Personal responsibility in customer service

[hubrix]

Ask HN: I spent 1.5 hours on the phone with Dell today trying to get a downgrade from windows 8 to windows 7 for 4 comouters we bought for our call center today because windows 8 sucks. but that is not the problem. I talked to 4 different people in customer service and tech support all on one long phone call and they presented me with policy based responses that when i asked them if they would think them reasonable I got a unanimous answer that they would not but that was the policy. does this bother anyone else? how can it be done better? what about on a large scale?

[purple_peon]

The better answer is to either make policies that are actually reasonable to more people or to invest in more training for the representatives having to pass on the information so that everyone involved understands. Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen. Most times, low-level employees do not understand why a policy is the policy: Even if they do, they aren't likely to be allowed to pass this information on to the customer. More training is not likely because most of the call centers, at least the ones I've worked at/know of have very high turnover rates (in the US). More training would mean more investment in employees that may not last more than 2-6 months for various reasons.

Policies that actually make sense rarely happen for larger companies, it seems.