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Honestly it’s not that much worse than being forwarded off to India where someone’s getting paid $0.10 an hour to read off a flow chart to me. If your 24-hour service line doesn’t have an actual engineer available after the flow chart It’s not meaningfully different than the AI.
Yep. I hate having to phone support lines to be told to run basic troubleshooting like turning something off and on again when that’s the first thing that I’ll try.
If only shibboleet actually worked…
The alt text on that XKCD is even better:
“I recently had someone ask me to go get a computer and turn it on so I could restart it. He refused to move further in the script until I said I had done that.”
Something very sweet with living in a country with a different language than English is that the people on the phone can’t be outsourced.
The AI problem remains though :(
I’d probably feel very different about the whole situation if the call center is that were being subverted were in my own country.
(Goes through a phone maze to get the option you need, then the robot voice comes on)
“OUR STAFF CAN HANDLE THAT REQUEST TUESDAY THROUGH THURSDAYS BETWEEN 10AM AND 4PM. GOODBYE.”
And it’s never even a half decent bot.
“You double charged me this month”
“Hi! For problems relating to your wifi, please visit our FAQ.”
support bot has ended the chat
Followed by an automated email that reads “Would you like to participate in our customer survey? We are dedicated to improving the quality of our customer support! :D”
I see you answered 0 out of 5 stars. Janice in Support (whom you’ve never spoken to) will now get put on a PIP.
Technically they aren’t 24h if they didn’t shut down for one of the 1:00am hours last night. If they stayed open for both 1:00am hours, they’re a 25 hour service line today.
“We’ve been running for most of a year now. It’s what BeefPiano would call a 7000h service line”
Right up there with customer service lines that just have menus of canned responses that don’t address your need. No, I don’t need to hear your hours, I don’t need to know where you are, I can find all of that online. I need to talk to a human being.
A few years back you could say “operator” or press zero to get transferred to an actual person. In my experience it only works about 1/3 of the time these days.
Sometimes the system would even escalate your call if you were swearing while you were on hold.
Swear. Loudly. Scream ‘Fuck This Shit’.
It works and gets you a more immediate operator. May or may not be one with empathy, but 🤞
Sure! I’m transferring your call now!
Sure! I’m transferring your call now!
Hangs up
Fuck you Seagate, this doesn’t excuse your behaviour. I would like my drive RMAd please
Three months to actually initiate the rma. Got billed 3x for replacements i have yet to receive. Please dont come at me when they didn’t show up.
Do you expect them to jeopardize their bonuses by spending money on human beings to support customers? Then you’ll probably want them to keep them employed for more than a few months so they can actually become good at their jobs and familiar with the products.
