[CarbyAu]

For me the biggest issue was authority/power on the Service Desk.

The worse cases are when the Customer Rep gets a problem from a customer they have little power to resolve. When you are:

- logging tickets to a black hole of "higher tier" support with no communication back to you.

- "chasing them up for the customer" aka by putting notes in a ticket

...you feel powerless.

Then when the next call comes in from the customer you begin to think "Why am I even here. I can't do anything..."

Customer Support need to see their efforts make a difference, just like most people, in order to be motivated to do it again.

[Gracana]

As a customer, it's a painful experience when you realize the support people are in this position. I can't be mad at them, they're friendly and personable and they at least pretend to want to help, but it's obvious that they're unable to do anything useful. At a certain point (around the third three hour phone call, in my experience) it feels like they're mocking you with their saccharine lies, and I begin to loathe the company they represent.

I suppose if I was an entrepreneurial type, I'd try to disrupt industries like that by creating a company that charges extra to provide service that doesn't make customers want to spit in your face. Surely there's a market for that...

[dfxm12]

I can't be mad at them, they're friendly and personable and they at least pretend to want to help, but it's obvious that they're unable to do anything useful.

I wonder if companies are relying on your empathy. They want you to realize this and just close tickets before they're resolved. Like the service desk's primary directive is to get customers off their employer's backs. If they happen to fix an issue along the way, that's a nice bonus.

For example, I've had to call Amazon 4 times recently over the same issue. I've been lied to each time that they fixed it. I was promised evidence that I was never given. I really don't know what to do about this...

[SeerKlein]

I think you're on to something. I've been working for as a contractor for a big health insurance company and that seems to be the impression for the purpose of my job: "Get the customer off the phone as soon as you can."

In more polite terms, "Try to escalate the ticket by 15 minutes if you haven't resolved the issue."