An anonymous reader writes: After a still-unresolved, four-day nightmare trying to switch to Comcast digital voice (with all features working, please-thank-you), I'm again asking myself what does the buffer zone support layer really provide. I've been bumping up against the BOsFH since Friday trying to get my phone service ported, along with my number, and I'm asking myself again what do these unqualified phone-bots really provide? They operate under the theory that having a layer of low budget (India!) phone-answers in between you and the solution to your problem adds value somehow. I lucked out getting Michelle today who ported my number correctly in about two minutes, whereas four days of calls to front-line nincompoops led me to nothing but frustration and a disconnected number. I specifically requested to speak to Michelle's supervisor so I could tell him she rocks!
Background: I've been managing in IT for 10+ years and the career is getting close to 25 years overall. It's taken as gospel, in my experience, that some fresh-out-of-school $15k-a-year (US) newbie is the best person to answer the phone. You've got to keep your developers, who cost real money and who really know what's going on, away from that distraction — away from customers. That distraction keeps them from creating new stuff to sell after all. In this process though, customers effectively get ignored (often for a weeks) while somebody in front-line support gropes for an answer... an answer that a developer could field with a couple of SQL queries. From what I've seen, a couple effective developers could outmatch an army of call-center bots.
The over-arching question here is what the real value of a call center is. At the moment I'm thinking not much. Get the people who can really answer questions on the front line! The counter-argument is that those folks cost 3-4x what a phone-answering bot costs. So which is really most cost-effective, a few highly skilled people or an army of near-illiterates?
The twist I would add is that a company only need rotate a fraction of the development workforce through the call center at any given time — say folks who are rolling out a new service or a major upgrade. Everybody else in development would still be nose-to-the-grindstone. Make the people who release stuff eat their own dog food.
