this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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[–] sugar_in_your_tea 21 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

It would be so much better to just have a website with all of those options. Why does it need to be a phone system at all? I hate calling in, I just want to enter an identifier of some sort and click a couple buttons...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah that’s an excellent point. Older generations still prefer phone calls but I imagine increasingly the only people who want to call will be the people who can’t fix their issue via an automated system.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 3 points 4 months ago

Yup. I'm pretty good at avoiding talking to people, yet I've needed to call in a few times recently for stuff I should've been able to handle online:

  • report fraud
  • cancel credit card
  • report internet outage
  • buy insurance

If they want to save money on customer support, make the customer support less necessary to get routine tasks done...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Because they are not trying to design an efficient system. They are trying to design a system that is as cheep as possible, puts off as many customers as possible from interacting with it while not being so bad as to fall foul of regulations. A well designed website that efficiently took you to the right place to make your complaint and get money from them/make them do something would fail requirement 2.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 1 points 4 months ago

The thing is, I rarely want money from them, I just want to provide them information to make my experience as a customer better. For example:

  • my card kept getting declined, so I wanted to help their investigation by flagging fraud
  • close a credit card - feel free to show me retention offers and whatnot, I'm more likely to accept online than over the phone
  • report an internet outrage and see whether there's a known outage - I actually can make a report, but they've never followed up, so calling is the only way to make sure they actually got it; I just want to know that they know about it

I can see a reason for the credit card thing sucking since they want to make a bad offer and keep you as a customer, but at least for me, all of the above would make me more likely to stay a customer instead of switching to a competitor (and I've seriously considered switching each of the above).