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Vanishing phone customer support is driving us all insane
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/07/phone-customer-support-disappearing/
XanaDUer2
(10,327 posts)And total bs. I dread any type of interaction now
mucifer
(23,367 posts)I work for a small local non profit hospice. Some of the vendors will only let us order things online so they can hire as few people as possible and we do their work.
We have to put in online accounts which takes time. In the past we could call and make orders. If there is a problem and we do call we have to be sure we are in a place where we can multitask because it is at least a 20 minute wait to answer the phone.
Also, the fact that local pharmacies are horribly understaffed sucks a lot of everyone's time.
True Dough
(17,090 posts)the elevator muzak, playing over and over and the repeated assurances that my call is important!
wnylib
(21,146 posts)are so ridiculously laughable because of the obvious disregard for the callers in the 20 to 30 minute wait. Or, would be laughable if not for the aggravation, frustration, and unnecessary delay to the customers.
A large part of the problem is that companies hire call centers to handle their customer service calls. Call centers often handle calls for several companies, or "clients." The call center employees have to follow a script for each client company. The employees might know nothing about the company outside of the script in front of them, so if you ask them anything not in the script, they can't answer you. If something goes wrong, like accidentally dropping your call, they don't care. They have dozens of others to answer.
Companies hire call centers to do their customer service because they want to save money. If they hire a company to do it, they pay a flat fee. If they do their own in house customer service, they have to hire, train, and retain employees, plus give whatever benefits the company has for its employees. They'd rather reduce customer service calls to automated script responses from people who don't have a clue about their business.
Eventually, companies lose business when their calls are handled by people reading scripts who don't know the business. That's especially true of companies that do online sales through their websites or via catalogues. When people can't get reliable answers to their questions, they move on to another brand, another website. Then the companies switch to another call answering service or they go back to providing their own in house customer service. In the end, the amount of business that they lose through impersonal, scripted customer service is not offset by the money they save from hiring a call center. After all, they have to pay call centers, too. They think that it's cheaper to do that, but in the long run, it's not.
Irish_Dem
(45,616 posts)They seem to want to discuss things only via the website email.
Hard to get a person to actually talk on the phone with us.
cilla4progress
(24,585 posts)locals?
Irish_Dem
(45,616 posts)For example, if I call a restaurant to enquire about catering, I am told only the owners
can answer questions and most times I do not get a call back from them.
Or I am told there is not enough staff to answer questions or do catering anymore.
I did find one restaurant which was helpful and my daughter is going to check it out for dinner tonight.
But that was only after a couple of days of dead ends.