What? It’s a legitimate question. Companies set up automated phone trees to reduce costs, at the expense of frustrating customers. It would seem relatively simple to send any account info entered on the phone to whichever operator ends up pulling up the customer on the computer.
> Companies set up automated phone trees to reduce costs, at the expense of frustrating customers
I'd modify that slightly to say they set up phone trees to reduce costs by frustrating customers. Adding friction to prevent people from getting refunds or other concessions, or getting them to give up without speaking to a human, is a big reason for these systems. They could easily make them better, but there is no incentive. That's why (usually) monopolies or places like rewards programs that don't want you to use them have the worst service, but if you ever call in to get a new insurance policy you'll be talking to a human in seconds.
True. Reducing customer support calls that get to a real person contributes to the performance and cost metrics for a call center. Some companies may try to make a useful phone tree. Some may use it to introduce friction and cut off nuisance calls. I won’t say the companies always have nefarious or uncaring intentions but it can feel that way from the customer end.
Agreed. That would make sense given the facts I think I have. Maybe some legal or regulatory or anti-fraud consideration comes into it that I don’t know about.
I have worked on phone trees that run in a software PBX that actually doesn’t connect to other systems, like customer service, though I don’t see any technical impediment. Maybe the various vendors don’t interoperate. Maybe the company outsources their phone tree, or their customer service, or both.
Lots of things don’t work the way we’d like or think they should. I get that. But getting upset and starting off the chat with a real person in a bad mood or tone, when they had nothing to do with the phone tree implementation, you do have control over that.
Almost every day I see people driving in ways I interpret as rude, dangerous, or oblivious. I try to remind myself that their behavior isn’t directed at me, personally, and I can’t control them but I can control my reactions. Same principle.
"But getting upset and starting off the chat with a real person in a bad mood or tone,"
They didn't say that. They never said they took it out on the employee. They said that the system caused the customer to be less happy than they could have been. Perfectly legit complaint, and a failure on the part of the people who set up the system.
That's actually why they came HERE to ask. That is something they have control over.
> Its aggravating and sets the wrong tone for my support call.
One can read that in different ways. When I’m aggravated by the time I get through to a person I may communicate that by my tone. Having worked on the receiving end of support calls I know that’s common. Who else can they vent on?
And they have a right to be aggravated. You're talking about something else, their outward reaction, which you are making assumptions about.
I'd hope every user interface designer (and yes this is user interface design) also gets aggravated by bad design. If all you do is make excuses for bad design, it's a good bet your designs suck.
I made no excuses. I did offer some possible explanations in a different comment thread. I didn’t go so far as to say anyone’s work sucked.
I don’t let myself get aggravated over things I can’t control or that likely have causes other than malice or someone sucking at design. I don’t take out my frustrations on customer support people. Not worth it, no point.
You don’t know that. We just interpret the original complaint differently. If someone says their frustration with a phone tree “sets the tone” that implies something about the following conversation. A “tone” doesn’t mean anything without a conversation.
Complaining on HN will not get any closer to changing the actual problem. I offered possible explanations elsewhere — multiple vendors, incompatible systems, outsourcing, deliberate friction to reduce human call volume, anti-fraud. Sheer incompetence or even malice present possible explanations too. I stand by my original answer: Things don’t necessarily work the way we think they should, that’s simply a fact, so there’s no point letting yourself get aggravated about those things.
This doesn’t really deserve a reply, because you have extrapolated from my comments about something I had nothing to do with (a phone tree) and my advice to not take out frustration on people who have no power or control over such inconveniences (customer service operators). How you got to my skills or what I might do in such cases I can’t tell, but it’s a leap of thinking that just seems like misdirection or jumbled logic.
I do design and implement user-facing software, have done that for decades, and can point to online testimonials about my own work as user-friendly. As I described in comments in this topic (not necessarily in response to you, but you can see all of my comments), bad phone trees can happen for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with deliberate bad user experience. It can be as simple as the explanation for why a Jeep spare tire won’t work on my Mazda. And yes, as I already described, some of the explanations have to do with saving money and reducing operator time on call, which we as customers perceive as frustration and not caring, but at minimum you have to understand that the problem has multiple dimensions.
As for not getting aggravated and frustrated, I only advised against taking that out on people who have no control or power or ability to fix problems. Whether the OP actually did that or not is irrelevant. Lots of people do berate and shout at customer service reps, and if you have ever worked in a call center (I have) you would know what a crushing experience that is, to get shouted at and blamed for problems you cannot influence or fix. A little patience and empathy goes a long way. Feel free to email the software managers at the company with the shitty phone tree. Feel free to design a better phone tree and call center user experience and sell it to the big companies that use those products. I can already tell you that end-user/customer satisfaction is not a metric most companies care about, so feel free to not use those companies. That’s how I handle it — terrible customer service, I take my business elsewhere. I don’t bitch about bad phone trees online or yell at customer service reps about it.
