{"id":9977,"date":"2023-02-12T01:52:13","date_gmt":"2023-02-12T01:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=9977"},"modified":"2023-02-12T01:52:13","modified_gmt":"2023-02-12T01:52:13","slug":"the-death-of-the-customer-service-hotline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=9977","title":{"rendered":"The death of the customer service hotline"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The answer to why companies make it hard or impossible for people to call them is simple: It saves them money. It\u2019s more expensive to hire a person in a call center \u2014 assuming they can find people who want to work there \u2014 than it is to engineer some chatbot that offers up canned answers on a website. The result is sort of a sliding scale of cost-saving terribleness.
 \u201cThere\u2019s a straight-up clear hierarchy,\u201d Buell said. \u201cThe cost to talk to a live person face-to-face is always going to be greater than the cost to talk to a live person on the phone, which is going to be greater than the cost to talk to a live person over chat, which is going to be greater than the cost to talk to some kind of automated solution. In the middle there is also email, and chat is more expensive than email, which is more expensive than non-human.\u201d”
…
“Even if companies do have options to call, they\u2019re often ineffective and have a ton of automated options before you get to a real person, if you ever do. \u201cYou have to go through all the menus, you say, \u2018I want to talk with a person,\u2019 you have to wait for an hour,\u201d Hu said. \u201cEven though they have the call option, it\u2019s almost like no call at all.\u201d”
…
“Talking to customers about their products and services may lead businesses to discover deficiencies they might not otherwise notice. This allows them to improve their offerings so that, in the long run, they build something better \u2014 and ultimately field fewer complaints.”
…
“recently found herself on the \u201choly hell\u201d end of the customer service frustration experience. She couldn\u2019t get the electricity turned on in her new house because her credit was frozen, and the credit bureau she needed to reach out to to have it unfrozen had shuttered its call center. She had to send copies of her driver\u2019s license and Social Security card to a random post office box in Texas. She ultimately waited months for her credit to be unfrozen and her lights to be turned on.”  
https:\/\/www.vox.com\/23571375\/no-call-center-phone-number-frontier-facebook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The answer to why companies make it hard or impossible for people to call them is simple: It saves them money. It\u2019s more expensive to hire a person in a call center \u2014 assuming they can find people who want to work there \u2014 than it is to engineer some chatbot that offers up canned answers on a website. The result is sort of a sliding scale of cost-saving terribleness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a straight-up clear hierarchy,\u201d Buell said. \u201cThe cost to talk to a live person face-to-face is always going to be greater than the cost to talk to a live person on the phone, which is going to be greater than the cost to talk to a live person over chat, which is going to be greater than the cost to talk to some kind of automated solution. In the middle there is also email, and chat is more expensive than email, which is more expensive than non-human.\u201d”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Even if companies do have options to call, they\u2019re often ineffective and have a ton of automated options before you get to a real person, if you ever do. \u201cYou have to go through all the menus, you say, \u2018I want to talk with a person,\u2019 you have to wait for an hour,\u201d Hu said. \u201cEven though they have the call option, it\u2019s almost like no call at all.\u201d”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Talking to customers about their products and services may lead businesses to discover deficiencies they might not otherwise notice. This allows them to improve their offerings so that, in the long run, they build something better \u2014 and ultimately field fewer complaints.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“recently found herself on the \u201choly hell\u201d end of the customer service frustration experience. She couldn\u2019t get the electricity turned on in her new house because her credit was frozen, and the credit bureau she needed to reach out to to have it unfrozen had shuttered its call center. She had to send copies of her driver\u2019s license and Social Security card to a random post office box in Texas. She ultimately waited months for her credit to be unfrozen and her lights to be turned on.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[798,1829,217,165],"class_list":["post-9977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-business","tag-customers","tag-economics","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9978,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9977\/revisions\/9978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}