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by dbg31415 3385 days ago
Years ago one of my clients had an internal system like this... it tried numbers in sequence... but the problem was for the person who dialed in this meant very long wait times if the first person or two weren't responsive. Also we hit issues where the message would end up in someone's personal voicemail box.

Then we switched to more of a "ring all the lines at once and the first one who picked up got the call" -- much better for the person dialing in... but meant every one of our support people got distracted every time the phone rang... they hated it.

Eventually we just went back to something like ZenDesk for customers to write in to create tickets, and then expanded it to something more like what Apple does... where the user creates a request to be called back at a certain time. This is what the client still uses. It's a better system for everyone than trying to sort out incoming calls in real-time.

1 comments

But now it's bad for the customer again. When they need help, they are ready to call and get their problem solved now, not at some point later in the day.

If you're Amazon/Apple/eBay and the "call me on my phone" allows 1-5 minute time windows to being called, that makes sense, but if the customer is sitting around for 10+ minutes you've already frustrated them.