“Your call is important to us, please remain on the line…”
Those little words... I wonder if one day we'll hear them being used by the defense in a murder trial.
Defense Lawyer: Your honour, it's hardly the defendants fault. He was on hold with Rogers and the computerized female voice just kept telling him that his call was important and that he should remain on the line. I'm sure you've experienced this voice for yourself. The victim just happened to stumble into the defendants office at minute 176 of the wait for support... for this reason we'd like to plead temporary insanity.
Judge: There's no need... I've been in that situation before... I'm waiving all charges, this case is dismissed.
This may seem a little far fetched but I don't think it is. Tonight we had a power outage. Not the end of the world, but it was a pain in the ass. It lasted 5+ hours. I say 5+ because at hour 5 the battery died on the laptop (leaving us with nothing left to do in the house) so we ventured to a midnight matinee. When we returned, the power was finally back on.
So, how does this power outage relate to a comment on the Rogers "helpful" phone system. Well, the power went out at about 7:15pm, we'd just ordered a Pay-Per-View movie (The Pink Panther) at 7pm. Here we are 10 minutes into the actual movie (after I buy my movie, Rogers makes me watch 5 minutes of previews for other movies they are now showing) and I'm without power. I decide I'll call Rogers... they let you cancel a PPV X minutes in and I figure in this case they'll quite easily refund me the $4.99 or give me a credit.
So I call... I'm using a cell phone as we have VoIP in the house, no power means no phone. My phone call lasts 5 minute, we're in the basement and the signal fades. In those 5 minutes I was told that if I wanted french, I should say french, asked what I was calling about (Cable TV, Wireless, etc) and then asked for a category inside the first division (Pay Per View, Technical Support, etc). Then it wants my phone number. I say my phone number 5 times... not once does it get it correct... and then the signal faded.
The second call lasted 20 minutes (that should have been more than enough time to obtain a credit... wrong!) I entered my phone number correctly this time, and then provided the last 3 digits of my postal code (Weird, I always though that C was a letter not a digit). Interesting Side Note: You can run up somebody's cable bill by knowing the phone number associated with their cable account and the last 3 "digits" of their postal code by providing that information and then automatically ordering PPV movies. So, I'm in the
PPV menu, thinking ok I can get a refund... nope. It just starts reading off upcoming PPV movies and telling me I can order them. I press 0 frantically and it tells me to wait while they connect me to someone. I ended up waiting, while the annoying voice repeated the same thing over and over again, until the cell phone battery died. Needless to say I wasted more time than was worth the 4.99 credit, luckily the power was out and I don't feel so bad. I'm going to email Rogers at some point to see if they willingly provide the credit... if they don't, I'll be providing the email discussion here; if they do provide one, I'll let you all know.
So how does this fit into the topics of this blog... it does't have to... it's mine and I wanted to write this... but it does. It made me think back to a simpler time, a time when you could call tech support and speak to the person you wanted to speak with... no automated systems, perhaps at most a receptionist who transfered your call, no one has a system like that these days... everything is automated and it's not necessarily a good thing. It makes me think of the commercial where the guys on the phone with one of these wonderful automated systems and the voice over talks about providing the greatest system of all for phone support... a person. I realize that Rogers wants to have that fancy 1 - 888 - ROGERS - 1 number but I'd settle for dialing 1 - 888 - ROGERS - 2 if it meant I could talk to a person about Cable TV right away instead of dealing with that lousy voice prompt.
Peace,
HT
I think it was someone’s way of telling you that you shouldn’t be watching Pink Panther, which was a horrible movie.
I don’t know if I completely agree with you there. I’ve been on both sides and I understand the pain of having to sit for 30-60 minutes waiting to get a voice on the phone.
The reason why big companies do this is to weed out stupid people. These are the people who want to talk to *anyone* to solve their problems, whether or not they would be able to. We used to have a two-layer support system. The job of the first layer was to either solve very simple tech problems or pass them along to the group that could. The problem was that there were 10 offices in our building and we were the only tech support there. Since people knew we were in the building, they would lie about their problem just to get one of us on the line, even though we couldn’t solve our problem.
This is the flaw in the simple system. It’s too *easy* for any caller to get a hold of anyone else, whether or not they are the person qualified to handle your problem. If half the phone calls a support person gets has to be redirected needlessly, it’s a complete waste of time for them. I can tell you from experience that it is very frustrating. I think most people who complain about this are a lot smarter (and know what they want) than a lot of other people in the world.
Well we reordered Pink Panther… It was, as expected, another stupid comedy… although I can think of much worse movies than it.
As for why they do it… I know why they do it… I’ve done the call center thing way many times… I’ve also done the directly answer the call system… both systems have merits and flaws and I don’t think either solution is the answer.
At the call center system, you weed out the “stupid” people that will talk to anyone… but if you had individual phone numbers for each service… that would accomplish the same thing but be less of a pain,. You also get the people that randomly push buttons until they do get someone, proving the system isn’t fool-proof.
With the direct call system, you do get people calling that aren’t your responsibility to deal with, but you seldom have to deal with a disgruntled person who’s spent 30-60 minutes waiting on the phone.
I’d like to see something in between. Call a number for Cable TV (seperate number for say Wireless or Internet)… punch in my phone number (not have to say it) and get a list of options (kind of like telephone banking). Press the number I want, be connected to the right person. I’d also like to not have the voice continually tell me that my call is important… I feel that if my call was truly important, they’d employ more people so they could respond to me more quickly.
I can also see where you’re coming from with level-1, level-2 tech support. Verizon, for example, has multiple levels of tech support. Level 1 is actually the computerized system that answers the phone. Level 2 is the first tech that you talk to, the person who had 30 days of training. They’ll escalate you to “Help Desk” if they can’t solve it… People at “Help Desk” have no additional training and can apply for that position while still completing the training.
I remember one time dealing with Sympatico.. I got the initial rep… DSL was down in our area and we were the first to call to report the outage and the rep refused to believe it was an outage… He wanted me to do everything… power cycle the modem, power cycle the PC, reinstall NIC Drivers, reinstall PPPoE software, reseat the NIC… literally everything. I performed all these steps sitting on my livingroom couch and because he was just reading off a screen as he told me what to do, he bought it. Right from the start I asked for someone higher up… and he refused… now that everyone was done he finally escalated me. As soon as I talked to the next level tech, they said you’re right… we do have an outage… The problem with tech support is it’s the blind leading the blind so I can see them wanting to direct the person… For tech support it makes sense.
However, I didn’t need tech support. All they had to do was have a system enabled that said, “These are the movies you’ve rented in the last 30 minutes. To cancel a movie please press the corresponding number”… If it’s more than 30 minutes make me talk to tech support…and wait on the phone but if it’s less than that, since they’re going to oblige anyways… why not automate it.
Lastly, I have sent them an email (I’m not calling again)… I’m just waiting to see what they say.
Totally agree with you. I think there does need to be a happy medium between the two. The problem is that the powers that be have to fight between dealing with customers and protecting their employees.
I think the best solution (and I’ll admit that a co-worker came up with this years ago) is that every system should ask you the following question when you connect.
“If you are an idiot, press 1. If not, press 2″
This would weed out a hell of a lot of people