[patio11]

An aside for HNers, which I write as someone who had his first job in customer service: please remember, when interacting with customer service agents (and the various ops folks at companies that hire from very similar talent pools), that you (very likely, if you are on HN) are in a ridiculously fortunate position in life relative to the customer service agent, and that they did not write the state machine that made the poor decision about you. They're just following the arrows on that state machine.

You either want to discover the inputs needed to get the state machine to give you the outcome you want, or, you want to get this issue kicked from the CS/etc person you're talking to a fellow well-compensated professional who has substantial discretionary decisionmaking ability. None of this requires getting intemperate with a person who makes very little money and has a frequently soulcrushing job.

[nate_meurer]

Thanks for this addendum, this is important. I'd also emphasize the practical effect that our rudeness/friendliness can have. I experienced this last year when we were trying to get care for my father after he was nearly killed by COVID. The hospital wanted to send him home before he was able to care for himself, and we wanted the hospital to discharge him to rehab instead.

My sister's initial strategy was to go full Karen and treat the patient care coordinator like she was my sister's employee. She adapted to the coordinator's natural reticence with increasing bitchiness, and quickly got her calls screened.

My father on the verge of getting kicked out while still in dire need of care, I called the same coordinator, explained our dilemma in detail, said I don't know what to do, and asked for her help. My magic spell was simply to treat the coordinator as a resourceful and intelligent person who was in a position to help me, and ask her plainly for help. That's it. The coordinator told me she'd see what she could do, and then spent the next two days searching for a solution. When she found a way to get my dad into rehab for a few days, I told her she was my hero.

I try to treat even the most obviously external and powerless customer service reps with the same plain respect as that patient coordinator, and I'm often surprised by how far it gets me.

[serf]

>please remember, when interacting with customer service agents (and the various ops folks at companies that hire from very similar talent pools), that you (very likely, if you are on HN) are in a ridiculously fortunate position in life relative to the customer service agent

I agree with the sentiment that 'you attract more flies with honey than vinegar' with regards to customer service folks, but disagree with the trope that HN-users (or computer-job-people in general) are somehow privileged and in a fortunate place in life simply due to where they hang out online or the categorization of work they do.

I also disagree with the stereotyping of customer service workers as disadvantaged.

simply put : I disagree with uninformed characterizations. I don't know anything about the life of the customer service worker that I need to call, and they don't know anything about mine; to assume anything with what little we both know about each other is a recipe for inaccurate profiling.

"try walking a mile in my shoes" isn't a literal request to learn more about the person you're judging, it's advice that suggests that 'the other' is ultimately unknowable and that presumption is worthless.

judge their job and the quality of that, maybe some accurate generalizations can be made about their job; I can agree that most customer-service work is low quality, grueling, and sometimes abusive.

Don't extrapolate judgements borne from work presumptions into 'total life quality & stature'; a person is more and has more than the work they do.

[Normille]

It's not so much that the customer service people are advantaged/disadvantaged or helpful/unhelpful that, in my opinion, makes it a compete waste of time ringing them. It's the fact that they have no real ability to solve any of your problems which are not down to error on your part.

The turnover of staff in call centres is continual and few people last long in the job. So the person you speak to is doubtless barely trained, knows nothing much about how the company works and, when speaking to you, is working from a script along the lines of _"Customer has problem A -- Suggest solution B"_. So is highly unlikely to be able to do anything to help you, if your problem is not on their script --and they have no authority to make any decisions beyond the most standard basic procedures, anyway.