

Tech Companies Leave Phone Calls Behind - briandear
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/technology/tech-companies-leave-phone-calls-behind.html

======
patio11
1). Phones are really expensive to answer. Budget $7~12 a call for competently
designed call centers staffed by Middle American housewives, probably 10x that
if you have e.g. engineers doing things ad hoc. That's about an order of
magnitude more than email support and, um, "a whole lot" more than a blended,
scalable FAQ > self serve tool > email system. (You see this pattern all the
time for a reason.)

2) "Insufficiently technical skill to use email forbids customer from
successfully reaching support" is a feature not a bug. (For a software
business.)

3) Ask me about the six calls I got from a customer a) arguing over the color
of text on my page (grey vs. black) b) asking how to operate a third party's
voicemail, c) confirming receipt of an email five minutes after it was sent...
all happening on my emergency line between 2 and 6 AM.

4) Customers frequently perceive negative value from phone support. Think of
companies with _excellent_ phone staffing like banks or insurance firms. How
happy are online reviews for those numbers? (Terrible, largely because the
state machine on the phone is enforcing business rules that the customer does
not care for. You know what the #1 call Facebook would get? OK, password
resets, not a great example. #N? "Why does Facebook let X do Y?" "<That's a
product decision>" "Can you change it?" "No." "It causes me social problems! I
will now abuse you personally!" "Still no." "I have a lawyer." "No, in six
minute increments." "Pretty please?" "No, I don't even have a button to do
it.")

~~~
droithomme
We have gotten phone calls from people wanting help running and installing
completely unrelated software, in some cases on platforms we don't even
develop for. We don't publish a phone number for tech support anymore and this
sort of service request is more common than actual tech support on our own
products, which is nearly always done through email. The people telephoning
fairly often will say something like:

"I didn't want to waste your time with an email, I just have a quick question
that won't take a moment. I am having trouble installing Outlook 97 on a
computer I got at an auction, it's an SGI Workstation?"

"I'm not sure why you're calling, we don't produce or support Outlook, that
version has been obsolete for many years, and was not written for SGI."

"You were so helpful getting your software installed before, I really
appreciate it, and no one else has been able to help me with this."

"We don't support that, also it's not possible."

"Surely there is some way. Let me read you the serial number of the computer
plate. Do you need the Outlook license key?"

"I can't help you."

This goes on for a while. I stay on the line mostly because I am amazed by the
call.

Anyway the basic insight I have is that anyone with a reasonable request
understands the information we have about email and forum support and uses
that. It's only the unreasonable customers who feel sufficiently motivated to
track down the phone number and make a call. As the parent post mentions,
these sorts of calls often come in at weird early morning hours and weekends.
We also get calls from people wanting advice in their life about non-support
related things like where to go to university to learn to write software like
we do or whether to buy a new car. Again, reasonable people understand that
support is by email, unreasonable people don't and this explains why most
phone calls are unreasonable requests. I still handle these politely, perhaps
so I can later tell the stories to people as I am now. Maybe also I am a bit
of a sucker for whackos!

~~~
spitfire
... it's an SGI Workstation.

"Good choice sir! Do you have a support contract with us?"

SGI's were such cool machines I might actually talk to that person and explain
what they are and why you can't help.

~~~
droithomme
Oh I did that! This particular guy worked in a machine shop, he was in charge
of the warehouse. He would watch the local classifieds for estate and defunct
business auction notices and go and buy weird random stuff for no reason.
That's how he got the SGI, but he didn't know what it was and thought it was a
weird sort of PC that someone had installed Linux on. He was hoping to get
Windows on it, and he had an installer for Entourage someone had given him or
he had found at Goodwill or who knows, and his work used Entourage so he
thought he would get that working for some reason. No one could help him but
we had provided such helpful service in the past for our products he thought
he'd give us a call at weird hours and see what we thought about his problem.
This was not the only call from him, he made several over the years, he had my
private line number because of a previous legitimate call that had gotten
escalated to development.

He's just one example and one of the more unusual ones. There's also the calls
from somebody that wants you to write custom software that only they could
possibly ever use for them for free, they'll even be willing to forgo their
royalty! Those ones are more frustrating.

Having a public phone number for Twitter to take random calls from free
customers who are too impatient to wait 2 days for an email response since
their fundraising twitter account was suspended for (quite reasonably) looking
like a violation of service terms sounds like a nightmare. It's quite bizarre
that the NYT was taking their side in this in the referenced article, or even
writing an article about it at all. The people mentioned have a crazy level of
entitlement and insane expectations from a free service serving tens of
millions of people. Their bad attitude and whining at the end was infuriating
even to me as a bystander observing the story.

------
rdl
The thing I've wanted is a way to post a per-message "non-nuisance bond" on
incoming communications.

Basically, a recipient can define multiple channels (mailboxes, call, physical
mail, fax) to contact, and set a price for unsolicited communications on each.
Maybe I'd say $1000 to take an unsolicited phonecall at night, and $1 for an
unsolicited email during the day.

If the message was of value to me, I wouldn't collect the bond. If it was a
waste of my time, I'd collect, which should be high enough to compensate me,
as well as high enough to deter future communications. Pricing could adjust
over time.

This would also serve to push users to contact me in the most convenient for
me way, or at least to expose my priorities and preferences to the senders.
When I'm driving, my phone call price drops below my email/text (instant
response) price, but for $100k, I'd probably be willing to pull over and read
an email once notified.

(There are lots of sender-bond systems, but they are all designed around spam,
not nuisance email or even just unwanted email. Plus, they're per-sender, not
per message. Mail from someone you like could be inconvenient at certain
times, so with a sender-bond system, you'd be forced to choose either no-op or
a lasting ban, which is lame.)

~~~
jimrandomh
> The thing I've wanted is a way to post a per-message "non-nuisance bond" on
> incoming communications. > > Basically, a recipient can define multiple
> channels (mailboxes, call, physical mail, fax) to contact, and set a price
> for unsolicited communications on each. Maybe I'd say $1000 to take an
> unsolicited phonecall at night, and $1 for an unsolicited email during the
> day.

A good idea, but people will detect the perverse incentives and respond
negatively. Give the bond to a (GiveWell recommended) charity instead, and
it's perfect.

~~~
rdl
I don't see what the perverse incentives are here (you are paying to interrupt
someone), but setting a way to donate 0-100% to charity transparently would be
a great extension.

If it's an iterated game, there don't seem to be bad incentives. If it's one-
off, sure, but very little gets accomplished in a single message and reply.

------
ghshephard
The simple math around this is the incredible asymmetry of the entire customer
base of these companies, compared to the number of employees. It might seem
obvious to us (or at least it does to me) that a multi-billion dollar company
like google should have a set of operators prioritizing calls, particularly
for the ones that really do need human attention - but, when you have billions
of people using your service, if just 1 percent called you in a year, that's
still 10 million+ calls you would have to triage.

An eye opener for me, was when I finished Diablo, and watched the credit - and
saw the many, many, many pages of customer support staff for that application.
It looked like they numbered in the hundreds - and, all to serve just 4
million customers that had each paid $60.

There is no way that Google/Facebook/Twitter/Linked in can handle incoming
voice for all their free users.

~~~
alanfang
Google doesn't even handle calls/customer support for paying users. Google
Adwords/Adsense support is completely automated and also completely useless.

~~~
azylman
Except for, you know, everyone who purchases Google Apps and has 24/7 phone
support...

~~~
b7888888
But Google Apps has been around since 2006. They only added 24/7 phone support
last year.

Google has no credibility regarding customer service, both online and by
phone.

------
marquis
This completely depends on the type of business. For us, all tech support
calls are considered sales calls because we charge for tech support.

"People get aggressive or aggravated; people are depressed or crying. It’s
just hard talking to customers" - these people tend to be the ones happiest to
pay tech support, because you solve their problem and prove that you care. If
you are a small business, especially one selling higher-priced services, make
it a core part of your business to provide personal service.

This is also one thing I love about new start-ups: I can call/skype the
founders and have the most interesting and insightful conversations while
testing out their product and this has sold us on many services.

Having said that, with my ISP they provide a chat app so I will always use
this instead of calling them, as it keeps a historical record of our
conversations and technical problems so I don't have to repeat myself.

------
forgottenpaswrd
They said it: Facebook has one worker for every 300.000 customers, witch is
exactly what lets them provide their service "free" or cheap(you pay with your
personal information).

A significant part of the population(more than 10%) have real problems in
their life. The median number of friends per American is 0.7, one of the
lowest in the world. People need someone to hear them, they will use anything
as a excuse for calling.

So you go to the bank and you see people talking about their lives most of the
time. It makes it human contact, but is very expensive, in money and in time,
as it makes other people wait.

If only 10% customers called facebook for support over their lifetime, that
means 30.000 customers per employee to handle!!

What NYTimes expects? Multiplying the labor force(and cost of facebook,
Google, Amazon,vimeo...) by 100?.

~~~
raygunomical
> The median number of friends per American is 0.7

I think you might have gotten a bit confused here. I don't understand how a
median can be a non-integer.

~~~
spindritf
Strictly speaking it can be with an even number of elements in the sample but
yeah, your parent probably meant mean number.

~~~
shalmanese
But even then, it can't be a non-half integer multiple.

------
jakeonthemove
As most of these companies are Web-based and use automated systems for
support, it makes little sense for them to implement call centers with live
operators.

It's not an issue of scalability IMHO (although it's harder to scale telephony
than text), but a matter of cost: human phone operators are much more
expensive.

They could create _better_ automated voice replies, though - in fact, I
believe that will be the case soon, what with voice recognition and TTS
getting a lot better every day...

------
rabidsnail
Facebook providing phone support to their users would be like a corn farmer
providing phone support to their corn stalks.

------
zdw
The weird thing is that sometimes it does work.

I called Yahoo on the 4th of July 2006 because of a password problem relating
to my Flickr account, and Ronald answered after two levels of voice menus (the
number I used: 408.349.1572). I doubt they still offer this sort of service
(having a phone bank of people dedicated to customer problems, let alone being
paid to work on holidays).

As crappy as it is on a user side, vendors that offer pay phone support have a
pretty good business model. I'm willing to bet that a company with a lot of
nontechnical customers (such as Intuit or similar) makes as much or more money
on it's paid phone support and consulting than on actually selling their
software.

But in reality, the invasiveness of phones is a liability. Being able to barge
your way into absolutely anything else the person is doing (no matter how
important) via phone is somehow tolerated as not rude, when in any other
circumstance it would be.

~~~
WiseWeasel
That's what silent mode and voicemail is for. For the caller, there is
plausible deniability that they were interrupting anything, so it's up to the
recipient to manage phone availability.

------
crazygringo
When I was interviewing at tech companies in NYC, I was surprised to find one
well-known one that simply had no phone number.

I'd wanted to call them back after my interview, and realized I'd never been
given any phone number for anyone. When I went back, I discovered that, with
20+ employees, they literally didn't have a phone in their office. People have
their personal cellphones whenever they need to receive calls.

I'd stopped having a landline ten years ago, but I had no idea businesses
could do it too!

~~~
briandear
I don't know one NYC startup with which I have any association that has a
landline. In one company in particular, even HR uses their personal cell
phones (reimbursed by the company, naturally.) I interviewed at a few places a
while back where I didn't speak to anyone until the actual interview. I love
it. When you call me, you're demanding me to drop everything and deal with
your problem. To me, phone calls are exceptionally intrusive. Of course in a
sales environment, intrusions are vital (that means someone wants to buy
something, usually.) Still, I'm glad to see the death of the business
landline. Now if we could only kill off the fax machine..

~~~
tomjen3
What do you still use the fax machine for?

~~~
briandear
HR uses it. Insurance companies are still stuck on faxes.

------
Shenglong
Makes sense for consumer based products, when you think of how much cisco
phones cost. For enterprise solutions, obviously, not so much.

Phones makes people feel better - and if your clients are worth enough, and
you can control the volume, it's a good idea. Heck, even Google offers to let
you call them for $2.

------
kentbrew
Huge productivity benefit to not having a phone on your desk: not having to
deal with voice mail.

~~~
spudlyo
Agreed. I don't miss having a phone on my desk _at all_.

------
tonyedgecombe
Customers expectations have changed as well, when I started my business 14
years ago I would get daily calls from customers. Now it's not unusual to go a
whole month without a call.

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msh
the companies they refer to are primarily getting their income from ads, most
likely a very low income per customer. So a single phone call would properly
cost more than their average revenue per customer.

------
topherjaynes
I'm really interested in the Facebook message they describe in the article.
Anyone have the number they are referencing?

~~~
michaelt
Perhaps they called the number listed in the box on the right hand side of the
article?

