GRIPES

[pmccarthy]

I have been thinking about how our world has turned to crap. Thirty years ago, I could ring Qantas Help or Westpac help and get straight through. Now we have technology and the internet and no one in business cares what the customer thinks. Its after 4pm, I'm reaching for the Shiraz.

[willedoo]

It would be good if some websites could make the chatbot less intrusive. I guess it depends on your particular device or OS, but on mine the chatbot pop-ups tends to cover content. A bit similar to those retail sites that have continual annoying pop-ups covering content and being an eye distraction just to tell you someone else has just bought something. The problem with it is that if you turn javascript off, the rest of the site loses function.

[onetrack]

These are some of the most infuriating "progressive developments" of our time......

 

1. Intrusive and annoying ads or pop-ups, that pop up ceaselessly, when you're trying to read an article on a news feed website. I click the site off, I don't need that kind of constant crap.

2. Indians on help desks, who speak English with an accent that sounds like they're speaking with a mouthful of thick custard. Why do businesses do this? Everyone I speak to, has the same complaint.

3. The pop-ups that Willie speak of - the ones that carry on about how Joe Bloggs from Outer Dumbsville has purchased a gimmicky product. Who cares? I don't, and I don't need the annoying distraction.

4. "Help desks" that are no help at all. They provide FAQ's that never answer your question. Then, when you're asked if you want to speak about a problem, you're handed over to a chatbot.

If you get to the point where the chatbot actually hands you over to a real person, you get a recorded message saying you're 4th in the queue, and the wait time to speak to the "help" person is 13 minutes. 

5. The sites with pre-programmed forms to fill in that refuse to recognise legit records. Every time I change my phone plan, I go through the ID quizzing, and the forms refuse to recognise my MDL, saying "there's a problem" with that type of ID. I don't have any way of getting around this "problem" unless I try a different form of ID, usually my passport, which is then accepted.

But if I go into my Telstra store, talk to a real person in the form of a Telstra employee, and present my MDL - their system accepts it, as he/she types in the details, no problem at all.

6. The websites that refuse to give you the freight cost of an item, until you've put the item in your cart, filled in all your personal and shipping details, and gone through to the "payment" page.

I fill in a lot of gobbledegook, such [email protected] for email address, and some spurious basic address such as 1 xxx st. - with a correct postcode, of course. I'm starting to simply avoid these sites, and look for ones that show freight charges upfront.

[willedoo]

I think a lot of the issue nowdays is that almost everything relies on computers. There's humans there but they have to work within their company's systems. Computers don't have common sense and because the human staff have to work within their computer systems, common sense is long gone from corporate customer service. A big portion of the work force these days have never known a day of their life when computers weren't a big part of it, so they don't know any better. To them, ineffective, unproductive computer bureaucracy is the norm.

[Marty_d]

I'd actually argue that the rise of call centres is the cause of bad customer service.

Businesses think that the number of calls answered and the wait times are the only KPI that matters. Staff don't have in depth business knowledge because they're hired, trained for a week then told to follow the script.

A good employee who knows the business may spend 10 minutes or more sorting out a difficult problem. However if they spend this amount of time on one call they'll be reprimanded. The short sightedness of this is that the 10 minute call may have stopped the client ring back another 5 times, getting progressively more annoyed and then telling everyone they know how bad that business is.

[red750]

Spot on Marty.  The last job I had before retiring was as a customer service operator in a call centre for a company who handled calls for a number of companies. Therefore the  person sittting opposite me was taking calls for a different company to me.

 

My KPI was an AHT (average handling time) of three and a half minutes per call. I later found out no-one else was on such a stringent time limit. This time included writing up details of the call for the next person to take a call from this customer. The customer said that AHT was not important, that customer satisfaction was more important. However, they didn't employ me, the call centre operator did.

 

At the time I was 6 months over retirement age, so I was told it was an appropriate time to retire, because my AHT's were too long. If I didn't retire, they had "alternative plans" in mind, and voluntary retirement would look better on my resume.

 

As the net result was the same, against my wife's wishes, I took the retirement route.

 

Sorry for late edit. I didn't know part of my post had dropped out.