Five Priceless Tips to Prevent Call Center Derangement Syndrome
whether someone is for you. With a tech support call, you have eight seconds.
Your decision will determine whether your problem will be solved by an experienced, customer-attentive agent or not solved by an uninterested, unmotivated one. You’ll want both a technical wizard and a person who conveys clarity of expression, patience, persistence, resolve and diligence.
While it’s better to make the decision as quickly as possible, if you’re unable to make it in the first eight seconds, then make it in the first five minutes. If after five minutes you’ve gotten nowhere in solving your problem, say, “Thank you, I have to go now,” and start the wretched process over again, rather than lose even more precious minutes of your one and only life.
How do you make a snap decision based on one sentence at the other end of the line?
B. WHAT TO AVOID
Here’s what you don’t want to hear at the other end: someone who sounds tired or fails to speak up (mumbling rather than stating clearly, “Hi, my name is Sylvia . How can I help you?”) If what you hear is, “himynameissylviahowcanihelpyou,” Sylvia may be insufficiently awake, alert or communicative to be of any assistance. On the other hand, if the agent sounds overdosed on uppers and ready to speed over to a high school football pep rally — “Hey! What’s happenin’ today, dude?” — he or she may be too pumped to address your profoundly tedious issue.
C. WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR IN THE VOICE AT THE OTHER END
What you do want to hear is someone alert, awake, confident, and focused.
RULE 5: WHAT YOU CAN ACTIVELY DO TO MAKE THE CALL GO BETTER
A. LISTEN FOR AND THEN USE THE PERSON’S NAME
If you miss it the first time, just ask, “Did you say your name was Barry?” Once agents hear you using their names, it tends to instill a higher degree of motivation to do their best.
B. YOUR GOOD MANNERS AND PATIENT ATTITUDE WILL PRODUCE A BETTER RESULT AND WILL DO SO MORE QUICKLY THAN A SOUR OR CRANKY ONE
Try not to begin on the wrong foot. The person you’ve reached did not cause your problem. Someone in his or her company may have done so, by constructing a device in such a way that your problem could all too easily arise (after all, it did arise), but don’t hold that against the agent on the line.
You’ll have far better experience if you begin with a greeting such as, “Hi, Sylvia, How are you?” and then a quick sentence of self-introduction. You could say, “I’m usually good at tech issues but today I’m up against a problem that’s beyond me. I need your help.” Or, in the alternative, “I’m a techno-failure and I really need your help if I’m ever going to talk on my cell phone again.” Things go better if you sound like a real person, not just a problem with an angry voice attached to it.
C. KNOW WHEN TO CUT YOUR LOSSES AND HANG UP
If the agent is reading from a poorly-devised script and keeps repeating the same lines even after you did what you were told, and have clearly stated that the suggested action didn’t work, it’s time to say goodbye. When you ask, “Could we try something else, please?” and the answer is a robotic re-reading from the same script, cut your losses and say, “Thanks. I have to go.”
If you cannot understand what the agent is saying, this is not a shortcoming that’s going to improve in the course of a single phone call, so ring off and call back. It will save time.
D. IF YOU GET GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE AND GOOD TECH SUPPORT, DO THIS
Take one extra minute and ask to speak to the agent’s supervisor to tell the supervisor what a great job the agent has done. Your words of praise will be added to the agent’s personnel file, and you’ll have made the supervisor’s day: normally, they only hear complaints.
A BLESSING IN DISGUISE
With a modicum of patience, good manners and clear communication you’ll (a) achieve the goal of solving your technical problem, (b) have the best-organized sock drawer in your zip code, and (c) have contributed a positive comment to the agent’s personnel file. Who knew that three such delightful benefits could flow from a single technical glitch?
Why, with enough calls to tech support, by the end of the year you could get your entire home and office whipped into shape — and who says you can’t do thigh lifts and push-ups while waiting to hear the agent’s voice?
Don’t think of your next glitch as an undeserved punishment. It’s a priceless opportunity.
—Belladonna Rogers
Send your questions about personal, political or cultural matters, or anything else that’s on your mind to Belladonna Rogers at advice@pjmedia.com . All correspondence with her is confidential, and all names, locations, places of employment and ages of the parties will be changed to protect the privacy of the readers who write to contribute questions.
Having worked at a call center for a Big, Brown, Package-moving company for a number of years (including as a supervisory facilitator for teams which serviced the firm’s most important accounts) I know what good customer service is (as I understand it, after I left, their call centers were all outsourced to India).
The points made above are all exclelent, especially Rule 5D: “IF YOU GET GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE AND GOOD TECH SUPPORT, DO THIS
Take one extra minute and ask to speak to the agent’s supervisor to tell the supervisor what a great job the agent has done. Your words of praise will be added to the agent’s personnel file, and you’ll have made the supervisor’s day: normally, they only hear complaints.”
Keep in mind, however, that call centers operate under a set of target parameters, including call time. The idea may originally have been to provide customer service, but typically, the goal now is to “process the call” as quickly as possible, and hope for the best.
First, be sure to get your agent’s name and (if available) extension, along with those of anyone else with whom you speak. There will be a file opened with your information, as well as an attached record of calls and transactions, which allows review if you are disconnected (or if the agent is bucking for dismissal and hangs up).
There are good agents (mebbe even in those centers in India); I coached many such. But they are gonna do their best to settle your inquiry in as brief a time as possible, preferably according to some by-the-book guidelines which may guarantee that they pass internal quality monitors, but not necessarily resolve the specifics of your problem. In the event that your agent appears incapable of resolving things to your satisfaction (though you should ALWAYS allow them the opportunity to do so), you have every right to escalate the call to their supervisor (though call escalation is typically discouraged). Unlike the rank-and-file agents, supervisors have the option to revisit issues and call back customers to ensure complete resolution of complex issues.
Just make sure that the agent knows you’re not escalating to complain (unless, of course, you are); simply explain that you desire to speak with someone who possesses the authority to go outside the box. You can even praise the (limited) help you received, when speaking with the supervisor, if you thought that the agent did their (limited) best.
In the event that the supervisor fails to resolve your issue, remember that there is a chain of command, and that they, too, have a supervisor, one who is less likely going to want to waste time stringing you along. That first supervisor is going to be reluctant to send you up the chain, for that very reason, and may also come up with some additional resources, first, if you allow them to.
Just remember that front-line agents have limited options, and little room to work beyond those boundaries. If you are told that the agent “cannot” do what you desire, escalate. But your agent would likely much prefer to succeed (and receive your kudos) than to tell you “no.” And, when all is said and done, if anyone manages to resolve your issue, assuming that they did their best and didn’t mistreat you, then a final escalation to their superior to pass along those kudos will help to reinforce that kind of helpfulness for later customers. =^[.]^=
Call time is the easiest thing to measure and permits mediocre management to evaluate employees on that basis.
An anecdote. My daughter used to work for a call center. Thanks to the frustrating nature of the menu system, many of the callers she handled were pre-pissed off. She was praised by her supervisors for the patient way that she resolved their problems and gave the callers correct information. Unfortunately, she averaged more than the target time to resolve those issues when callers had complex problems. After receiving praise but no raises or promotions through several cycles, she started using the stop watch function on her cell phone and hanging up as the target time approached. She was soon promoted to handling the calls that were escalated to resolve the problems that had been mishandled by the front line people who said anything in order to complete their calls within the target time. Her new job came with a raise.
My comment will infuriate readers. My nephew in Australia told me this at Christmas. His company hired a call center to do their customer service calls. The call center manages their employee hiring to have an average wait time of 22 minutes. In the name of efficiency, they make you wait. They chart call volume , and hire accordingly.
Amazing. They must be thinking of the other meaning of ‘service’.
Actually, my better half is a tech support manager, so I’m somewhat familiar with the constraints involved.
Like many other customer-facing jobs, tech support’s resource demands are “clumpy” — you’ll get very few calls for hours, then thousands over the span of minutes. Depending on the product, it’s typical to surge each day as each time zone begins work, takes lunch hours, or settles into a particular activity. If you’re running a call center, you cannot double the size of your staff for the first 10 minutes of every hour — you have to accept a hit to your average wait time.
In order to minimize frustrating wait times, sometimes the simplest method is to just call when few other people are calling. Just like dining at popular restaurants at 2:30 can allow you to be whisked to a table, calling at unpopular times can get your call answered briskly.
I’ve had a moderate amount of success lying to the robotic voice about why I’m calling. As soon as possible, I say I’m calling about adding a new service. That can get you through to a human being about as fast as anything can.
I’ve had fair success saying nothing in response to all prompts. The robot asks you to repeat, you say nothing, and often it will say, “okay, I’m connecting you to a live operator.”
Our bank (one of the top three) has a feature whereby you can engage customer service through a chat line. Very efficient, quick & easy. I would love to see this become a trend. I have no idea though how cost effective this is compared to having call centers providing the services.
I’ve personally solved 95% of my issues with just about any piece of technology or equipment by doing a Google search on the issue. Chances are, someone, probably lots of someones have had the same problem as you.
In the few cases where I couldn’t find an answer in one of the forums, when I submitted a new topic I had numerous suggestions within an hour.
You shouldn’t even think about calling tech support until you’ve exhausted this:
http://xkcd.com/627/
Belladonna Rogers – You had me chuckling all the way through your posting. I have frequently experienced just what you described. Indeed, yesterday I had the need to call one such place, and got the “Your call is important to us … ” message (and if it really was, why weren’t you answering it?). Well, I held on for ten or so minutes until I got the ‘piece de resistance’ message: “We are sorry, we can’t answer your call righ now, all our representatives are busy, call back later.” They didn’t know that from the get go?
Some companies have several different groups, depending on how complex the problem is. If you get to the place where your service rep is repeating the same steps you’ve already done, he may be at the end of his script card. You can often move on to more experienced personnel by asking to speak to their “Tier II” or “Level II” support team. I suspect that some of these guys answering the phones are actually trying to learn the system so they can move up to the higher levels of tech support.
Waidmann
Keep pressing zero- many times this will get you to a real person. Good luck from there.
Most companies counter this behavior with an auto-disconnect in my experience.
Dell right now has great follow up, and they actually listen to you, but the accents are so strong they’re very hard to understand – but the script reading is the *worst*. It is so insincere and flat and just the opposite of charming.
“I understand X is the concern you are calling in about today and I agree that X is a valid convern to you (While giving it all the gusto of a dead fish that reminds you they very much do not think it’s valid. it’s just a script.)
Of all my experiences with companies, the worst mistake is the one you make where you think they see you as anything other than a number or a dollar sign.
As a commenter pointed out above, if you want to connect fast, call in to add services.
You can do an easy search for live human phone numbers on Gethuman.com – it’s a really useful research. Good for companies who try to hide their contacts to save time and money.
If the customer service person is not able to help you, don’t hang up (as advised above). Instead, ask to be connected to their supervisor – after thanking them for their assistance.
Typo – ‘useful resource’ (wish pjm had an edit button).
Thanks for the great article. From my standpoint, 5.B. is the most important point. “Try not to begin on the wrong foot. The person you’ve reached did not cause your problem.” It’s discouraging to get a call from someone who’s angry at you for something you didn’t do. The Help Desk guy on the other end of the phone is going to be my team member for the next few minutes as both of us work to solve my problem. He’s my best friend in the world during that time, so why would I want to make him feel bad? He probably gets way too many calls from angry people anyway, so if I’m friendly and upbeat, then he will be more motivated to help me. My goal during the call is to make my new friend laugh. Being Mr. Nice Guy has gained me access more than once to the high powered programmers in the back room who don’t have to read from a scripted response book to fix my problem. In the end, everyone ends up having a good time, and my problem is solved without raising everyone’s stress levels. I never considered talking to the person’s supervisor to give them a good review, but that is an excellent idea.
I don’t know about making the customer serv. rep. laugh, but if show them I’m human (yeah, hopefully w/a sensa hooma) they *will* respond to that by being human too. It’s a fact — you CAN hear people smile when on the phone b/c it changes how the words come out.
My son worked in a call center for yrs. w/a major cell carrier, working his way up to highest level (altho not programming). Imagine you’re calling in and get him. What follows is a true story; pretend this was his last call right before you. Can you blame him then for being bemused and a bit upset? (You’ve seriously gotta have the right personality for call center work)
After the usual “hello, what’s your problem?”
Cust: I need to activate intrnt’l calling.
Son: I don’t believe that’ll be a problem sir, pls. let me check your calling plan. (after slight pause) Yes, we can do that, but there will be an addt’l $__/mo. for as long as you need this feature.
Cust: But I only need it for 1 month. I’m going out of the states. Can’t you just set that up?
Son: No sir, but you can call back and deactivate it after you return. I’m guessing you’ll be on vacation — where are you going?
Cust: New Mexico.
Son: (pause) Ah, you must mean Mexico, sir, b/c you don’t need intrnt’l calling for NEW Mexico. Your current plan will still work fine.
Cust: No, YOU don’t understand! I need intrnt’l calling. I’m going to New Mexico!
Son: Sir, N.M. is within the United States. Your current plan will cover any & and all calls.
Cust: You dumb @*&#^$! I’m going to f****ng N.M. to GO ON A f****ng CRUISE, and I need intrn’l calling!
Son: A cruise? In N.M.? (pause) There’s no need for cursing, sir. I’m only saying there is no NEED for intrn’l calling plan in N.M. I’m trying to save you $$!!
Cust: You @*&#^$*@&#^$@*&#^$! Your parentage &^@&#%^! How ’bout you #*&^%#&#^$^@&#!
Son: Thank you for calling, sir. Have a wonderful time on your cruise in N.M.
D.D. that’s hysterical! My aunt lives in NM and gets this type of thing all the time! Although I’ve never heard anyone claiming to take a cruise in NM!
Hiya, CI,
I know, absolutely, this sounds like some “urban legend” that my son or I made up; but he called me the evening after this happened and told me, almost word for word (the conversation went on *much* longer than stated above, that’s just the jist of what was said). He was pretty upset, and wondering how many abusive idiots a day he was supposed to tolerate for VERY low wage. Shortly after this he got a diff. job. He’s still in cust. serv., but for a new comp. with better policies re: swearing customers.
Of course, these days — Mexico? NEW Mexico? eehh, almost 1 & the same … (esp. when our govn’t takes into huge consideration anything Mexico has to say; they send us their worst and when WE won’t take care of them, they try to sue us!)
The options are limited, but one way to strike back is to go out of your way to do business with companies that have good service, even if it means paying more. Apple is a good example. I always get a knowledgeable human being who actually solves my problem. Bottom prices mean no frills.
But when you have no choice, having a task handy to complete while you’re waiting is the best thing ever.
With some companies (Hughes Satellite is one), the trick is to learn the ropes so that you know the right things to say to get forwarded to the actual help desk in the States, after they make you go through the script-reading call center in Asia. Those poor folks have no authority to help you. They just have a horrible job that I hope lets them feed their families, because they serve no actual function but to weed out customers by frustrating them, thereby lessening the load on the real tech guys.
Isn’t there supposedly some universal code you can key in that automatically gets you a live operator? I usually just say “operator” or “agent” in response to any question and then I’m put in holding pattern for that — not that the wait time is less, though.
I’ve learned to make these calls when I know I’m going to be home for a while. I just put them on speaker, and do what I would normally do until someone picks up.
As much as I loathe what passes for “customer service” these days, I’ve learned that the key to efficient service is being so disgustingly nice to the person on the other end that I make myself feel slightly nauseous. God knows they’ve been dumped on all day long, and sometimes a little extra friendliness goes a long way, even if you have to fake it. Of course, afterwards, I have to cuss like a longshoreman just to get my blood pressure back down.
I’ll be testing these this weekend. The kidlet received a tablet computer from the grandmother. He’s overjoyed at the techiness of it. She’s thinking he’ll sit quietly at a dinner table, if he’s wreaking angry bird veangeance on foul pigs. I’m not seeing any upsides, around here. Well, the tech support for AT&T is really great- they’ve always been super-helpful problem-solvers, after that first five minutes of chinese food menu options; press one, press two, speak your problem, etc….I got to hear about one guy’s clothesline, and turtle in his garden, and some other guys’ charity work. And, problems solved in one phone call.
I am grateful the spouse buys particular name=brand stuff, if the service has been good in the past. AT&T, Ford Motor Cars, Best Buy, Gamestop, Barnes and Noble, Academy Sports, Castle Dental….
AT&T? They’re the Worst. Ever. Except for maybe Virgin America. Maybe they’ve gotten better, but I paid to dump them and switch to Verizon last year. I couldn’t take the blatant lying from their customer service staff.
Virgin America is the worst, though. I WISH they’d outsource their call center. Then maybe I’d get an agent who could spell a name correctly. Otherwise it’s the crowd that spells “Sean” “Shawon”. Try dealing with a misspelled name on an airline ticket sometime. Good fun.
I’ve been using AT&T for many years and almost always have gotten pretty good customer from them. Hughes Satellite used to be the absolute worst, but they’re improving a bit.
A local hardware store here has a phone message that goes: “Your call is very important to us . . . OR IS IT? BWAH HAH HAH!” It wins point with me. I find it easier to accept mediocre service if they at least don’t lie to me about it.
Nice! I’d give ‘em points for honesty, too.
I am actually quite happy with AT&T Cellular as well (from what I understand, land-line, Internet, and Cell are completely different businesses). I usually call them about non-technical questions, though. The wait is short, and the resolution has always been satisfactory.
A couple of other points. First, have all the necessary documentation handy – you don’t want to have to call back if they ask for, say, a serial number, and you don’t have it. Second, have a blank piece of paper handy. Write the agent’s name down, and you may also need to write a ticket or transaction number down. Third, I read somewhere that if you get an overseas call center, you can request to speak to someone in the U.S.
Finally, I arrange my spices by category – baking, savory, Italian, Indian – not alphabetically
I’m giggling — does anyone actually arrange a spice rack alphabetically? If they really USE it daily? I use the system you do, sorta. What I use most is within the easily grabable reach. Everyday cooking stuff is on a little step thingy (so I can see everything); most baking stuff is in cabinet right above, b/c I don’t bake every day. I hate spice ‘racks’ as they inevitably get grimy, greazee, sticky, and look like poorly-built cr@p in short order. Same w/having spices in a cupboard — in the middle of cooking, if you need to get into cabinet, now you hafta clean up the handle and surrounding area. Do that often enough, you have no varnish/paint.
You mean there are people who don’t arrange their spice racks alphabetically? We have a set of three large shallow shelves (maybe nine linear feet in all) and spices A to Z — precisely because we use them daily and don’t feel like hunting for them.
D.D. and texan99:
Years ago I read that — here’s a blast from the past — Martha Stewart alphabetized her spice drawer. Of course, I never did it, but as I was writing this blog and trying to think of something that might be a chortle-worthy task, I finally found a use for Ms. Stewart’s harebrained idea.
Can you imagine needing salt and pepper (not an unusual combo) and first having to find salt between “sage” and “savory” and then having to hunt for pepper between “parsley” and “pickling spice”?
It’s not for nothing that this parody of Ms. Stewart was written, and included in its contents was a Martha recipe for how to make your own…water:
http://www.amazon.com/Martha-Stuart-Living-Tom-Connor/dp/B000F6Z6KI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330566637&sr=8-1
One of my pet peeves. When you call the non-profit I manage during work hours, a real person usually answers. Yes, with only six people, we can have too many out or tied up, but we try for live answer. I will link to this from my Old Jarhead blog.
Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
All royalties go to help wounded veterans
For a free PDF of my book, write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com
It pains me to defend the big evil call centers, but having worked at many there actually IS a method to the madness. In the company’s view, a rep sitting there who is NOT taking a call is money pouring down the drain for them. They COULD hire enough people to have your call answered by a live human being on the first ring, but that would greatly increase the cost of your service. Do you want to pay $10 a month for your checking account for this? No, me either.
We all hate the voicemail hell. But unfortunately, in this era of specialization each department handles a different issue. The only thing more frustrating than listening to a big list of options, none of which pertain to your issue, is waiting on hold for 10 minutes only to have me tell you “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to speak to the credit department for that” and being transferred to another hold line for another 10 minute wait.
I know I hate the recording telling me “many of your questions can be answered online.” Yeah, well mine can’t! I already looked! Don’t you think I checked your website BEFORE I decided to waste my time on hold? But when I worked in a call center, I got loads of “what time do you close?” “what’s the phone number for my local store” “where do I mail my bill” calls. Those waste everybody’s time. I once had a supervisor question what the heck was happening with all those calls we were getting that weren’t being logged in a customer account. We told her those were all the transfers to other departments, hang ups and stupid questions. That’s a lot of money for calls that the company can’t even quantify.
Funny story about hold times. One day, way back in 1995, I was working as “queue master” (Not a real job title. Just what we called the person monitoring the center stats on a monitor) and counting down the minutes till my 1:00 lunch break. Suddenly, we were slammed with calls. Our average hold time (which was under a minute) skyrocketed. Every single operator was on an active call. The president of the company was standing over my shoulder sweating bullets. I was worried I was going to miss lunch and I really wanted to clock out at 1 to hear them read the OJ trial verdict. Then it went dead. No calls holding. 100 operators sitting idle. Apparently, everyone in America was rushing to see the verdict too. Never saw that happen again.
I understand the connection between low costs and not having a human operator sitting idle half the day just to be sure no one ever has to wait for one second on hold — but there’s a big difference between waiting a minute or so and getting stuck there for 30 minutes, even assuming you don’t get disconnected repeatedly, and that’s before you even consider the appalling waste of time many companies are willing to inflict on you even after some poor sod picks up the phone. It’s like the difference between having one or two people in front of you at the supermarket checkout, and seeing a line that snakes around the block. I try to quit doing business with any company that can’t manage its hold times, just as I wouldn’t shop at a supermarket that expected me to stand in line for an hour. I feel I should patronize the businesses that figure out how to do it right, even if it means paying a bit more. If a company tries to rival the experience of hanging out at the DMV, I’d just as soon see it go out of business.
As much as I’m not a big Comcast fan, they do have a good feature. They will take your info, keep you in line, and call you back when your turn is near. More companies should do the same thing.
That is a good feature. A local gas company does the same. Much preferable to waiting on line.
Brilliant!
I always say, like one of the previous comments, that I would like to add a new service, bingo you get a person and they tell you that you pushed the wrong number and get you help very quickly. They don’t want to be on hold either.
Also try this, it works GREAT: http://www.nophonetrees.com
Or you can clean your fountain pens while you wait.
I thought the idea of these centers was to make callers give up and leave the supplier alone.
Excellent advice as always on how to deal with what I find to be another scourge of the modern world.
20 years ago I used to provide technical support for a software company – so I paid my dues, and saw my share of stupid clients… And maybe it’s nostalgia, but I think the CSRs were more intelligent and less scripted then.
My two pet peeves with today’s call centers are having to enter phone, card number, etc. into the voice system, only to repeat it to the live person. That sets me on the wrong foot (“my telephone is the same as the one that I entered in your IVR system. It didn’t change in 10 minutes that I was on hold).
Second, constant “we apologize for the inconvenience”. That usually means that the person has no clue, and fills the pause while searching for the right script.
And then of course, the situations when the agent doesn’t understand what you are asking, and can’t admit it, and answers the question that he does know. As somebody explained, level 1 are all “freshers” (Indian English for rookies), and they don’t know whether they *should* know it or not.
Probably the worst customer service is Tracphone or Net10, they’re the same company. Their customer service is in India or possibly a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan. Their CSRs start out by introducing themselves as “Steve” or “Mary” but it’s obvious that they’re really Rashid or something. You can never get the problem you are calling about solved. If you ask for a supervisor it seems that they put you on hold and have a different CSR pick up. They will not solve the problem either. They will tell you things that are patently absurd like, “it is technically impossible for us to port your old number to your new phone” or “the reason you cannot call out is because your phone is obsolete.” If you are brave (or foolish) enough not to hang up on them, they will hang up on you. When you call back you will get a new CSR who will tell you, in Indian accented English, “Hello my name is Arthur, how can I help you?”
I think the reason they keep their CS in India is because it is too far for any customer to go and commit murder.
excellent advice and the comments are very helpful too. I try not to add too many links to my favorites list, but I just added three. I learned most of these points by dealing with Intuit Quickbooks over the last two years. From Intuit I ultimately learned the following lesson:
While I would prefer to use their software and do it myself, is far more cost effective to hire my tasks out to local professionals who do the individual tasks I need accomplished. Why – because time is money. I don’t have to buy the software and updates every year (hundreds of dollars) and then when problems inevitably come up, I can get immediate friendly service instead of Raymond (aka Rashid) running an update and diagnostic test that eats hours upon hours of wasted time without EVER solving ANYTHING.
I have since hired a local payroll service AND a professional bookkeeper (real people who answer their phones) who save me endless hours of time and frustration because they know what they are doing and they do it right the first time – as well as being great resources for the tough questions that go beyond the software. It seems like more money up front, but it is far cheaper in the long run. Adios Intuit.
“When you hear the inevitable announcement about continuing in Spanish, try not to re-examine the entire political controversy over whether the United States should be a bilingual nation or solely an English-speaking country.”
Too true and too funny!
Great column, Belladonna! Comprehensive, funny, wise, practical…
The article touched on two of the Three Big Lies of voice menu systems: “Your call is very important to us” and “Our options have recently changed”. The other one is: “We are experiencing unusually heavy call volume”.
WordPerfect used to have a system that could estimate, to within a few minutes, how long you’d be on hold. They also had a “hold jock” who handled the music-on-hold like a radio station.
I believe Microsoft did the same way way long ago.
My very favorite recording went something like “If you want accounts payable, press 1. If you want receivables, press 2. If you want sales, press 3. If you have a rotary dial phone, press 4.”
I often field calls from collection agencies (J-1 students from some place overseas, usually) (What sort of fool sells something on credit to a temporary worker from Khazakastan?). After they ask for the person by name, they go to the above “/your/ call is very important to us”.
I have a bit of fun with them when I have time.
But, so far as I can tell, the only purpose of the phone trees is to discourage people calling for any reason. The ones who stick through it are the ones representing wealthy customers they can make lots of money from, everyone else stops calling.
Great article one of the real banes of our times.
I stay on hold, then hand the phone to my wife when a human comes on.
They ask to speak to me, she tells them He cant talk to people like you.
You’ve done a fantastic job on this subject!
Great column, Belladonna! Your advice is excellent, and I love your suggestion to recite “Jabberwocky” when the computer asks the customer to describe the problem. Now I can’t wait to hear Sanjay a/k/a “Sam” on the other end ask if I’ve tried restarting my computer yet and whether that made my toves less slithy.
The only issue I might interject is how one deals with one’s second (third, fourth, fifth or sixth) service rep, AFTER the advice given by the first one (or five) has proved utterly useless or even made the problem worse. Because at that point, one is usually so angry that it becomes difficult-to-impossible to suppress a scream. Is it useful to mention one’s frustration and anger to the next service rep who answers the phone when one(inevitably) has to call back for better advice?
My own technique in this area was honed after more than 100 phone calls I had to make in a mere 1-month period to Verizon and Google technical support to set up a personal website and e-mail. (P.S., worst consumer experience of my life.) Based on this experience, I can confirm that, yes, it CAN be helpful to mention one’s frustration and anger caused by prior reps to the new rep, provided, however, that one does it calmly, and maybe with a polite request that this rep will try harder.
I found that giving this schpiel to my new reps caused them to be more sympathetic, patient, determined to find the right solution even if it meant spending more time with me, and trusting (in that I was being honest about my feelings, but also obviously trying hard to control them). Whether it made the reps any more COMPETENT I can’t say; but for that, I’m afraid one may need to speak with a supervisor, divine intervention, or both.
http://www.justluxe.com/syndicated-news/cid1734581/Belladonna-Rogers
“You won’t hear silence. Instead, you’ll be treated to the most jarring, brain-jangling jingle ever recorded, played on a sadistically endless loop until you finally do hear a human voice.”
You left out the jarring, EXTREMELY LOUD sequence of touch-tone noises then followed by something done with tones and a drum machine they try to tell you is music.
I don’t think there is a single person who cannot relate to this! I shall be trying these tips next time I find myself wanting to throw the phone out the window
. This is the reason why call centres should on hire experienced, friendly, well-trained staff! and if they don’t have enough staff to NOT keep people on hold..then outsource (not offshore) to a professional company..or hire some more agents.
What I find most annoying is that they’ll interrupt the hold music to remind you that you’re on hold. Don’t interrupt the music to tell me things I already know.