Customer service my ass.

[MIButterfly]

What passes for "customer service" these days is a joke, only I'm not laughing. First, you have to listen to the automated voice ask you what you want so they can direct your call to the proper individual and the automated voice doesn't understand a word you say, so you have to repeat it three (or more) times. Or you have eight buttons to select and none of them pertains to what you're calling about. When you finally get through to a person, they have an accent so thick, you can barely understand what they're saying. Then they put you on hold with the most god-awful music you've ever heard in your life, which they jack up as loudly as possible. Or else they have a recording with the god-awful music in the background that repeats ad nauseam how important your call is to them and that you can find the answer to your question on their website. In other words, don't bother us.

It seems like all of this is intended to have us get frustrated and hang up and leave them alone. And that's customer service.

I'm not sure which forum this rant should be in. Let me know if I'm in the wrong place.

[Sneederbunk]

1. Obviously, you should tip more.

[unblock]

2. You forgot they disconnect you 20 minutes into the call

And when you call back you have to start all over.

I also love giving my identifying information to the automated system, and then again to the human.

Yes, it's entirely deliberate. They know how to provide good customer service, but they make more profit if they can discourage calls from reaching humans, or from achieving the customer's desired results.

It certainly discourages complaining about a matter of just a few dollars if it's going to take an aggravating 20-60 minutes to only maybe resolve. And that's money they get to keep even if they're entirely in the wrong in the first place.

[barbtries]

6. definitely part of the plan.

speaking of which, I'm sure my medical insurance provider is having AI deny claims. i'm curious whether they have included this unearned income in their financial reports. someone wants a fat bonus for thinking up this way to avoid paying valid claims.

they are deliberately wearing us down.

[Irish_Dem]

3. Insurance companies have been doing this with providers for decades.

They hire people of limited verbal and intellectual ability who cannot understand anything
and have no interest in paying providers the money owed to them.

[Midnight Writer]

4. "Customer service call centers" are not designed to serve the customer.

They are in place so the company can claim they have a customer service call center to serve the customers.

It is window-dressing: part of their sales pitch.

Face it. If they cared about customer service their call centers would be adequately staffed by real people with the expertise and training to solve your problem. The system would be efficient and painless to the customer. They know how to do it.

All the run-around and rigmarole are part of a psychological ploy.

[Oeditpus Rex]

8. 'Better living through technology'

"Better living" for the bosses, not for you, and not for the people working the phones at the call centers, often in India or wherever. (At least they're employed, vut I can't imagine many shittier jobs. Their turnover is staggering because they quickly get sick of being yelled at for stuff over which they have zero control.)

The OP didn't say what type of business frustrated them, but I'd guess it's almost certainly a for-big-profit one.The only automated answering systems I've dealt with in many years are my PCP's office and my pharmacy, and I've had no real complaints about either except for that one guy at the clinic who runs his words together. I don't even bother with consumer "help" lines because I learned long ago they're rarely of any help.

[MIButterfly]

9. Actually, today it was Build-a-Bear, but it pertains to any business that I've tried to call

in the last 20+ years.

[barbtries]

5. bots.

the scourge of the 21st century.

i often end up yelling at the bot.

customer service!

Human! I need to speak to a human!

Let me talk to a person

believe it or not, sometimes they understand and the bot says, okay. I think you want to speak with a representative. Is that correct? Say "yes" or press ONE.

frustrates the holy shit out of me. maybe some day someone will do the math and we'll know exactly how much of out time has been wasted chasing after fucking BOTS.

[thucythucy]

7. Another wrinkle to all this:

"contact us" or "customer service" links that connect you to a website where you're supposed to post about the problem, the idea being that some other customer who was able to fix a similar problem will reply with their solution. In other words, the company is outsourcing "customer service" to the general public.

Or: you get directed, and only directed, to a list of videos that are supposed to help you deal. Except they bear little or no relation to the issue at hand.

All of it to maximize profits. Welcome to the Brave New World of vulture capitalism.

[OrwellwasRight]

10. This is 100% due to economic concentration

If companies actually had to compete for customers, at least some would compete on the basis of superior service. Others would learn they lost customers due to poor service and they’d try to improve. But they don’t have to compete. There are essentially 6 airlines, 6 banks, 1 cable company (per community), 3 cell phone companies, 1 gigantic online retailer, 1 payment processor (PayPal, which owns Venmo by the way), 3 credit card companies, etc. they know you have few choices. So they don’t give a rip. They don’t have to. Biden was (albeit slowly) starting to deal with this. Now we are sunk. Trump likes monopolies. He has stopped all progress Biden started.

[Totally Tunsie]

11. Ah yes...PayPal, the founder of which is none other than Peter Thiel,

friend and financier of the Repug party. He's since sold out, but this was once his "baby" and helped to make him the rich bastard that he is.