Conversations – Customer Support

In one of Mike Baldwin’s comics, a man would be on the phone line, probably calling the customer support. The voice from the other end would say

“Your call is important to us, please hold the line until your call is no longer important to you”

I have had similar experiences and I am going to share a few of them here.

Recently, I contacted my telecom operator support for an issue related to billing. Reaching the customer support person was a pain, with multiple call drops. However, the sweet voice in the IVR would say one thing that you, as a customer, are being held in high respect and importance, which is not the truth. The IVR was intentionally made to be convoluted, that I had to type in at least 20 numbers picking the options that the IVR was offering. Moreover, the options went in cycles repeating the same thing again and again, testing my patience!

Adding more fuel to the fire, when going in the cycles, the IVRS kept changing the options for reaching the support person, the first time it would be 3, the next it would be 0 and 8 the next time.

Finally I got through, reaching that support person, let’s say B. But to my surprise, B did not understand the issue, gave blunt replies and all of a sudden hung up. I couldn’t believe that customer support had gone this bad.

Again, I went through a few call drops and the convoluted options to reach the support person, but this time determined that if I get the same response, I would either take the issue with their higher-ups or move to a new telecom operator altogether. However, this time, my sanity was saved by a noble support soul that heard me and resolved the issue.

For another product support, whenever I called their helpline, the IVR voice would say, “You are in a queue. You are customer number 60, please hold the line… You are customer number 56”. I had to try a few times because of call drops to reach the support person.

Reaching the support over email is even more painful because the response is a template message without even reading your email.

It is sometimes difficult to understand why companies make it so painful and difficult to reach customer support. It is likely that they don’t understand that “Satisfied customers tell 3 friends and angry customers tell 3000”.

Of course, there are companies that are very famous for their wonderful customer service and support, but they are only a handful of them, the rest fall into the quagmire of mystery.

The issue here is that the top brands and companies talk loud through the lengths and breadths, that the customer is the king, the customer is your boss etc., but in reality, not an iota of concern or care is given to the customer. A person is cared for until he/she becomes a customer, after that you would understand what it would be, if you had read this far!

Image Credits: Pixabay