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nosh:
I have faced tech-support hell with pretty much every large company I've dealt with. My mobile operator (Vodafone) makes it almost impossible to speak to a person. And they even have the ability to shitlist your number so the system just hangs up on you, regardless of how unsuccessful they have been at solving the issue.

There's something inherently f***ed up about the modern tech support system and I usually end up dealing with a series of retards, each of whom needs to be told about my woes from scratch, with a chapter added everytime about my dealings with (current_retard - 1). I eventually end up getting a split personality, one part fantasizes about beating people to a pulp with a blunt instrument and the other tries to invoke some sanity and rationalizes that it's just low paid mouth-breathers trying to make a living and whatever the issue, it's not worth getting a stroke over.

steeladept:
I eventually end up getting a split personality, one part fantasizes about beating people to a pulp with a blunt instrument and the other tries to invoke some sanity and rationalizes that it's just low paid mouth-breathers trying to make a living and whatever the issue, it's not worth getting a stroke over.
-nosh (August 29, 2011, 01:04 PM)
--- End quote ---
Nice way to sum it up.  The first half you can't help, the second half is probably closer to the truth of the matter.  Problem is, it doesn't make it any easier to deal with.

mahesh2k:
Vodafone support is irritating for sure. "Your call is important to us, please stay on the line."  :P

KynloStephen66515:
Vodafone support is irritating for sure. "Your call is important to us, please stay on the line."  :P
-mahesh2k (August 29, 2011, 05:46 PM)
--- End quote ---

Try being on the phone to Virgin Media...Fur Elise...in Monotone (Like those ring-tones you got on phones 15 years ago lol)

IainB:
I suspect that the nature of the majority of the Level 1 (first point of contact) work in customer HelpDesk/TechSupport in telcos is probably so mind-numbingly boring that the people who really could/do have the capability or technical savvy or know-how cannot put up with it for long, or are moved to Level 2 or Level 3 support before they leave. If you looked at Level 1 staff turnover statistics you would probably find that it was 20-30% per annum. So the average level of knowledge and expertise in anyone answering your customer call will likely be very low. Word gets around, and it becomes increasingly difficult to recruit people into such jobs.

If you are responsible for providing such a customer service, then what do you do under those circumstances? Well, typically, what seems to happen is that you try and automate the queue management as much as possible, because you only have (say) 3 or 4 human customer reps dealing with live customer calls. (You simply can't afford to pay to have an army of capable people available all the time, who would be sitting on their thumbs most of that time with nothing to do.) Hence those long waiting-times with softly-spoken assurances that "Your call is important to us. All of our customer support people [all 4!] are busy right now [they are!]. Please continue to hold the line and one of them will be with you soon [if you're lucky!]. Thankyou."

Sure, your call might be important, but it's not likely to be that important, is it? How could it be for the peanuts you are paying for your telephone service in what is a cutthroat business? It would be important as all hell if there was revenue/profit in handling your call, but there isn't, so it isn't.

I have worked on setting up and streamlining/operating similar call centres for clients (coincidentally, one of them was Vodafone), and I have every sympathy for all the parties involved regarding the difficulties and stresses that they face. Call centres are a real loss-maker, eroding a telco's potential profits. For this reason alone, I can fully understand why call centres are outsourced to India or to some other third-world country where you employ people for absolute peanuts if they can speak/read a bit of English and can be trained to follow a script. You can rest assured that, if a chimpanzee could do it, then chimpanzees would be employed (and for real peanuts too). All they have to do is work through the script (flowchart) for each call. The training these people are given (and the work they are paid to do) is to never deviate from the script, and never whatever they do, employ any thinking.

Generally speaking, if customers are getting annoyed because their calls are not being well-handled, then it's not the people in the call centres who are idiots or incompetent (though they might be so or might seem so if they are poorly trained for the work they have to do), it's the management of the call centers who are negligent/idiots/incompetent - because they have not implemented a better process. In my experience, most such processes tend to have a grossly unexplored potential for dramatic  improvement.

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