Ask HN: Why are customer support processes so awful?

[EricRiese]

I understand the cost effectiveness of outsourcing and paying bottom barrel wages for agents. But every time I have to deal with customer support for a big company, I come up with countless technical improvements I can’t believe they don’t implement.

  • Provide an asynchronous email-like support channel.
    • Sure, a real email address would get spammed, but let me kick it off from a contact page and then reply via email
    • Let me upload files and screenshots
    • This is asking a lot, but basic formatting for quotes or pre blocks for logs makes a world of difference
  • Let me navigate the phone tree on the web and have them call me when a representative is available instead of me waiting
    • Or at least give specific numbers on a web page so I can bypass the phone tree
  • Provide visibility into the underlying ticketing system.
    • If a customer support agent is typing up notes, let me see them. Send them in an email so I can search the text and pull up the ticket number for instance.

I’ve taken to immediately escalating all my issues with financial organizations to the CFPB since they have a process that pretty much completely satisfies my desires.

My current frustration was triggered by the Nationwide website crashing when I tried to download a policy document. Their web support team is only reachable through a phone number, so they’ve guaranteed that the vast majority of good samaritan technical people won’t go through the hoops to send them a bug report with javascript console logs or screenshots. But I can send an asynchronous message to other teams.

[PaulHoule]

There is a "service chain" crisis sweeping the world.

This week the bus I take in the morning has been canceled because they don't have enough mechanics. At the doctor's office, pharmacy, restaurant, hair salon, etc. things are frequently screwed up. Some businesses are doing OK right now (I went to a wedding at a casino resort and everything spun like a top) but the malaise is moving around and some places bad today will be OK in six months, but maybe a bunch of employees will rage quit the casino and it will be in bad shape.

Worst of all I have had trouble getting through to customer service people at the electric company at all. Because of a long chain of anomalies, I once again was receiving no electric bill. There was a time before when I didn't receive an electric bill and had my service cut off for non-payment so I am naturally sensitive to this. I got put on hold for a total of 3 hours at the electric company before I decided to file a complaint with the public utilities commission.

We are doing work on our rental property (which is on the same lot as our house, which contributes to the electric company, accountant, and many other people misunderstanding my situation) and want to turn off the electric service temporarily so we can do some work around that part of the house. Sure enough, my handyman calls on the phone and he gets put on hold indefinitely so we've deferred some of the work -- it either won't get done or it will get done at some time when it's less efficient for us.

Some firms are doing OK though. I had trouble with my phone line and Frontier had somebody fix it the next business day and the experience was 100% great from end to end except for the fact that my phone line failed.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33356503

Related to that post I'd say businesses would need to invest in technology, process and people to build the capacity to support customers but they aren't inclined to do that when the economy looks uncertain.

[ravenstine]

They don't actually want to support you and are hoping you will give up. If they can make you choose not to interact with a human customer support specialist, that's more money in their pocket.

[97s → ravenstine]

You wrote what I came to write. The entire reason they have all these things is so you give up.

[LEDThereBeLight → ravenstine]

That’s simply not true. It’s generally a matter of corporate dysfunction, not active sabotage.

[clnq]

There's no financial incentive to improve customer support in most services with a relatively inelastic demand.

Most companies know that their call centers have been "experiencing an unusual volume of calls" for years, and that most customer service requests take way too long to act on. And so what? You'll keep paying your electricity/internet/heating/water/medical/phone/insurance/bank/credit lender/etc bills anyways because you need these services. Giving you good support or improving anything in customer service just hurts the bottom line.

This is not true for services with elastic demand. In industries with a lot of substitutes (like hotels), customer support often goes more along the lines of "customer is always right" and "making it right" at even a high cost. Sometimes it's done even when the customer is clearly abusing the generosity. This is even more common in luxury services (like luxury restaurants) or luxury item sales (like some collectable watches and cars).

P.S. This is obviously a generalization of a complex soup of factors that impact customer service quality in every company.

[matt_s]

Some of the things you have mentioned are implemented by some companies. You mentioned Nationwide so I'll provide some anecdote about how with Geico I can manage my policy entirely online, get quotes, print/download docs, summon chat support, etc.

I think a huge differentiator with customers is the support or service a company can provide. This may matter more than the product when the products are pretty common and easily comparable (bank accounts, car insurance, etc.) Something to keep in mind as a lot of people work at startups here and there are countless examples of large companies that provide 0 support and randomly shut down entire products.

[toast0]

> Provide an asynchronous email-like support channel. > Sure, a real email address would get spammed, but let me kick it off from a contact page and then reply via email > Let me navigate the phone tree on the web and have them call me when a representative is available instead of me waiting

These options only work if the user actually knows what their email or phone number is.

[codegeek]

Until large companies see a reason to fix their support (i.e. loss of revenue), they wouldn't and couldn't care less. Having said this, it is not rocket science. You just need to care about your customers more. Most large orgs don't.

[faangiq]

No exec ever got a bonus for taking care of their customers.

[__lbracket__]

With profit as a metric, do you deploy a fixed budget to acquiring new customers or keeping current ones happy?

Unfortunately, shareholders evaluate largely on profit, not customer satisfaction.

[LEDThereBeLight → __lbracket__]

Keeping an existing customer is significantly less expensive than acquiring new customers. It has more to do with expected churn rate for customers and the cost to improve service not making up for the expected reduction in churn.

[jenkstom]

Because businesses, along with society in general (especially US society), is very bad at making evidence-based decisions. That extends to changing policies and procedures according to evidence of what works well and what doesn't. In fact, in some places (the US again comes to mind, which is where I live) it goes in the opposite direction of effective and evidence-based. I think it's because of psychopaths - which I define as someone living in a fantasy world who wants to control and hurt others.