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Customer "service" in general

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Reply 20 of 25, by mrau

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cyclone3d wrote:
No, the only thing I expect is the CS staff to know the products they are supposed to be supporting inside-out and to be helpful […]
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No, the only thing I expect is the CS staff to know the products they are supposed to be supporting inside-out and to be helpful in a timely manner.

Most companies just hire dolts that just read off scripts and really have absolutely no clue about the products or the company they are working for.

When a company has a really good CS/RMA department I tend to go to that company when I need another product and also recommend them to other people.

Companies that have bad CS or RMA support do not get my business and I make sure to steer people away from them if they ask me for recommendations.

Cost cutting on CS/RMA is BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD.

I expect the companies I buy from to have the decency to actually support the products they sell, and to support them well. Anything beyond that is just icing on the cake and is what steers people towards recommending said companies to other people.

Examples of companies with absolutely horrible CS and/or RMA.

1. ATT - I have not used any of their services for over 5 years. Reasons:
a. Had them for cell phone service back in the day. They could not keep their crap straight. Once it took me over 3 months to get them to straighten out a bill after I called to up my minutes. Instead of just upping my minutes, they removed me from the family plan (free calls to other ATT customers), which resulted in a huge bill that they kept trying to get me to pay even after they said they would take care of it. I wasted a massive number of hours on calls with them.
b. We had DSL service from them for a second connection at a place I worked. The connection would go down regularly. I would literally have to wait on hold anywhere form 1.5-3 hours in order to be able to talk to somebody in order to even put a service ticket in.

2. ASUS - have a piece of their hardware die within warranty? Might as well just toss it in the trash unless you like wasting months waiting and back/forth shipping for them to actually get you even a half working piece of hardware. And they have a nasty habit of claiming customer damage and unless you have pictures to prove otherwise you are hosed.

3. Mediacom (ISP) Their service is pretty reliable, but their CS and billing department is from hell. I called to cancel, and they told me the date when it would be disconnected and how much my last bill was, which I paid immediately. Then I got another bill and called them up and they said they had no record of me cancelling service. Took me months to get them to stop trying to charge me for service after I canceled service from them. They even tried sending it to a collection agency... over a $9.00 error on their end. Then when I asked to talk to their legal department, they acted like I was insane.. but they did finally did drop the charge.

i'm working at this place for almost 14 months now and i'm one of the older agents there !! we were never allowed to print manuals/ take notes home to just review sometimes - of course this slows me down; at work however it's too loud and they make a fuss if i stay - yes i'm still somewhat of a dolt;i passed my first "exam" over there and got a little raise for advancing and becoming a better agent - the procedures that i'm supposed to know for this are not used, so outdated they are; how would you want to improve in such an environment? you might say that i'm just slow and not so smart, true, but this is a low paying job, people who have good memorizing skills and higher iq look for a real job;

Reply 21 of 25, by gdjacobs

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mrau wrote:

but you would suspect that this is at least forced on one part, would you not? do you think all the shitty people get that shitty job?

Sorry, I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. We had all kinds of people working on the floor, few of whom I would call "shitty". The actual cause of the antagonistic relationship between customer and agent would probably be worthy of a thesis in workplace dynamics, but lack of trust is always the resulting major barrier between customer and agent.

Have you never had a customer call where the first half consisted of convincing the customer that you really wanted to help them because they'd been blown off several times before (as substantiated by the obviously faked up notes on the account) by agents who were too concerned about call time to actually do their job? Then again, I've had countless conversations that consisted of irate/abusive/racist/drunk/high rants which pulled my overall opinion of humanity a few notches lower.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 22 of 25, by mrau

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gdjacobs wrote:
mrau wrote:

but you would suspect that this is at least forced on one part, would you not? do you think all the shitty people get that shitty job?

Sorry, I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. We had all kinds of people working on the floor, few of whom I would call "shitty". The actual cause of the antagonistic relationship between customer and agent would probably be worthy of a thesis in workplace dynamics, but lack of trust is always the resulting major barrier between customer and agent.

Have you never had a customer call where the first half consisted of convincing the customer that you really wanted to help them because they'd been blown off several times before (as substantiated by the obviously faked up notes on the account) by agents who were too concerned about call time to actually do their job? Then again, I've had countless conversations that consisted of irate/abusive/racist/drunk/high rants which pulled my overall opinion of humanity a few notches lower.

don't get me wrong, but when my employer punishes me for something, for example by giving a lower salary, i usually will avoid getting punished again - if time is that most important factor it must get cut so i could keep feeding my family; again - the enemy is not on the phone;

i had customers who i had to explain/convince before, but quite frankly i don't get them - if you call you should be ready to put some trust into me otherwise why even call? if you do not you should not call, but make this conversation in writing, so you have proof for the ombudsman or sth; if you want this case to be taken care of because it was not done properly the last time just say so - i had people tell me that they call for the 3rd time and so on, this alone on the phone is enough so i could take that case for myself (usually not the case) and see it to the end including feedback (of course not allowed to say that on the phone);

Reply 23 of 25, by gdjacobs

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snorg wrote:

2. Management by metrics, and solely by metrics: managers of call centers typically want one thing: for you to make them look good by taking as many calls as possible, this is often the only metric that matters. If you happen to incidentally solve the customer's problem, good for you. You have at most, 10-20 minutes to resolve a problem before a manager will get antsy and start pinging you to get off the phone. There are lots of technical problems that take much longer than 20 minutes to diagnose and resolve, I hope yours isn't one of them. Sometimes you get lucky and get a manager that will let the occasional long call slide as long as your overall numbers are in the right trend. Most times you will have a manager that cares strictly about metrics.

It's really awesome when they begin perverting the metrics so that they conform with the latest corporate groupthink. aka If you don't like the answers, just ask different questions. This is often used to support points 1 and 3.

mrau wrote:

i had customers who i had to explain/convince before, but quite frankly i don't get them - if you call you should be ready to put some trust into me otherwise why even call? if you do not you should not call, but make this conversation in writing, so you have proof for the ombudsman or sth; if you want this case to be taken care of because it was not done properly the last time just say so - i had people tell me that they call for the 3rd time and so on, this alone on the phone is enough so i could take that case for myself (usually not the case) and see it to the end including feedback (of course not allowed to say that on the phone);

Some people by this point have explored other options, or have given up. The people that persist are either desperate or want someone to unleash their anger on.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 24 of 25, by Errius

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Someone mentioned CS trying to sell new stuff instead of helping out. Reminds me of a woman I know who was having problems with her internet, so she called up the ISP to find out what was going on, and they tried to get her to upgrade her package - i.e. pay twice simply to get decent service. Fortunately I was there at the time so jumped in and stopped it.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 25 of 25, by gandhig

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As with everything, there is good and bad on both sides. Probably more bad on the customer service side, but more so on account of the company.

Even if the 3rd party CS is bad(not always), it is the responsibility of the company to take necessary actions to rectify that. If the company is even remotely good, profitable and ethical too(lucky to find many such companies), they are bound to take actions on complaints/feedbacks received from genuine customers about their customer support. Ultimately it is the customers that are driving their business, no amount of cost-cutting by engaging cheap 3rd party CS is going to help that and invariably in the process, lose customers and brand name. Either the company needs to review the existing procedures or change the unworthy 3rd party CS or for the better, get an in-house CS in place(atleast the big & really proftiable companies) to keep business growing. On the other hand, if profit-making is the sole motto of the company by hook or by crook, what best can you expect from them other than cheap services? There is middle-ground too, where a company(especially the startups) is genuinely unable to meet the demands of their customers due to lack of capital/funds/experience, despite marketing a good product/service. The above isn't exhaustive and there maybe other cases too.

Coming to the other side, it will certainly not harm if the customers take some time to address the issues by themselves to the extent possible by means of their own knowledge & experience. By doing so you may even save everyone's time including yours', instead of waiting for others to attend it. There is an abundance of A-Z information out there to choose from, provided you make the efforts. Granted the abundance creates confusion as to which is correct, but thankfully there are forums to take care of that to some extent. For genuinely technical issues which can't be solved, you just book a ticket with the customer service and try to catch hold of the right person(luck is a must).

You also have to consider the mindset of a good CS guy from a more humane(shouldn't we be always human 😕 ) point of view, who has to put up with a monotonous job & obscene no of calls from myriad types of customers(novice) especially due to a poorly designed product. You probably would have smashed the phone in his/her place. So it is better to avoid the bad companies, i.e. unless the offered product or service is terrific in so much as there is potentially no need for after-sales support. If each and every customer starts avoiding such bad companies, maybe they will pull their socks for the better, or worse go out of business in which case the 3rd party CS guys will unfortunately lose their job for no fault of theirs. It would be then upto those CS guys to upgrade their skills or develop new ones to remain competitive without which no one is expected to thrive/survive in this world and in accordance to modern society's expectations. Also, an extreme scenario of closure of companies would be the onset of a potential monopoly, which is bad for the customers in its own way.

You are welcome to draw your own conclusions from the mess above as per your own interpretation 🤣 .

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