not to continue doing business with that company.
I feel like even a robot could've handled that situation better (especially from the perspective of the company, me not getting an answer at all would've probably been the more favorable outcome).