New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why are customer support processes so awful?

Ask HN: Why are customer support processes so awful?
7 by EricRiese | 2 comments on Hacker News.
I understand the cost effectiveness of outsourcing and paying bottom barrel wages for agents. But every time I have to deal with customer support for a big company, I come up with countless technical improvements I can’t believe they don’t implement. • Provide an asynchronous email-like support channel. • Sure, a real email address would get spammed, but let me kick it off from a contact page and then reply via email • Let me upload files and screenshots • This is asking a lot, but basic formatting for quotes or pre blocks for logs makes a world of difference • Let me navigate the phone tree on the web and have them call me when a representative is available instead of me waiting • Or at least give specific numbers on a web page so I can bypass the phone tree • Provide visibility into the underlying ticketing system. • If a customer support agent is typing up notes, let me see them. Send them in an email so I can search the text and pull up the ticket number for instance. I’ve taken to immediately escalating all my issues with financial organizations to the CFPB since they have a process that pretty much completely satisfies my desires. My current frustration was triggered by the Nationwide website crashing when I tried to download a policy document. Their web support team is only reachable through a phone number, so they’ve guaranteed that the vast majority of good samaritan technical people won’t go through the hoops to send them a bug report with javascript console logs or screenshots. But I can send an asynchronous message to other teams.

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