

Ask HN: Does anyone actually get call centers right? - diminium

Almost every time I call a call center, my head feels like it's ready to explode.  Answers are unavailable or impossible to find.  Some answers are just wrong.<p>This gets to me.  Does anyone out there, anyone get the phone call right?  Why is it so difficult to deal with people calling a company for help?  Does anyone out there actually get customer phone calls right?<p>Are all mass facing businesses doomed to recreate this horrible experience for their customers as they grow in size?
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CyberFonic
I doubt it. If anyone has, I have yet to experience it or hear about it.

The root causes are rather obvious:

1\. Management treat it as a cost centre and try to minimize the cost of
running it.

2\. Working in a call centre sucks. (I know I did phone support at Toshiba for
over 12 months) You feel like a battery hen and the incentives focus on the
number of completed calls.

3\. The staff in most call centres are way too inexperienced to provide
satisfactory assistance.

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millzlane
Apple does a pretty great job at call centers. The structure, the training,
even down to the QA dept., They seem to have it figured out. I remember
training was very much like reading the manual of the computer. Being a
windows and linux user I was fairly comfortable with the transition. Going
from Not knowing anything about Macs to issuing commands to help users who
have manually changed the name of their user folder.

They use IRC heavily for teir 2 support for teir 1 guys. If anyone has a
stumper throw it into IRC and get help. That was the nice part about the job.

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dagw
Every time I've called my bank, SEB in Sweden, I've gotten perfectly fine
support. Sure my problems have never been particularly hard, but they've
always picked up the phone reasonably quickly, and quickly and helpfully
answered my questions.

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dalke
I've read (over and over) that Zappos has an amazing call center.

