Companies are slowly learning that those infuriating automated phone trees aren’t the answer to their customer service problems. Some experts even claim that automated systems anger customers. The New York Times decided to trace the history of the hated trees, while wondering if things will ever change.
It all started in the ’80s, when corporations birthed the phone tree out of a desire to cut costs and, understandably, gain some distance from their outlandishly outfitted customers. They took the need for space too far, even as America cleaned up its act, forgetting that bad customer service is a bad business decision.
“I’ve listened to thousands of people interacting with machines,” Mr. Rolandi said. “You hear sighs of resignation. You hear people swear. If businesses knew what I knew, they would not design them this way. Many people do not take into account the emotional state of the customer. When you call someone for customer service, you’ve got a problem and you’re probably in a bad mood. You hear someone telling you your call is so important that we won’t let you talk to a human. Then they slap people with too many options, and eventually, you’re in a fight with the system. When you do get a customer representative, you’re loaded for bear.”
The popular conception of outsourced call centers ruining our lives isn’t quite right. Fewer than 10% of call centers are based offshore. As Americans, we can all be proud of the more than 100,000 call centers we host, excluding telemarketers.
The Times thinks the tide is slowly turning in our favor.
For the first time, American corporations are acknowledging “customer service as something worth paying for rather than just red ink,” said [Jon Anton, director of benchmark research at the Center for Customer Driven Quality at Purdue,] who looks at call centers worldwide and, using a number of criteria, compares how well they work. “If you can satisfy customers and keep them buying, it’s as important as marketing.”
He said that in the last year or so some large companies have been creating a chief customer executive, whose success is measured not on profit, but on customer retention.
Another reason for this change is that the very technology that is driving us crazy is helping people fight back.
Consumers are posting their experiences with customer service online and warning people away from businesses that do not offer a good follow-up with customers. Secondly, there are Web sites that tell customers how to get around an automated system.
The Times cites Netflix as one example of an enlightened company switching its emphasis from automated support to well-trained, empowered call centers. We’ve lauded Netflix before, but don’t know of many other companies that are cutting down phone trees in favor of quality support.
What do you think? Are companies slowly improving their service, or are consumers just getting better at biting back?
Far From Always Being Right, the Customer Is on Hold [NYT]
(Photo: Getty)
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I mash buttons until I get a real person then make them transfer me to the appropriate department. Of course at my work transferring a customer involves me yelling out pick up line 1.
Bohemian writes:
The voice recognition stuff is even worse. Like I want to start saying random words out loud while out in public.
Oh, so you’re one of those people shouting their problem into their phone in cafes? Why should anyone else have to participate in your getting your broken refrigerator, or whatever, fixed? Could we please just read the paper in peace?
@RvLeshrac: Apple provides great support – if you buy AppleCare, and as long as you don’t have a REAL issue, such as the poor quality of their MacBook Pro and iPos screens.
You get AppleCare free for 90 days — with the same quality of service as people who pay for it. And you can choose to extend it by paying for AppleCare for three years…if you wish. If not, well, you take your chances.
I’ve had Macs since 1985, and that one I got back then is still working (my friends’ kid plays on it in Italy). AppleCare has saved my butt countless times, and they’re great and very helpful, and the one time I had a problem, I asked for a “Frontline technician” (I think that’s what I said — or maybe a supervisor) and they overrode the first technician’s assessment pronto.
@Amy Alkon: Where did you get “in a cafe” from that statement?
My father-in-law has a rotary dial phone. Well, he acts like he does, anyway. Gets him to a human faster.
and why do I have to “press 1 for english” ?? Can’t that just be the default?
saying random words out loud while out in public
Maybe you’re shouting into your phone while in Staples or in the grocery store?
The above statement you made suggests you conduct your complaint conversations with these companies while in the presence of a number of other people.
Or has the meaning of “public” changed since yesterday evening?
I work for a human backed IVR company. That’s right, humans sitting at computers interpreting what you say and giving you the appropriate (9 out of ten, at least) action.
Say you are calling your phone company, and you need a repair. You say, “repair” or “my phone isn’t working” and you get put into a repair tree, and asked specifics about your phone problem. Once the specifics are out of the way, you are either given instructions on tests you can do yourself (free) before a repairman comes out (not free).
It can be funny when the wrong person gets stuck in the wrong tree. We hear it all. We get acid laced F bomb laden tirades, to confused little old ladies.
But it’s a fun system to work.
I work at a Teleperformance center for Verizon, and I’ve had people tell me it took them 20 to 45 minutes to get through to me when there was zero hold time to get to my department.
@ghost77: I used to work tech support and billing for a phone company and we felt your pain when it came to the IVR. When they rolled out the “input your account number” feature in the IVR they didn’t test it very well, I guess, so we rarely got the account number or it was truncated or whatever. I’m sure it’s amazingly frustrating for a customer to have to give that information again, but it was just as frustrating for us not to have it and get yelled at about it multiple times a day. If we could’ve changed the IVR, we would’ve, trust me.
@homerjay: How about this – get off the phone while you’re in the car. You’re a danger to yourself, your kids, and anybody else unfortunate enough to be on the road with you.
Wow, there’s people that get to hear the all the cruel, brutal, and disgusting stuff I say to Microsoft Bob? That’s frightening and funny at the same time. I hope somebody got a good laugh out of it.
Verizon has TERRIBLE customer service but, at least in my experience, the linemen are pretty competent and will work with you.
Apple was great, both on the phone and at the Apple Store. They replaced my MacBook battery 1.5 years after I bought the laptop for free because it was from a defective lot.
My company also has the rotary-dial option to get to a receptionist to break from the tree. Granted, we don’t have 10 billion people calling a day but we do have a CS staff on-site who knows what they are doing.
I hate phone trees. The worst I’ve ever had to deal with was Virgin Mobile; I’d decided that the pre-paid phone was costing more more per month than a standard plan so I wanted to cancel. It took me TWENTY MINUTES to finally get the stupid phone tree to connect me to a person…then I got the hard sell about keeping the account.
A note: I had to call ING Direct to ask about their CD accounts and got a person after 2 rings. I was so surprised it took me a few moments to respond to the CSR.
Our billing department got a phone tree not too long ago. On the positive side, the very first question is…
“Press 1 for a representative. Press 2 to go through our automated system.”
I *heart* USAA for letting me talk to a person in under 30 seconds. Cox Communications was almost as good; most hold times when I lived in Las Vegas were under 5 minutes.
The company I work for has a large call center for tech support and we make it a goal to keep the average hold under 5 minutes. For the last month or so, we’ve had it down to under 2 minutes to get to a tech. We’ve long realized that a good call center means more support contract renewals, more product sales and a better revenue stream. Too bad a lot of other companies haven’t figured out that support, techincal or otherwise, is much more than a cost center.
When I run across an Automated Voice System, I just start saying, “Agent” over and over until the system gets the point and sends me to a real human being.
Apple phone reps are perhaps the best in the business. I guess that’s where the extra money you paid for that Macbook Pro goes to, and I’m glad. I noticed some companies are starting to understand the concept of good customer service. Last time I called Chase and Time Warner Cable I had to fight less through phone trees.
If any company reads the article, the moral is, the money you spend in marketing is better off in customer service. You’ll get more customers through good word of mouth than annoying advertising.
“Citibank when you activate any of their cards requires you to call them so “Phil” in India can sell you “Identity Theft Protection.”
Yes…..and do you know why they want you to “activate” your card on your home phone number? So their CallerID system can activate it and forever associate that phone number with your name. These credit card companies use products from companies like Axciom to trace your every electronic move.
Read this and never call ANY 800 phone number from your home number again:
[www.acxiom.com]
[www.acxiom.com]
In my current job we support the telephone systems and back end computer integration for a large number of call centers for a big company (not outsourced, btw). Part of our responsibilties include helpdesk type support for our (US based) outsourced IVRs. Any specific customer complaints are researched (couldn’t authenticate account information, etc), because we want to make them as user friendly as they can be. Plus at around 1 million calls a day we want as many customers as possible to successfully complete their calls inside the IVR.
Having said that, if you really want to talk to a live person for just about every application that is out there if you say “Representative” or press zero at any point it will take you out of the IVR and send you to an agent. The only time this is not true is if the area you would be transferred to is closed, or you are using one of the one or two applications that do not have agents to service them. But those applications are targeted to very specific groups, and they know ahead of time that they would have to call another number for a representative.
As far as having to repeat your account number to the agent after you’ve entered it into the IVR – that’s really poor customer service. My company ensures that on most of our applications (for about 98% of our callers that opt out to an agent) you don’t have to repeat this information. This is the advantage of CTI (Computer Telephony Integration). It allows us to pass the infomration that has already been collected by the IVR and send it to the agent. In our case the agent will ask a security question or two and continue to assist. All of this is assuming you authenticated in the IVR of course.
.
@Invalid_User_Name:
I wouldn’t need the products from Acxiom to do that. You could use an existing customer database and pull the ANI (caller ID) from the inbound call and update the database. Of course you have to assume that they are really calling from home or your screw up your database. If your authorizing/activating a card you could compare the ANI to the number you have on file and refuse to activate the card I suppose, but that just reeks of bad customer service to me.
Most banks and credit card companies want your home phone number as a part of doing business, so – for banks anyway this falls under the revised requirements set forth in the anti-terrorism legislation that came in wake of 9/11. I believe it was a part of the Patriot Act, but I won’t swear to it.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be scared of, they have it already. But I will admit that I’m a little jaded when it comes to telephony technology, so maybe I’m missing your point?
I think companies just don’t know how to cost it out, so they just try to minimize spending on it. If someone came around and gave the sort of fuzzy math/motivational speech about inbound customer service that they used to convince companies to install data centers and build out websites, things would probably improve, but I guess the sales angle just isn’t there.