Kevin Drum and Bruce Bartlett bring up something that drives me crazy. Because of a multi-decade corporate funded PR campaign, we believe that all government bureaucracy is corrupt and impenetrable (frustrating and impenetrable to be sure) in a way that doesn't exist in the private sector because the market disciplines them. Not so. Companies seem to engage in conscious parallelism to give terrible customer service and try to keep from resolving the issue by hiding customer service numbers, making you go through minutes of prompts before you get someone on the line, then that person often doesn't speak English clearly or must simply follow protocols, etc. Compare that to corporate bureaucracy, which is frequently set up explicitly to help customers as little as possible without losing them. Wait times are long, and this is deliberate. Support is outsourced to undertrained call center workers in India solely to save money even though it increases frustration. Corporate rules and penalties are handed down as gospel, and nothing a customer says can change them. Try arguing with an insurance company sometime. They make even the chronically understaffed IRS look like a Swiss watch. This doesn't apply to all companies, of course. For starters, this is mostly big company behavior. And some companies genuinely want to provide good service. But not many, and competition obviously doesn't change this. In some cases (cable providers, insurance companies) you're stuck with them no matter how bad their service is. In other cases competition doesn't matter because customers have no real way of judging service before they buy something. And in yet other cases, companies in similar industries have entered into a toxic equilibrium where all of them offer lousy service in identical ways. I'll bet that most of us spend way more frustrating hours on the phone with banks and cable companies than we do with the IRS or Social Security.¹ We just remember the battles with government bureaucrats more sharply because—let's face it—they often matter more. But that doesn't mean the government folks are any worse. They're probably not. Corporate bureaucracy is the worst bureaucracy - Kevin Drum
I like it when a young man somewhere in New Delhi answers the call by saying “Thank you for calling (insert company name), this is William speaking, how may I help you?”
Exactly! Not saying the foreign call centers cannot be helpful, but it takes longer and doesn't usually have the ability to handle complex situations, and there is no way around having to go through all that for hours before you knew someone who could address a complex situation
I would love to see a study done on the average time it takes to get a new cable account set up, as opposed to shutting one down. Just from my own experience, I would say 3 to 4 times longer, with a lot more problems.
After going through the press a button menu, getting transferred a few times, followed by a please hold, then a dial tone. Good times.
As with anything, it is more a function of the quality of locally trained employees. There is a very large IT and IT infrastructure industry in India, as well as several good universities for this area. Everytime I call Microsoft and get "Hi, this is Bob from Texas" (code for, xxx from Bengaluru), that usually goes well. However, when I tried to deal with United Health Care after less than 5 minutes I told the very nice, but ill informed woman to just forward me the US call center so I can talk to someone who knows what I am talking about.
It's more about call quality and pay than anything else. The US carriers now have the ability to provide good call quality for personnel based in the Philippines or India, and at the same time pay them about a quarter of what a US based individual would expect. Don't worry though, AI will take care of everything.
I am not even necessarily suggesting the representatives you get in a foreign call center are not as capable in diagnosing the issue, given sufficient training, but they are usually given a very limited set of protocols and not full background or full power to resolve the issue. Add to that the language barrier and it is just a recipe for frustration
I work in IT and we use AT&T for some things. I occasionally have to call them/enter tickets and I can confirm that AT&T is the WORST company on the planet. Two thumbs down, would not recommend.
Just last night i had an overseas customer service rep. It’s as much the failed nuances of conversing. i.e. as I explained my issue, the rep repeatedly interrupted with “mmmmmmmm.” Like they were told to give feedback of pretending to care, but didn’t quite understand when it should be provided. It was quite obvious. And quite annoying.
“I understand you would like a representative. But please tell me a little more about your issue so I can connect you to the appropriate department”.
Called adapt health this morning about a double bill. I called 3 times because my question about a small bill was never answered. Sounded like an Indian accent person all three times. It was obvious after the 3rd call they don’t know the answer. So now I’m trying to figure out who I can talk to in person who can answer my question. I’ll pay the $30.64 bill even though I haven’t received anything for it because I don’t need it going to collections. I’m looking for another supplier that doesn’t use adapt health for billing. Sucks that I have to waste my time on the phone over a simple question. Edit. My insurance company answered my question. Geewiz I wish the other people would have.
