[the_only_law]

Still doesn’t piss me off as much as automated phone support systems.

90% of the time they only offer options that I could easily go online to do. If I’m calling your phone number. It’s because I have a problem that’s not solved or clarified by your existing self-support systems.

[bootlooped]

I've frequently thought about how much net productivity loss automated phone systems cause for the economy. It seems like for every 10 minutes of my time is wasted on one the company I'm calling saved 1-2 minutes of customer service rep time.

[rhino369]

They do that because a significant number of people will call rather than check the website first.

My issue is that they often don't give you the "none-of-the-above please let me speak to a real person" option--or they hide it.

[kapp_in_life]

Unfortunately I think they've found that most people don't(won't?) do that self debugging.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/806/

[pydry]

They could do a better job of separating the two.

Most companies would save their time and mine if they had a callback system which took as many details as possible up front & didnt have to ask my name and account details because Im already logged in.

Even better if it could give me some warning about where I am in the queue and when the call might be coming (e.g. via push notification).

I'd 1000x prefer that over any oversold AI hooked up to an FAQ.

Unfortunately it seems call centres are driven by very traditional metrics which wouldnt lead anybody to set up a system like this.

[zerkten]

> They could do a better job of separating the two.

When support is purely viewed as a cost, then this will never happen. 99% plus of your call volume may be for the obvious things. If you offer two options all of those people are going to be more confused than they already are and you will have some of them engaged by costly humans.

> Unfortunately it seems call centres are driven by very traditional metrics which wouldnt lead anybody to set up a system like this.

You are getting to the higher level point here. Costs need to be minimized so you go with the cheapest vendor available and then try to squeeze everything you can out of that. If you can send someone to an AI, again, after you've put them in the direct of a human, there is the possibility of deflecting further cost. Depending on the scenario these cost savings can rack up for both the company and the support vendor. All the time, the humans doing the support or creating the solutions forming the basis of the AI get treated pretty poorly.

Support at a particular scale will start to skew this way unless there are strong forcing functions in the organization. For example, sales need to be able able to sell support which needs to be backed up by solid people, and keep getting renewed. If you offer predominantly free support then you don't have much wiggle room. When PMs and devs only focus on new features and not fixing real issues raised by customers, or more importantly in many ways, proactively identified by support people, then you lose support people and make toil for those remaining.

Lastly, recognizing support people as an asset, will result in better behaviors and attracting more talent. Many times companies struggle badly with this and then decide to just outsource it. Promoting people from support into sales or deeper tech roles over the long-temr can also be pretty cost effective versus hiring outside. Many folks on HN will have done support at one point and felt they could have contributed much more in other roles.

[mrweasel]

> When support is purely viewed as a cost, then this will never happen. 99% plus of your call volume may be for the obvious things.

Maybe, but not my experience. I worked at a telco, and as developers we had to sit in on support calls a few times, to help identify areas that could be improved with minor effort. The majority of the calls I listened into on a given day had to be assigned to an engineer. The remaining, they just wanted a better deal or help reading their bill.

[waynesonfire]

> Still doesn’t piss me off as much as automated phone support systems.

Yes, the AI voice bot is marginally better because I can request "customer service" without waiting to discover the right numeric code. That's about the extent of that.

[gregmac]

I accidentally discovered a cheat code a few years ago, interacting with one of those IVR voice systems, as I was getting frustrated with it and eventually exclaimed "fuck!" -- its response was brilliant: "Alright.. ok.. it looks like you're having troubles. Please hold while I transfer you to a human operator."

[the_only_law]

I’ve had that work a few times, but other times, I can verbally abuse the bot all I want to no avail.