🤣

I still chuckle when I think of Penny Arcade's AT&T customer service droid ...

AT&T is like my least favorite company to have contact with. We've wasted so much time at work on the phone with those clowns, and same for friends who deal with them.

you guys really are spoiled little brats - i work in cs almost all my life; the only real thing about customer - cs relations is that it is a vent for little people who want to feel big and important, mostly are just little rats, sometimes lying rats;
i would expect anyone to first do 5 years in cs before even uttering a word on this;
and read this a few times before you answer, in my experience most do not even interpret correctly what i write before they answer and describe their weird fantasies about cs (which is kinda perverse imho anyway) and how i am a bad cs-guy;
get real - theres people on the other side too and that has both up and downsides;

mrau wrote:

you guys really are spoiled little brats - i work in cs almost all my life; the only real thing about customer - cs relations is […]
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you guys really are spoiled little brats - i work in cs almost all my life; the only real thing about customer - cs relations is that it is a vent for little people who want to feel big and important, mostly are just little rats, sometimes lying rats;
i would expect anyone to first do 5 years in cs before even uttering a word on this;
and read this a few times before you answer, in my experience most do not even interpret correctly what i write before they answer and describe their weird fantasies about cs (which is kinda perverse imho anyway) and how i am a bad cs-guy;
get real - theres people on the other side too and that has both up and downsides;

Thanks a lot for pointing out exactly what is wrong with a lot of Customer Service departments - no respect whatsoever for the customer except considering them pots of gold that fill the bank accounts - unfortunately you seem to be part of the problem.

yawetaG wrote:

Thanks a lot for pointing out exactly what is wrong with a lot of Customer Service departments - no respect whatsoever for the customer except considering them pots of gold that fill the bank accounts - unfortunately you seem to be part of the problem.

thanks for confirming what i said

mrau wrote:

you guys really are spoiled little brats ...

Insulting people isn't gonna help you get your point across.

oerk wrote:

Insulting people isn't gonna help you get your point across.

which again proves my point, see? probably not ;]

mrau wrote:

you guys really are spoiled little brats - i work in cs almost all my life; the only real thing about customer - cs relations is […]
Show full quote

you guys really are spoiled little brats - i work in cs almost all my life; the only real thing about customer - cs relations is that it is a vent for little people who want to feel big and important, mostly are just little rats, sometimes lying rats;
i would expect anyone to first do 5 years in cs before even uttering a word on this;
and read this a few times before you answer, in my experience most do not even interpret correctly what i write before they answer and describe their weird fantasies about cs (which is kinda perverse imho anyway) and how i am a bad cs-guy;
get real - theres people on the other side too and that has both up and downsides;

Oh REALLY????

Problems I have had with CS, biggest first.

1. A CS ticket is made and they tell you that somebody will call you within 24-48 hours. NOBODY EVER CALLS!!!!!! I've had this happen with almost every single company I have had to put in a request with. Trying to get a response is like trying to find a piece of hay in a needle stack

2. ROBO email repsonses. Fill out a CS support ticket form and no matter how much information you include, a robo response comes back.

3. After the robo response. When you finally get in touch with a real person, you have to repeat absolutely everything that you put in the original request. Then, even it you have gone through all the troubleshooting steps and more, they still respond with what looks like scripted questions/solutions even if you have specified that you have already done those steps.

I could list a lot more things, but that would take up a few more pages of what is wrong with CS in general. I have been fulltime in IT for over 10 years and the amount of disdain of customers by CS in general is absolutely appaling.

Now, there are some companies that generally do CS very well, but the majority of them basically need to completely revamp their entire CS branch or go out of business completely.

I worked CS/TS when I was younger and, from my perspective, I consider dishonesty to be the primary problem in both directions. The agent and customer have to have a certain level of trust in order to accomplish anything, and any time that trust is undermined it poisons the relationship.

Having been on both sides of the desk, I feel qualified to offer my input as to the reasons why CS generally sucks. Usually, it is some combination of the following:

1. Churn & burn: experienced CS / Tech Support reps are constantly moving out of the desk because it is not a career position. You, as the customer, are constantly dealing with an endless stream of green, inexperienced techs. Enjoy, since this will never change, management doesn't want it to.

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.

3. Requirements to push things on the customer that are completely contrary to providing a good support experience: example, upselling the customer on some service instead of focusing on fixing their problem.

I don't see any of this changing. This is why customer service sucks. Even in non call-center environments, these still apply just slightly differently.

Customer service(especially the technical ones) has more or less been forced into the present unfavourable situation by the needs of the modern world, i.e a demand for quick(if not immediate) response and resolution.

In earlier times when life was a lot less complicated than now (say 20 or 25 years before), normally the local service guy was directly contacted for attending any issue with a particular product or for providing a service. Let's forget the software products & services for a moment. Depending on the guy's availability, you will know for sure when the problem is going to be attended and may even get immediate & proper/relevant technical feedback. Mind you, the number of products in those times itself would have been very less and probably be of better quality too with potentially less issues in comparison with majority of present use&throw products. Further not every family had those products too leading to a relatively small number of complaints. Most of the products were luxury and there were alternatives to them, i.e. less dependency on those products. They didn't need a lot of services too which they mostly managed themselves.

Fast forward to now, the ratio of the number of service guys to the number of (failure/problem)-prone products/services upon which our life depends 🤣, has gone up such that a buffer in the form of customer desk/service had to be created between the service providers and the service seekers. This is especially so for software products/services and its inherently large no. of problematic scenarios. Customer services also serve to protect the service tech from pranksters and more importantly, wastage of their time. Needless to say, the no. of service centers/tech also depends on the profitability of the business.

The main function of customer desk is to pass on the information to the concerned and frankly, expecting anything more from them will always gonna lead to disappointment. Now if the service guys are all busy attending issues, you can't really fault them, maybe the company. Unless the company does something about the design of the product for potentially less problems or increase the number of service guys in that area, nothing is going to change much. It maybe better to avoid the product/service offered by such company. It is only a problem if the modern service tech, now isolated from general public by means of customer desk/service, are sitting idle even when there are numerous pending service calls.

cyclone3d wrote:

Now, there are some companies that generally do CS very well, but the majority of them basically need to completely revamp their entire CS branch or go out of business completely.

Thing is, many companies don't even have a proper CS branch, since it's much cheaper to just contract a 3'rd party CS provider. Most of the time these providers are paid primarily for the amount of cases/calls received and quality/cases solved is secondary.

I worked for UPS UK a while back and basically got fired because my calls were taking too long.
My TL was always pestering me on how I would try and solve problems with shipments when "the system is showing that its OK and on its way!", when I could see perfectly from the tracking info that the system is showing bullshit and it's lost somewhere in a warehouse.
Also how I would "send too many messages to warehouses", as if there is another way to tell them they have a package lost somewhere...

With that said, there is often the issue of the customers themselves. Around half of my calls would start with the caller talking to me in a condescending, passive aggressive manner.
At least several times a day someone would resort to insults or actually threaten kill me because it's apparently my fault that Apple is too cheap to pay for pre-noon shipping and they cant wait that long to get their iphone or whatever.

cyclone3d wrote:

Oh REALLY???? […]
Show full quote

mrau wrote:

you guys really are spoiled little brats - i work in cs almost all my life; the only real thing about customer - cs relations is […]
Show full quote

you guys really are spoiled little brats - i work in cs almost all my life; the only real thing about customer - cs relations is that it is a vent for little people who want to feel big and important, mostly are just little rats, sometimes lying rats;
i would expect anyone to first do 5 years in cs before even uttering a word on this;
and read this a few times before you answer, in my experience most do not even interpret correctly what i write before they answer and describe their weird fantasies about cs (which is kinda perverse imho anyway) and how i am a bad cs-guy;
get real - theres people on the other side too and that has both up and downsides;

Oh REALLY????

Problems I have had with CS, biggest first.

1. A CS ticket is made and they tell you that somebody will call you within 24-48 hours. NOBODY EVER CALLS!!!!!! I've had this happen with almost every single company I have had to put in a request with. Trying to get a response is like trying to find a piece of hay in a needle stack

2. ROBO email repsonses. Fill out a CS support ticket form and no matter how much information you include, a robo response comes back.

3. After the robo response. When you finally get in touch with a real person, you have to repeat absolutely everything that you put in the original request. Then, even it you have gone through all the troubleshooting steps and more, they still respond with what looks like scripted questions/solutions even if you have specified that you have already done those steps.

I could list a lot more things, but that would take up a few more pages of what is wrong with CS in general. I have been fulltime in IT for over 10 years and the amount of disdain of customers by CS in general is absolutely appaling.

Now, there are some companies that generally do CS very well, but the majority of them basically need to completely revamp their entire CS branch or go out of business completely.

first of all, unlike the first guy who answered me, you use arguments, give examples of what you mean, that is precious and makes sense when comparing points of view - thank you; at the same time it is one of the primary problems with spoiled brats - "you actually signed the contract stating so" "but still i deserve more, your service is bad if you don't give in" - if this is not juvenile then what is?

1. we have that too, most often this comes from multiple factors together - very many incoming calls, too few agents - bad planning by the supervisors, bad use of available technology and workforce (the multibillion company i work for still does not have proper tools to make callbacks quick and efficient); i have had days where there was constantly 30-40 people in queue during an 8 hour work day; bad numbers given out by customers - yes this happens more often than most will admit, but undeniably this can be proven when we listen to conversations after a complaint (the agent you're speaking to is around the world and does not really know what prefix you have); if additionally a customer did not keep us up to date with the company's contact info change this leads to no callback; sometimes people are 3 times in a row not ready to take the call - this also leads to no feedback (yes there are pretty low limits on callbacks, i got myself a little hint from my supervisor too one time, that i make a lot of callbacks for one single case, obviously this can end badly); bad quality of voice connection also leads to this - digits get lost or wrongly understood - this is often the case when i talk to germans, where 2 and 3 are somewhat similar, but when i ask explicitly people actually get pissed of and i'm not supposed to piss them off so i stopped asking more than 2 times; the biggest factors are 1. agent stupidity 2. bad tools ("don't you dare criticize company's software solutions" - i even got one reprimand for this) 3. bad communication between departments ("don't you dare...")

2. yes this is kinda dull, it serves 2 purposes though - you have a confirmation that the message arrived where supposed 2. it informs of requirements for the processing of the request which quite often helps to answer faster with less message ping-pong - what it could do is immediately inform of a given ticket number, sometimes this is faster when talking about the case, but this depends mostly on the person

3. that sounds idiotic, but i can imagine a company doing that, it has nothing to do with the person you speak to, if that person omits steps because the information is given, she would get a lower score (yes, really, but it depends on the company) - we have one partner for technical stuff whose service does this

disdain - not really, most people though will complain about an agent and not the procedure/company, hence the agent is forced to go exactly the way the company wants and be careful and distanced towards the customer, otherwise both customer and company are unhappy with the agent and he loses his job - isn't that kinda obvious? - pick a side to survive 😀

cs done well - who would that be? can you give examples?

Oh REALLY???? - yes really - you want to be treated more humanly, but forget there's a person on the other side of this trying to get by, keeping their job by doing things like the procedure says, like the machine he is supposed to be;

one more thing you just kinda don't want to see - companies don't thrive on quality service usually, but on cheap service - you're fighting cs people while it's the company who actually f*cks you

gdjacobs wrote:

I worked CS/TS when I was younger and, from my perspective, I consider dishonesty to be the primary problem in both directions. The agent and customer have to have a certain level of trust in order to accomplish anything, and any time that trust is undermined it poisons the relationship.

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?

@snorg - absolutely right you are, the fact that the customers don't see this makes also for bad communication and mistrust still making it worse;

@gandhig - agree, one thing is true also - the backoffice tech guys do have less work than us on the frontline so to speak;

@Munx - as if you were sitting right next to me at work 😁

mrau wrote:

first of all, unlike the first guy who answered me, you use arguments, give examples of what you mean, that is precious and make […]
Show full quote

cyclone3d wrote:

Oh REALLY???? […]
Show full quote

mrau wrote:

you guys really are spoiled little brats - i work in cs almost all my life; the only real thing about customer - cs relations is […]
Show full quote

you guys really are spoiled little brats - i work in cs almost all my life; the only real thing about customer - cs relations is that it is a vent for little people who want to feel big and important, mostly are just little rats, sometimes lying rats;
i would expect anyone to first do 5 years in cs before even uttering a word on this;
and read this a few times before you answer, in my experience most do not even interpret correctly what i write before they answer and describe their weird fantasies about cs (which is kinda perverse imho anyway) and how i am a bad cs-guy;
get real - theres people on the other side too and that has both up and downsides;

Oh REALLY????

Problems I have had with CS, biggest first.

1. A CS ticket is made and they tell you that somebody will call you within 24-48 hours. NOBODY EVER CALLS!!!!!! I've had this happen with almost every single company I have had to put in a request with. Trying to get a response is like trying to find a piece of hay in a needle stack

2. ROBO email repsonses. Fill out a CS support ticket form and no matter how much information you include, a robo response comes back.

3. After the robo response. When you finally get in touch with a real person, you have to repeat absolutely everything that you put in the original request. Then, even it you have gone through all the troubleshooting steps and more, they still respond with what looks like scripted questions/solutions even if you have specified that you have already done those steps.

I could list a lot more things, but that would take up a few more pages of what is wrong with CS in general. I have been fulltime in IT for over 10 years and the amount of disdain of customers by CS in general is absolutely appaling.

Now, there are some companies that generally do CS very well, but the majority of them basically need to completely revamp their entire CS branch or go out of business completely.

first of all, unlike the first guy who answered me, you use arguments, give examples of what you mean, that is precious and makes sense when comparing points of view - thank you; at the same time it is one of the primary problems with spoiled brats - "you actually signed the contract stating so" "but still i deserve more, your service is bad if you don't give in" - if this is not juvenile then what is?

1. we have that too, most often this comes from multiple factors together - very many incoming calls, too few agents - bad planning by the supervisors, bad use of available technology and workforce (the multibillion company i work for still does not have proper tools to make callbacks quick and efficient); i have had days where there was constantly 30-40 people in queue during an 8 hour work day; bad numbers given out by customers - yes this happens more often than most will admit, but undeniably this can be proven when we listen to conversations after a complaint (the agent you're speaking to is around the world and does not really know what prefix you have); if additionally a customer did not keep us up to date with the company's contact info change this leads to no callback; sometimes people are 3 times in a row not ready to take the call - this also leads to no feedback (yes there are pretty low limits on callbacks, i got myself a little hint from my supervisor too one time, that i make a lot of callbacks for one single case, obviously this can end badly); bad quality of voice connection also leads to this - digits get lost or wrongly understood - this is often the case when i talk to germans, where 2 and 3 are somewhat similar, but when i ask explicitly people actually get pissed of and i'm not supposed to piss them off so i stopped asking more than 2 times; the biggest factors are 1. agent stupidity 2. bad tools ("don't you dare criticize company's software solutions" - i even got one reprimand for this) 3. bad communication between departments ("don't you dare...")

2. yes this is kinda dull, it serves 2 purposes though - you have a confirmation that the message arrived where supposed 2. it informs of requirements for the processing of the request which quite often helps to answer faster with less message ping-pong - what it could do is immediately inform of a given ticket number, sometimes this is faster when talking about the case, but this depends mostly on the person

3. that sounds idiotic, but i can imagine a company doing that, it has nothing to do with the person you speak to, if that person omits steps because the information is given, she would get a lower score (yes, really, but it depends on the company) - we have one partner for technical stuff whose service does this

disdain - not really, most people though will complain about an agent and not the procedure/company, hence the agent is forced to go exactly the way the company wants and be careful and distanced towards the customer, otherwise both customer and company are unhappy with the agent and he loses his job - isn't that kinda obvious? - pick a side to survive 😀

cs done well - who would that be? can you give examples?

Oh REALLY???? - yes really - you want to be treated more humanly, but forget there's a person on the other side of this trying to get by, keeping their job by doing things like the procedure says, like the machine he is supposed to be;

one more thing you just kinda don't want to see - companies don't thrive on quality service usually, but on cheap service - you're fighting cs people while it's the company who actually f*cks you

Examples of companies with great CS. I include great RMA service in this as well.

1. Logitech. Absolutely top notch RMA service. I've not really had to deal much with their CS side of things but that seems top notch as well. You have a broken product within the warranty period and even sometimes not in the warranty period and they will ship you out a replacement without even having to ship the broken item back.

2. Saitek. I've only dealt with them once quite a few years ago, but really great service. I purchased a used X35/X36 HOTAS setup that had the DB-15 connection on it. When I tried it out I couldn't get it to work properly. I contacted Saitek about it and they said it was because my system was too fast and to send it in and they would ship me an updated USB version. I did that and they sent me a refurb USB version. I didn't even ask them to do this. They offered.

3. Dell. Now they have their quirks, but I have been dealing with them for years and they have gotten way better than they used to be. Now I consider them top notch. I always use the online chat because it is easier and quicker. I can either have a tech come out in 1-2 days or just have them ship me the part(s) needed and do the repair myself.
I did onsite warranty repair for Dell for 2 straight years as well as some contracting work a few years after that so I know the system very well.

4. Seasonic. Absolutely astoundingly good CS/RMA. If I buy a new PSU, they are my #1 choice not only because of the quality, but also because of their CS department.

5.Cisco. I absolutely hate their prices.. but they do have great CS and RMA.

6. Visiontek. Bought a couple of refurb HD4870x2 cards back in the day for a quad CFX setup. One of the ended up being faulty. Since they didn't have any 4870x2 cards and didn't know when/if they would be getting any more in , they replaced them both with 6870s. Both of those 6870s are alive and well to this day. would be very nice if they had a bigger presence in the market.

so what you're looking for in CS is actually the readiness to spend on you?
actually i thought about less material stuff, but as an example i cannot spend more than 50-60 EUR on complaints and i always have to explain myself in writing, get an approval and sometimes explain myself yet again; additionally while i do this i'm not working towards my set goals, so if this takes 20 mins i was "idle" for that times; last thing - this actually is taken from the money that is primarily for us, the employees in that team;

@ mrau: I responded the way I did to your first message because you basically sounded like a condescending prick (and still do). I've had CS employees who sounded like that on the phone, and generally I've found them less than helpful. Moreover because I tend to be very friendly when making calls to CS: in my experience, this yields the best results with most CS employees for both me and the employee. So what I don't expect is someone with zero empathy making me feel like a moron and not listening to what I say. That kind of response is just aggravating.
It also gives your employer a bad rep as a company that can't be bothered to employ decent, friendly people for aftersales support (i.e. it disqualifies the company as a company I will bother to do business with in the future...).

mrau wrote:

so what you're looking for in CS is actually the readiness to spend on you?
actually i thought about less material stuff, but as an example i cannot spend more than 50-60 EUR on complaints and i always have to explain myself in writing, get an approval and sometimes explain myself yet again; additionally while i do this i'm not working towards my set goals, so if this takes 20 mins i was "idle" for that times; last thing - this actually is taken from the money that is primarily for us, the employees in that team;

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.

yawetaG wrote:

@ mrau: I responded the way I did to your first message because you basically sounded like a condescending prick (and still do).

and i still am, i'm the only one who dares to say in the company that they suck, this is a wh*rehouse i'm working at, you're not saying it loud, but these rules mean i;m expected to lie or ignore customers in real need - this is the reason i never work for very long and i will probably not get a prolongation in this place either (next month); that does not mean i don't make mistakes, it means i have the balls to call back and correct myself; you probably hate me for this, as it is not the humble way that you want to caress your ego, but you can't change this, even i can't and i'm not exactly worried about this - truth has a value, it always will have;

yawetaG wrote:

I've had CS employees who sounded like that on the phone, and generally I've found them less than helpful.

i'm not aggressive if you do not insult me; do not expect me to make a role play - i am not supposed to be loyal to the company or you (yes people make that claim), i will help you as much as i can because that's how i view my task;

yawetaG wrote:

Moreover because I tend to be very friendly when making calls to CS: in my experience, this yields the best results with most CS employees for both me and the employee. So what I don't expect is someone with zero empathy making me feel like a moron and not listening to what I say. That kind of response is just aggravating.

i absolutely get sentence 1 - i like that in people because it is what i would like to go both ways
i don't get part 2 - empathy is something i don't have mostly - it's a lie i have to tell, but as both sides accept it i just take it; nevertheless you do not need empathy, just a morally intact person who wants to get things done (not all things are doable mind you); sometimes i tell people no, sometimes, when they insist or comaplin i have to tell them that i forward this to get a decision - this is obviously a lie and makes me just feel bad - but you customers are part of the cause of this scenario;

yawetaG wrote:

It also gives your employer a bad rep as a company that can't be bothered to employ decent, friendly people for aftersales support (i.e. it disqualifies the company as a company I will bother to do business with in the future...).

you make the same mistake - it is almost never the agent on the phone who wants to screw you; companies had even a strict regimen on which consecutive call they would allow the agent or the supervisor to give in on the customers demands; it is all regulated; i don't know about others, for me taking 40-80 calls a day is sometimes a lot when i'm not in top shape; but it is really the environment at the workplace who make me angry and frustrated;