The Roadway doesn't freeze, the water in the air voids freezes, expands, cracks the concrete, then unfreeze, then freezes again, cracking the concrete further. I developed a method to test if your air entraining admixture is doing it's job properly. The primary company that made admixture (WR Grace, the asbestos people) whined so much the Federal Highway people had to do a confirming study before the company would quit whining.
Ah, WR Grace, who, along with Dow and US Army Chemical Corps, contracted the services of convicted nazi war criminal Otto Ambrose. I confronted J Peter Grace on the radio once about Otto – he denied nothing but deflected the charge and the KQED interviewer called my calling out 'bizarre'.
But those radio waves are well beyond the edge of our solar system by now, racing toward who knows what advanced society that will ponder this info and then eventually say to themselves "Welp, guess there's nothing for it but to annihilate that quadrant of the the unfashionable outer spiral arm of the galaxy...just in case..."
I am remembering an old Bloom County Cartoon where Opus gets mad at a service rep on the phone, I think airline, and hangs up and calls another. The same voice answers and says something like: "Ha we've bought them too." So plus change.................?
I think Musk is being a little more nefarious with Twitter than the more typical corporate posture of mere disrespect for the consumers of their product -- I think there is a deliberate attempt on his part to flood the zone with shit and disinformation. And of course the trolls, who live by the mantra "you will be forced to listen to my opinion and take it seriously" are happy to oblige him.
"the marketplace of ideas" has once again rejected rightwing bullshit, so the spirit of Fair Debate demands that rightwing bullshit be artifically boosted.
Part of my never-ending problem with YouTube is its relentless pushing of Rightwing crap. I have never watched a single political video of any kind on YouTube. My viewing is limited to trains, planes, and fails. Yet the YouTube algorithm offers nothing but constant Trump propaganda, Greg Gutfeld segments, pro-gun videos ("watch this store owner literally blow this guy's brains all over the floor!"), and anti-vax bullshit. No amount of clicking "do not recommend this channel" diminishes the flood.
Jun 29, 2023·edited Jun 29, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
Yeah, I've been getting pestered with concealed-carry ads even though I've never watched a single gun video. Maybe the algorithm has been tweaked to deliberately annoy you with ads they know you DON'T want, so you'll give up and pay for the "Premium" service?
When you think about it (and I'm not suggesting you do) the last thing YouTube wants is a user saying, "Wow, that ad was really helpful and relevant to me, I'm so glad I didn't pay extra for the ad-free service!"
For years my youtube recommendations consisted of mostly old SNL clips and Anthrax or Taylor Swift videos, but now that my kid is old enough to have discovered youtube it's entirely video gamers playing Mario Party
What I'm getting that's infuriating is those non-video ads strewn among the list of videos - ads for gun accessories and Tough Guy Bible T-shirts. And you can't block those the way you can on Twitter. No ads from Prager U or The Epoch Times, though (knock on wood).
Right? The key to it all seems to be, they get bent out of shape when we don't show them the respect they crave for their dumb ideas -- but conversely, when they don't take us seriously, who gives a fuck? They're morons! Who cares what morons think? So while they petition to get into Liberal Twitter to "fix free speech," not one of us goes anywhere near any Conservative Social Media outlet. I am not even sure what the Trump one is called and I am fine with that; let them spend all day in that hellhole showing each other angry racist memes, I want zero of their respect.
The Debate's over and rightwing bullshit lost, so rightwingers have moved to the next step in the authoritarian's playbook: forcing people to listen to them.
Jun 29, 2023·edited Jun 29, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
There is another very real factor in shitty customer service, though - customer entitlement. Most people genuinely believe it's okay to bully and traumatize the poor asshole they finally get on the line. They think that's their absolute right, as a customer.
I'm here to tell you, having worked at many call centers - there's always a grey area. There's always a sweet spot between what I can do and what I am required to do. There's always a place where I can decide "yeah you're cool I'm going to really lean in and get you taken care of". Or, alternatively, where I can decide you're a garbage person and I quote the standard script at you until you get off my phone. (I personally would never deliberately hang up on you or transfer you to Wales, but accidents can happen.). Customers don't want to hear it and I'd never say it out loud at work, but callers have much more control over the kind of service experience they have than they want to admit or take responsibility for. Speak to me pleasantly and with respect and you will be astonished what I can do for you. Start out screaming "YOU FINALLY FUCKING ANSWERED THE PHONE WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE" and you're gonna have a bad call. Also, heavy sighs and phrases like "well is there anyone else there who knows how to do your job" are going to get you sent to someone's voicemail, too. Be nice. We're people too, and you hacked your way through that nightmare phone tree because you need us.
People in general are entitled assholes these days, and they tend to really be assholes to the faceless customer assistance folks on the phone line. It does not help either end of that conversation that the automated phone tree gets the dimmer customers riled up before they get to engage an actual human.
Pro tip for those who design such systems: If you set it up so that every caller has to drill down through more than three menus to get anywhere, your customer service people are all going to get nothing but pissed-off callers.
Yeah, but the phone tree designers don't care, they don't have to take the calls. And often times they are told to make it hard. One call center trainer I had explained earnestly to my class that ideally you want the customers to "cure" for a certain period so they have "ripened" and are in a receptive mood for both "resolutions AND offers".
If we could somehow require that those who make policies are forced to experience the effects of those policies, the world would be very different. But leaders don't fight their own wars, and generally neither do their kids or grandkids. The government exempts itself from its own safety regs and can vote itself raises. The people who created attendance policies and adherence stats and "first call resolution" quotas will never speak to a customer themselves. And so it goes.
Reminds me of the lesson inherent in the exercise "Given the godlike power to do so, how would you design our civilization? Keep in mind you will have to live in it, and your starting position will be decided randomly."
The plan is probably to plug in one of those LLM AIs for the screener level of support calls, which will probably make things, like, really, totally, great… (sweet elder gods, eat me now!)
I think the only thing holding back full automation right now, given that the initial investment of time and money will inevitably pay for itself in saved labor costs, is the same thing that's prevented most clerical and admin jobs from going fully remote for thirty years now... middle management doesn't want it. Bluntly - you can't bully a machine or a piece of software, and it's no fun trying.
Every job I've had since the 90s I could have done as well or better from my living room, and we've had the tech to make that happen for at least that long. And it's not economics that keeps us all car pooling; the real estate brokers hate the idea of all that empty office space, but ownership and shareholders should lick their lips at the savings on rent. But it's middle management that would recommend such a revolutionary change, and they're not going to. They enjoy the endless displays of forced deference and insincere respect the involuntary work force is forced into by the requirements of "professionalism" (which always seems, somehow, to work out to be self effacement and subservience on the part of labor, never management) and while yes they can manage just as efficiently using tracking software, it's just not the same. They want to see that look in your eyes when you ask for that day off. When they appear behind you like an evil djinn and catch you with your phone out, well, as John Turturro tells Gabriel Byrne, they want to see you squirm. And if you're working remotely, it ROONTS it.
I think (this is just me speculating) that a lot of this is coming from the fact that people are increasingly frustrated that there's nobody addressing their needs, so when they get an actual human they tend to unload on them. Can't punch up, so they punch down.
Oddly, once I reached an actual person at Northwestern Energy in Butte, Montana, she was pleasant and helpful. Of course the amount of time it took to get through the phone tree and wait on hold was another story.
I don't tend to lose my temper, but there have been times when I've been dissatisfied, and I'll explain to the rep that I know it's not their fault, but that they should tell their supervisor I got so mad I screamed at them and made them cry, but it'll be our little secret, and they should go on and have a good day, bye.
My own general policy, and I keep reminding myself: "If a service person did something good, it was on their own initiative. If they do something bad/stupid, it's because their boss required them to do it."
One of my customers has a problem with a piece of extremely expensive electronics I installed in his airplane. My own troubleshooting could not determine the cause, so I called the manufacturer. We're a dealer, so you'd figure that might get better service. Not really.
After a 20-minute wait, I finally get the service tech. He requests all my dealer ID info, enters it, verifies who I am, etc. I describe the problem. "Have you looked at our FAQs?" he asks. Yep. "Okay, I'm going to send you a link to the FAQs," he says. And hangs up.
Back into the phone tree and a 15-minute wait on hold. New tech. Go through the same process. "Have you read the FAQs?" he asks. "Yes, and don't you dare send me a link to them because the answer isn't there," I say.
I finally get to describe the problem. Tech is baffled. Back on hold. Ten minutes later, disconnected.
I have better luck googling about what the problem is, and eventually getting to some site or thread with crowd-sourced information that's more useful than the FAQ site.
I hated writing software FAQs for that very reason. They’re so contrived and unhelpful, and an actual index or search function would be much more useful.
I’m put in mind of a passage from 𝘡𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘺𝘤𝘭𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦. The author is talking about technical documentation: “𝘐’𝘮 from the factory too, and I 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 how instructions like this are put together. You go out on the assembly line with a tape recorder and the foreman sends you to talk to the guy he needs least, the biggest goof-off he’s got, and whatever he tells you—that’s the instructions. The next guy might have told you something completely different and probably better, but he’s too busy.”
Yeah, YouTube is where I go when I'm experiencing software problems (or even just want to know how to use the software I bought.) I need to know something about a Microsoft product, why the hell would I go to Microsoft, THAT'S CRAZY.
If only all customer service rose to the level experienced by the guy stuck on an airplane in a snowstorm for hours, who noticed the airline magazine listed the company president, looked up his home phone number, called it and got the president’s wife who was so appalled she had the airport rescue all the passengers. That’s several levels above the usual “Let me speak to your manager,” although that works, too. My kids taught me the way to bypass the robot voices: babble incomprehensibly. Some automated systems then default to a human. Meanwhile, a shout-out to regional cellular service Cellcom where you always immediately get a sympathetic human being no matter how stupid your problem. PS: Swissair is the absolutely fucking worst along with Lufthansa.
Jun 29, 2023·edited Jun 29, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
Last year for my birthday I got a Home Depot gift certificate for a hundred bucks. I'm on a the 6th year of a three-year remodeling project so of course I owe those guys somewhere between a shitload and a fuckton of money. I went in to pay my bill and right as I walked into the store there was a stackout display of Milwaukee power tools. (Hmmm tools) A landscaper buddy of mine had an battery operated 8 inch Milwaukee chainsaw he spoke pretty highly of - he been clearing a lot of fence rows and said it was invaluable. I thought about the mile or two fence line that I needed to clear and before I knew it I was heading home from Home Depot with a 8in chainsaw.
I didn't get a chance to work on the fence row until late February of this year. My landscaper buddy was right, it was the perfect tool for the job. After a couple weekends work I couldn't believe how much I got done. Then, I was cutting on a multiflora rose bush the size of a small Airstream trailer when a grinding noise came out of the saw which, up until that point, I had considered marrying because I loved it so much. I said"Fuck" as one does in that situation and put the tool away, putting the tool and it's unfortunate state out of my beautiful mind.
A month or so later I realized that it had been almost a year since I bought the saw and I should probably do something about returning it before I ran out of time was really fucked.
I dug out the receipt and looked up Milwaukee Tools online. There was a three-year warranty on it.
I was taken to a warranty claim page. I had to enter my info and scan in the receipt.
Then I explained what seem to be wrong with the saw. They told me my saw qualied for warranty repair and sent me FedEx label I could print.
I boxed up my saw and took it with me to work the next day. I was able to throw my FedEx package in with all the FedEx packages from work.
The next day I was notified that my package had been received at the service center in Louisiana. I grimaced a bit at the Louisiana stuff. My experience with Louisiana is that everything outside of the French Quarter is a shithole. The next day I was notified that my package had been assigned a service tech. A couple hours later I got another message saying that the saw had been repaired and would be shipped to me that day for receipt the following day.
They provided a routing number for tracking. The next day the saw was sitting on my front porch when I got home from work. It worked perfectly fine.
Before I got a chance to use it very much my son-in-law borrowed it. He returned it when he was done. It was broken again. Anyway, I had an excellent CS experience completely without any human interaction. Maybe that's the key.
Yeah, I'd say the flip side of terrible customer service is a system that makes it ridiculously easy to return stuff. Like they're saying, "Look, we'll do whatever you want, even give you all your money back, JUST DON'T TRY TO TALK TO US OK?"
I bought a Dell laptop about a month ago, had some problems with it that I might have been able to work through if I could have gotten to talk to an actual human, then I just said "Fuck it, I'll send it back", and THAT process was easy as pie.
And now we've got warehouses full of mountains of returned goods, probably most of them totally fine, but who's gonna sort through it all, just landfill it.
"We can build anything you want with this army of robots we got, but wait, you need an ACTUAL HUMAN? Sorry, we don't got those no more, let's just tell the army of robots to make you another one!"
I knew my boss had reached end-stage old when the (very early) computer he used finally showed its limits, and the tech came to the factory to fix it(!) But fixing consisted of unplugging old components and plugging in new ones til it worked again. My boss was deeply pained by the experience. "If I'd known he was only gonna randomly throw parts at it I woulda done that myself! I wanted him to FIX it!"
Capitalism isn't about building better mousetraps anymore. It's about making stuff worse but not so worse as you go someplace else. Freakanomics made their bones talking about guys only buying underwear in the good times. Now underwear is so crappy it only lasts a few washings.
What? Paying as little as possible to folks on the other side of the planet using as little material as possible so the life of the product is as short as can be risked? Unpossible!
When I worked for a medical office software company that, over the years kept getting acquired by shittier and shittier companies, they eventually rolled the Documentation Department—which was responsible for all online help, user guides, installation guides, tech manuals, etc.—into a “User Experience” team with the designers, and put the designers in charge. Then basically the designers played all day, held a few pro forma conference calls with customers to hear about their needs, and then ignored that and designed the software to look like the cool toy they thought it should be. The Documentation Department and programmers were left to make the actual product and communicate how it worked. And we were the only ones who paid attention to actual deadlines that had to be met, while the UX team let us all bask in their creativity.
I guess what I’m saying is fk late stage capitalism and its greedy, chaotic bullshit.
I spend a lot of time griping at the proprietary software we use at work. God, it SUCKS sometimes. Tried to print just one facility we ship to, yesterday, and it wasn't on the list but ones we haven't shipped to for two years were.
"User Experience" says a lot. You are no longer permitted to know how stuff works to address it on your own; the "experience" is what matters. Push the lever, get a treat.
Our UX was playing with an “intuitive” user interface that would eliminate the need for help documentation, etc. You can just add the diagnosis code here! If you can’t find the one you need, you can add one yourself! Then you can drag and drop them around the screen!
[raises hand] So what happens when you have multiple entries for the same diagnosis code because people couldn’t find the right one and made a new one? And how do they link to ICD-10 codes for billing?
[UX Team] We haven’t worked out all the kinks yet.
'bluecheck dipshits'...thanks for the chuckle. Yes, we've segued from the age of built-in obsolescence to the era of willingly accepting inadequate sub-par service and/or just plain broken bullshit because there ARE no alternatives... until you level up $$$ and even then, expect to s*ck the c*ck of your tech overlords because waddayagonnadoaboudit?
**shakes fist: Maytag washers used to last 3 generations! << non sequitur alert
The Maytag repairman is no longer, as he was when Jesse White played him in commercials, the loneliest guy in town -- he's in CS, constantly barraged by calls from screaming, dissatisfied customers, and on Paxil.
My dad maintained ours for ... 43 ... years. When the folks finally downsized to the townhome he called maytag and they sent a truck out to take it back to the mothership. Probly wanted to know what parts to encheapen so that sort of longevity would never happen again...
Apropos this here, I refer y’all to Cory Doctorow’s theory of enshitification.
Of course, unrestrained capitalism results in a norm, as it were, of sociopathic greed. As for Elmo, he’s a Trump-class narcissist so of course when he’s embarrassed into buying Twitter, he doubles down and makes it a shitty. As a result, it’s still useful enough but a miserable experience.
BTW: I had a glitch for a couple of hours a week or two ago when I was limited in what I can do. IIRC, a reason, long since forgotten, was provided.
Too: experience tells me that narcissists -- in my case, alcoholic ones -- make awful employers in all respects. Meanwhile, whatever one might say about Elmo, he’s a documented shitty boss, more so if one believes that a few of his baby mamas were coerced to whatever degree into having sex with him. (OTOH, other rumors say a bunch of the kids resulted from IVF. No idea and DK what the overlap there is nor do I care.)
But, you know, life with Elmo is too soon whilst still living in the Trump era.
I'm not on Twitter myself, but I can imagine the dilemma faced by anyone who's a writer (or any kind of artist, really). You've got to stay, because social media is the only way to be heard and seen. Easy for the rest of us to unplug (and then feel morally superior for doing so) not so easy if reaching an audience and making a living requires you to use these shitty platforms.
“Your call is very important to us. That’s why we intend to leave it hanging from this phone tree for a couple of hours so we can admire it.”
(Times past, when I’d hear people griping about the post office or the DMV, suggesting that they should be “run like a business,” or even privatized, I’d respond “So how did it go, that last time you called your cable company?”)
How long can they get by with "Sorry, we're experiencing a higher than normal call volume"? When was this halcyon period of people not calling you so much that you're now defining as "normal"?
Called the state's department of revenue, and after working through the phone gallows I heard, "There are *ninety-four* callers ahead of you." With frequent exhortations to try them at their website (which routs you back to their phone number and thence, phone gallows)
Speaking of public v. private, I think I told this story here before, but what the hell: I was moving, I had just spent about an hour on the phone trying to get through to the cable company, then I phoned up the local municipally-owned water company to get water connected, "Hello?" said a voice on the phone after the first ring. I almost dropped the phone.
I once ran my car into an ill-placed, 18" high brick wall rendering it undrivable 500 miles from home. Agitated, I called my insurance company. When the young lady heard my uncommon last name, she exclaimed, "Oh, my parents live there!" Turns out she'd grown up across the street from my MIL.
Gotta insert here my consternation when my call to Progressive car insurance to cancel the policy went straight to an extremely helpful, cordial and time economical live body. In/out no fuss no muss no "have you considered our new policy rates?" None of it.
Yeah, same here, nothing but smooth sailing with USAA. I've been in a few accidents and in each case they were quick and to the point and the bills got paid.
I know, right? At least we always know where the drooling assholes are – just follow the spoor.
-not in instructions behind a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield-
That's the sort of info you ignore at your own peril.
I would like to redeem that line for either a Shaw or a Shank.
Usetabe, in them old days, ya'd purchase the Shaw & the salesman tied the Shank onto the top of your car... throw in the twine as well!
Ignorance of the rock is no excuse.
"Beware the Ides of March" is on the same vein, and was also ignored.
-Bridge Freezes before Roadway -
The Roadway doesn't freeze, the water in the air voids freezes, expands, cracks the concrete, then unfreeze, then freezes again, cracking the concrete further. I developed a method to test if your air entraining admixture is doing it's job properly. The primary company that made admixture (WR Grace, the asbestos people) whined so much the Federal Highway people had to do a confirming study before the company would quit whining.
Ah, WR Grace, who, along with Dow and US Army Chemical Corps, contracted the services of convicted nazi war criminal Otto Ambrose. I confronted J Peter Grace on the radio once about Otto – he denied nothing but deflected the charge and the KQED interviewer called my calling out 'bizarre'.
But those radio waves are well beyond the edge of our solar system by now, racing toward who knows what advanced society that will ponder this info and then eventually say to themselves "Welp, guess there's nothing for it but to annihilate that quadrant of the the unfashionable outer spiral arm of the galaxy...just in case..."
To them it was very bizarre. A Populares knowing and caring about what an Equestrian did is just wrong
I am remembering an old Bloom County Cartoon where Opus gets mad at a service rep on the phone, I think airline, and hangs up and calls another. The same voice answers and says something like: "Ha we've bought them too." So plus change.................?
Am I too nihilistic or just too old?
Both, like most of us here
No. Not so's we'd notice.
A personal fave of mine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5DeDLI8_IM
I think Musk is being a little more nefarious with Twitter than the more typical corporate posture of mere disrespect for the consumers of their product -- I think there is a deliberate attempt on his part to flood the zone with shit and disinformation. And of course the trolls, who live by the mantra "you will be forced to listen to my opinion and take it seriously" are happy to oblige him.
"the marketplace of ideas" has once again rejected rightwing bullshit, so the spirit of Fair Debate demands that rightwing bullshit be artifically boosted.
Part of my never-ending problem with YouTube is its relentless pushing of Rightwing crap. I have never watched a single political video of any kind on YouTube. My viewing is limited to trains, planes, and fails. Yet the YouTube algorithm offers nothing but constant Trump propaganda, Greg Gutfeld segments, pro-gun videos ("watch this store owner literally blow this guy's brains all over the floor!"), and anti-vax bullshit. No amount of clicking "do not recommend this channel" diminishes the flood.
I've mostly dodged that there and I do not know why, but I promise not to subscribe to whatever it is you've unearthed.
CthulYouTubehu.
Now THAT I might subscribe to, at least til the Elder Ones pull the plug...
Me: "I would like to know how the Precision Time Protocol works."
YouTube Recommendation Algorithm: "After that, how about some Ben Shapiro clips?"
Also remembering the time the QAA folks went from 'Fortnite Headshots' to Jordan Peterson videos in like three clicks through YoutTube recs.
Three Degrees of Jordan Peterson.
Three Derps
"Hey! You viewed a political video! You like politics, so here's three hours of unhinged wingnuts blather! You're welcome!"
Yeah, I've been getting pestered with concealed-carry ads even though I've never watched a single gun video. Maybe the algorithm has been tweaked to deliberately annoy you with ads they know you DON'T want, so you'll give up and pay for the "Premium" service?
When you think about it (and I'm not suggesting you do) the last thing YouTube wants is a user saying, "Wow, that ad was really helpful and relevant to me, I'm so glad I didn't pay extra for the ad-free service!"
the only gun video I've seen, and I confess that I watched it several times, is the immortal, 'I just fucking shot myself!'
For years my youtube recommendations consisted of mostly old SNL clips and Anthrax or Taylor Swift videos, but now that my kid is old enough to have discovered youtube it's entirely video gamers playing Mario Party
What I'm getting that's infuriating is those non-video ads strewn among the list of videos - ads for gun accessories and Tough Guy Bible T-shirts. And you can't block those the way you can on Twitter. No ads from Prager U or The Epoch Times, though (knock on wood).
I just gotta ask – who publishes the Tough Guy Bible?
I just saw the dopes are claiming the WEF wants to re-write the Bible with AI, so I guess that's where it comes from.
When youtube serves me some right wing political crap, in recommendations, it is usually Ben Shapiro. But then I haven't noticed any for a few months
Catapulting The Bullshit
Right? The key to it all seems to be, they get bent out of shape when we don't show them the respect they crave for their dumb ideas -- but conversely, when they don't take us seriously, who gives a fuck? They're morons! Who cares what morons think? So while they petition to get into Liberal Twitter to "fix free speech," not one of us goes anywhere near any Conservative Social Media outlet. I am not even sure what the Trump one is called and I am fine with that; let them spend all day in that hellhole showing each other angry racist memes, I want zero of their respect.
It's called Trump, Socialist. Ironic, no?
The Debate's over and rightwing bullshit lost, so rightwingers have moved to the next step in the authoritarian's playbook: forcing people to listen to them.
There is another very real factor in shitty customer service, though - customer entitlement. Most people genuinely believe it's okay to bully and traumatize the poor asshole they finally get on the line. They think that's their absolute right, as a customer.
I'm here to tell you, having worked at many call centers - there's always a grey area. There's always a sweet spot between what I can do and what I am required to do. There's always a place where I can decide "yeah you're cool I'm going to really lean in and get you taken care of". Or, alternatively, where I can decide you're a garbage person and I quote the standard script at you until you get off my phone. (I personally would never deliberately hang up on you or transfer you to Wales, but accidents can happen.). Customers don't want to hear it and I'd never say it out loud at work, but callers have much more control over the kind of service experience they have than they want to admit or take responsibility for. Speak to me pleasantly and with respect and you will be astonished what I can do for you. Start out screaming "YOU FINALLY FUCKING ANSWERED THE PHONE WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE" and you're gonna have a bad call. Also, heavy sighs and phrases like "well is there anyone else there who knows how to do your job" are going to get you sent to someone's voicemail, too. Be nice. We're people too, and you hacked your way through that nightmare phone tree because you need us.
People in general are entitled assholes these days, and they tend to really be assholes to the faceless customer assistance folks on the phone line. It does not help either end of that conversation that the automated phone tree gets the dimmer customers riled up before they get to engage an actual human.
Pro tip for those who design such systems: If you set it up so that every caller has to drill down through more than three menus to get anywhere, your customer service people are all going to get nothing but pissed-off callers.
Yeah, but the phone tree designers don't care, they don't have to take the calls. And often times they are told to make it hard. One call center trainer I had explained earnestly to my class that ideally you want the customers to "cure" for a certain period so they have "ripened" and are in a receptive mood for both "resolutions AND offers".
If we could somehow require that those who make policies are forced to experience the effects of those policies, the world would be very different. But leaders don't fight their own wars, and generally neither do their kids or grandkids. The government exempts itself from its own safety regs and can vote itself raises. The people who created attendance policies and adherence stats and "first call resolution" quotas will never speak to a customer themselves. And so it goes.
Reminds me of the lesson inherent in the exercise "Given the godlike power to do so, how would you design our civilization? Keep in mind you will have to live in it, and your starting position will be decided randomly."
Isn't this just a restatement of John Rawls?
Could be, sure. I have no idea who to attribute it to.
The plan is probably to plug in one of those LLM AIs for the screener level of support calls, which will probably make things, like, really, totally, great… (sweet elder gods, eat me now!)
I think the only thing holding back full automation right now, given that the initial investment of time and money will inevitably pay for itself in saved labor costs, is the same thing that's prevented most clerical and admin jobs from going fully remote for thirty years now... middle management doesn't want it. Bluntly - you can't bully a machine or a piece of software, and it's no fun trying.
Every job I've had since the 90s I could have done as well or better from my living room, and we've had the tech to make that happen for at least that long. And it's not economics that keeps us all car pooling; the real estate brokers hate the idea of all that empty office space, but ownership and shareholders should lick their lips at the savings on rent. But it's middle management that would recommend such a revolutionary change, and they're not going to. They enjoy the endless displays of forced deference and insincere respect the involuntary work force is forced into by the requirements of "professionalism" (which always seems, somehow, to work out to be self effacement and subservience on the part of labor, never management) and while yes they can manage just as efficiently using tracking software, it's just not the same. They want to see that look in your eyes when you ask for that day off. When they appear behind you like an evil djinn and catch you with your phone out, well, as John Turturro tells Gabriel Byrne, they want to see you squirm. And if you're working remotely, it ROONTS it.
I think (this is just me speculating) that a lot of this is coming from the fact that people are increasingly frustrated that there's nobody addressing their needs, so when they get an actual human they tend to unload on them. Can't punch up, so they punch down.
Oh, and the whole "customer is always right" bullshit and the general lack of concern for others translating into a lack of politeness and tact.
"(I personally would never deliberately hang up on you or transfer you to Wales, but accidents can happen.)."
This right here is the essence of the game. Thanks for iterating it so precisely.
There are days when I would LOVE to be transferred to Wales.
What type of whale? I see you as a Beluga Whale, or perhaps a Narwhal
As long as he blows.
I've never had a problem with the people I reach on the phone, but I can't remember the last time I actually reached someone on a phone.
Oddly, once I reached an actual person at Northwestern Energy in Butte, Montana, she was pleasant and helpful. Of course the amount of time it took to get through the phone tree and wait on hold was another story.
I don't tend to lose my temper, but there have been times when I've been dissatisfied, and I'll explain to the rep that I know it's not their fault, but that they should tell their supervisor I got so mad I screamed at them and made them cry, but it'll be our little secret, and they should go on and have a good day, bye.
My own general policy, and I keep reminding myself: "If a service person did something good, it was on their own initiative. If they do something bad/stupid, it's because their boss required them to do it."
One of my customers has a problem with a piece of extremely expensive electronics I installed in his airplane. My own troubleshooting could not determine the cause, so I called the manufacturer. We're a dealer, so you'd figure that might get better service. Not really.
After a 20-minute wait, I finally get the service tech. He requests all my dealer ID info, enters it, verifies who I am, etc. I describe the problem. "Have you looked at our FAQs?" he asks. Yep. "Okay, I'm going to send you a link to the FAQs," he says. And hangs up.
Back into the phone tree and a 15-minute wait on hold. New tech. Go through the same process. "Have you read the FAQs?" he asks. "Yes, and don't you dare send me a link to them because the answer isn't there," I say.
I finally get to describe the problem. Tech is baffled. Back on hold. Ten minutes later, disconnected.
Back into the phone tree . . .
I have better luck googling about what the problem is, and eventually getting to some site or thread with crowd-sourced information that's more useful than the FAQ site.
Pouring out the contents of a can of chicken noodles and trying to divine the answers from that is usually more productive than the FAQs.
I hated writing software FAQs for that very reason. They’re so contrived and unhelpful, and an actual index or search function would be much more useful.
THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT
Your frustrated users create the helpful content that brings other frustrated users to your website! It's Synergy!
I’m put in mind of a passage from 𝘡𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘺𝘤𝘭𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦. The author is talking about technical documentation: “𝘐’𝘮 from the factory too, and I 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 how instructions like this are put together. You go out on the assembly line with a tape recorder and the foreman sends you to talk to the guy he needs least, the biggest goof-off he’s got, and whatever he tells you—that’s the instructions. The next guy might have told you something completely different and probably better, but he’s too busy.”
Yeah, YouTube is where I go when I'm experiencing software problems (or even just want to know how to use the software I bought.) I need to know something about a Microsoft product, why the hell would I go to Microsoft, THAT'S CRAZY.
If only all customer service rose to the level experienced by the guy stuck on an airplane in a snowstorm for hours, who noticed the airline magazine listed the company president, looked up his home phone number, called it and got the president’s wife who was so appalled she had the airport rescue all the passengers. That’s several levels above the usual “Let me speak to your manager,” although that works, too. My kids taught me the way to bypass the robot voices: babble incomprehensibly. Some automated systems then default to a human. Meanwhile, a shout-out to regional cellular service Cellcom where you always immediately get a sympathetic human being no matter how stupid your problem. PS: Swissair is the absolutely fucking worst along with Lufthansa.
Not all heroes etc
Last year for my birthday I got a Home Depot gift certificate for a hundred bucks. I'm on a the 6th year of a three-year remodeling project so of course I owe those guys somewhere between a shitload and a fuckton of money. I went in to pay my bill and right as I walked into the store there was a stackout display of Milwaukee power tools. (Hmmm tools) A landscaper buddy of mine had an battery operated 8 inch Milwaukee chainsaw he spoke pretty highly of - he been clearing a lot of fence rows and said it was invaluable. I thought about the mile or two fence line that I needed to clear and before I knew it I was heading home from Home Depot with a 8in chainsaw.
I didn't get a chance to work on the fence row until late February of this year. My landscaper buddy was right, it was the perfect tool for the job. After a couple weekends work I couldn't believe how much I got done. Then, I was cutting on a multiflora rose bush the size of a small Airstream trailer when a grinding noise came out of the saw which, up until that point, I had considered marrying because I loved it so much. I said"Fuck" as one does in that situation and put the tool away, putting the tool and it's unfortunate state out of my beautiful mind.
A month or so later I realized that it had been almost a year since I bought the saw and I should probably do something about returning it before I ran out of time was really fucked.
I dug out the receipt and looked up Milwaukee Tools online. There was a three-year warranty on it.
I was taken to a warranty claim page. I had to enter my info and scan in the receipt.
Then I explained what seem to be wrong with the saw. They told me my saw qualied for warranty repair and sent me FedEx label I could print.
I boxed up my saw and took it with me to work the next day. I was able to throw my FedEx package in with all the FedEx packages from work.
The next day I was notified that my package had been received at the service center in Louisiana. I grimaced a bit at the Louisiana stuff. My experience with Louisiana is that everything outside of the French Quarter is a shithole. The next day I was notified that my package had been assigned a service tech. A couple hours later I got another message saying that the saw had been repaired and would be shipped to me that day for receipt the following day.
They provided a routing number for tracking. The next day the saw was sitting on my front porch when I got home from work. It worked perfectly fine.
Before I got a chance to use it very much my son-in-law borrowed it. He returned it when he was done. It was broken again. Anyway, I had an excellent CS experience completely without any human interaction. Maybe that's the key.
10 ShL = 1 FkL 1,000 FkL = 1 FkT
The kilofuckload never really caught on, so we're stuck in a syncretic system blending Imperial & metrical measurements.
Are we talking imperial fuckton, long fuckton, or metric fuckton?
Depends on the fuck, really
Aces.
clearly it's metric
Yes, otherwise there would be 12 shitloads in a fuckload.
That's Sumerian, that is!
Yeah, I'd say the flip side of terrible customer service is a system that makes it ridiculously easy to return stuff. Like they're saying, "Look, we'll do whatever you want, even give you all your money back, JUST DON'T TRY TO TALK TO US OK?"
I bought a Dell laptop about a month ago, had some problems with it that I might have been able to work through if I could have gotten to talk to an actual human, then I just said "Fuck it, I'll send it back", and THAT process was easy as pie.
And now we've got warehouses full of mountains of returned goods, probably most of them totally fine, but who's gonna sort through it all, just landfill it.
I'm assuming it's literally cheaper for the company to ship stuff than to train folks to address problems over the phone/chat.
"We can build anything you want with this army of robots we got, but wait, you need an ACTUAL HUMAN? Sorry, we don't got those no more, let's just tell the army of robots to make you another one!"
I knew my boss had reached end-stage old when the (very early) computer he used finally showed its limits, and the tech came to the factory to fix it(!) But fixing consisted of unplugging old components and plugging in new ones til it worked again. My boss was deeply pained by the experience. "If I'd known he was only gonna randomly throw parts at it I woulda done that myself! I wanted him to FIX it!"
If you're not breakin' out the ol' soldering iron you're not fixin'.
"Caligula syndrome. (I’ve written about that too.)"
[sigh, accompanied by soft eyerole]
Of COURSE you have. That's why we are here! You're the BOSS!
Is Caligula syndrome when you vote for your horse for Senator?
Make Mine Equine!
Explains Chuck Grassley
Well sure, it's easy that way. Imagine if you had to explain him Brackenly, or Forbsly.
The Senator from Kentucky votes “Neigh!”
Capitalism isn't about building better mousetraps anymore. It's about making stuff worse but not so worse as you go someplace else. Freakanomics made their bones talking about guys only buying underwear in the good times. Now underwear is so crappy it only lasts a few washings.
Hear hear. The Freakonomics guys were way ahead of the curve and so was Tim Harford - you've probably read The Undercover Economist, et al.
The Freakonomics guys were and I assume still are idiots
Safe bet, tho we should consult with a freelance economist about the relative safety of such bets compared to, say, Eric Trump's crypto play...
What? Paying as little as possible to folks on the other side of the planet using as little material as possible so the life of the product is as short as can be risked? Unpossible!
Ha ha! You still wash yer underwear?
When I worked for a medical office software company that, over the years kept getting acquired by shittier and shittier companies, they eventually rolled the Documentation Department—which was responsible for all online help, user guides, installation guides, tech manuals, etc.—into a “User Experience” team with the designers, and put the designers in charge. Then basically the designers played all day, held a few pro forma conference calls with customers to hear about their needs, and then ignored that and designed the software to look like the cool toy they thought it should be. The Documentation Department and programmers were left to make the actual product and communicate how it worked. And we were the only ones who paid attention to actual deadlines that had to be met, while the UX team let us all bask in their creativity.
I guess what I’m saying is fk late stage capitalism and its greedy, chaotic bullshit.
From my experience, the First Rule of Corporate Website Design seems to be, "Scrub the website of all phone numbers."
At one point the UX Team geniuses wanted to move all our software help and documentation to a Wordpress site. Thank baby jeebus that never happened.
2nd thru 10th rules:
"See #1"
Rules 2 & 3:
"Do not mention where the building is located, or include similar information that might lead to mail."
"Use only stock photos to suggest people work here; pretend we do not have even a CEO."
Genuine laff "designed the software to look like the cool toy they thought it should be"
I spend a lot of time griping at the proprietary software we use at work. God, it SUCKS sometimes. Tried to print just one facility we ship to, yesterday, and it wasn't on the list but ones we haven't shipped to for two years were.
"User Experience" says a lot. You are no longer permitted to know how stuff works to address it on your own; the "experience" is what matters. Push the lever, get a treat.
Our UX was playing with an “intuitive” user interface that would eliminate the need for help documentation, etc. You can just add the diagnosis code here! If you can’t find the one you need, you can add one yourself! Then you can drag and drop them around the screen!
[raises hand] So what happens when you have multiple entries for the same diagnosis code because people couldn’t find the right one and made a new one? And how do they link to ICD-10 codes for billing?
[UX Team] We haven’t worked out all the kinks yet.
Get the customers to make the website for you!
Kinky!
Oh...YOU get TREATS. Back in MY day, WE got a day off from the LASH! THAT was OUR treat!
You got a whole day off, we got a picosecond. and we liked it.
Imperial or metric?
'bluecheck dipshits'...thanks for the chuckle. Yes, we've segued from the age of built-in obsolescence to the era of willingly accepting inadequate sub-par service and/or just plain broken bullshit because there ARE no alternatives... until you level up $$$ and even then, expect to s*ck the c*ck of your tech overlords because waddayagonnadoaboudit?
**shakes fist: Maytag washers used to last 3 generations! << non sequitur alert
The Maytag repairman is no longer, as he was when Jesse White played him in commercials, the loneliest guy in town -- he's in CS, constantly barraged by calls from screaming, dissatisfied customers, and on Paxil.
Well now I am just depressed and reaching for the off-brand Zoloft myself!
When I bought my current washer, the sales guy said to me, "See you again in ten years!"
AKA 'managing expectations'!
My dad maintained ours for ... 43 ... years. When the folks finally downsized to the townhome he called maytag and they sent a truck out to take it back to the mothership. Probly wanted to know what parts to encheapen so that sort of longevity would never happen again...
Apropos this here, I refer y’all to Cory Doctorow’s theory of enshitification.
Of course, unrestrained capitalism results in a norm, as it were, of sociopathic greed. As for Elmo, he’s a Trump-class narcissist so of course when he’s embarrassed into buying Twitter, he doubles down and makes it a shitty. As a result, it’s still useful enough but a miserable experience.
BTW: I had a glitch for a couple of hours a week or two ago when I was limited in what I can do. IIRC, a reason, long since forgotten, was provided.
Too: experience tells me that narcissists -- in my case, alcoholic ones -- make awful employers in all respects. Meanwhile, whatever one might say about Elmo, he’s a documented shitty boss, more so if one believes that a few of his baby mamas were coerced to whatever degree into having sex with him. (OTOH, other rumors say a bunch of the kids resulted from IVF. No idea and DK what the overlap there is nor do I care.)
But, you know, life with Elmo is too soon whilst still living in the Trump era.
RIGHT I knew I'd seen the concept before! Doctorow's good.
Parker Molloy has a good post about what's now being called "Enshittification"
https://www.readtpa.com/p/enshittification-of-social-media
I'm not on Twitter myself, but I can imagine the dilemma faced by anyone who's a writer (or any kind of artist, really). You've got to stay, because social media is the only way to be heard and seen. Easy for the rest of us to unplug (and then feel morally superior for doing so) not so easy if reaching an audience and making a living requires you to use these shitty platforms.
Jinx! (See Manqueman above.)
Senile minds think alike!
Senile minds think alike!
Senile minds think alike! or so I have read
Yeah, where did I read that?
Plagiarist!
Elmo's sitefuck is still going strong this morning, but doesn't seem to occur on the mobile version. Given time, I'm sure that will change.
“Your call is very important to us. That’s why we intend to leave it hanging from this phone tree for a couple of hours so we can admire it.”
(Times past, when I’d hear people griping about the post office or the DMV, suggesting that they should be “run like a business,” or even privatized, I’d respond “So how did it go, that last time you called your cable company?”)
How long can they get by with "Sorry, we're experiencing a higher than normal call volume"? When was this halcyon period of people not calling you so much that you're now defining as "normal"?
Called the state's department of revenue, and after working through the phone gallows I heard, "There are *ninety-four* callers ahead of you." With frequent exhortations to try them at their website (which routs you back to their phone number and thence, phone gallows)
Childhood!
Speaking of public v. private, I think I told this story here before, but what the hell: I was moving, I had just spent about an hour on the phone trying to get through to the cable company, then I phoned up the local municipally-owned water company to get water connected, "Hello?" said a voice on the phone after the first ring. I almost dropped the phone.
Or your insurance company. (Don't get me started)
I once ran my car into an ill-placed, 18" high brick wall rendering it undrivable 500 miles from home. Agitated, I called my insurance company. When the young lady heard my uncommon last name, she exclaimed, "Oh, my parents live there!" Turns out she'd grown up across the street from my MIL.
Wow, that AI ChatBot software is gettin' GOOD.
Gotta insert here my consternation when my call to Progressive car insurance to cancel the policy went straight to an extremely helpful, cordial and time economical live body. In/out no fuss no muss no "have you considered our new policy rates?" None of it.
Yeah, same here, nothing but smooth sailing with USAA. I've been in a few accidents and in each case they were quick and to the point and the bills got paid.