"Your call is very important to us" ... is it? really? If I am on hold with an airine, online purchase, warranty claim, or other phone related service call, and I hear "Your call is very important to us" more than twic, it is OBVIOUS that my call is NOT VERY important to the company I am calling, or they would
a) add more customer service agents to take my call more quickly
b) train the customer service agents they have more thoroughly, so that they ould help customers more quickly and with fewer errors, shortening ait times
c) keep their customer service call centers in a country where English the native spoken mother tongue (like Canada or the US)
d) provide a better product with a more intuitive and simple web site where customer service is not needed
My call is NOT very important to the company who makes me wait more than 2 cycle recordings. And DON'T thank me for my patience. You can only thank me for something I have given to you or provided to you. Listening, ad nauseum to the same canned recording again and again I lose my patience, aand they cannot thank me for that which I have not given.
8 years ago
there seem to be a lot of systems that have you enter/say your account #, only to have the operator ask for the same.
ReplyDeletewhenever i tell them i entered it, and why do they need it, i'm told they don't have that information on their screen.
is there really such a widespread and ongoing breakdown of coordination/persistence in these systems? is this *really* such a difficult problem to solve?
I've had the same problem. And I tell the operator ho grossly inadequate their call answering software is. Very aggravating.
ReplyDeleteheh heh, "operator ho"
ReplyDeletetyping on my tiny screened Asus E book poolside... some spelling errors will occur. =)
ReplyDeleteI have friends who are "2nd level" support state-side. basically, the companies are cheap and people no longer expect customer service. they would rather pay a "cheap" price aka wal-mart than pay fair value and get good service.
ReplyDeleteas for the phone issue.. yeah, I still don't get that. but, apparently none of the systems that has requested my acct number has provided that to the service rep. some will do a good act and say that they just need to validate my acct. number. yeah..right.
I think there is a firewall between the AUTOMATED system, and the human-operator system. If the AUTOMATED call handles the customer's needs, then fine, all the button pressing is fine. If the AUTOMATED call DOES NOT, then there's zero integration between the two sides. Rarely, is there any data transfer. Carlson Wagonlit Travel will send customer ID numbers from automated entry portal to helpful human rep, but that's an exception to the rule.
ReplyDeletethat would get me to support Carlson Wagonlit Travel.
ReplyDeleteit's my normal gripe about companies and short-sightedness. *sigh*