Is Bad Customer Service More Profitable Than Good? (hbr.org) 181
Two associate professors of marketing recently shared research in the Harvard Business Review about how customer service is structured at at tech, travel, and finance companies:
[O]ur research suggests that some companies may actually find it profitable to create hassles for complaining customers, even if it were operationally costless not to.... We found that these companies screen complaining callers by using a hierarchical organizational structure. This structure, we argue, keeps a lid on the amount of redress customers are willing to seek. In other words, by forcing customers to jump through hoops, the organization helps curb its redress payouts.
As part of our research, described in a forthcoming article in the journal Marketing Science, we interviewed managers of call centers to understand how their customer service organization is structured, and the way it contains redress payouts. We found that most involve at least two levels of agents. The Level 1 agents take all incoming calls and hear each customer's complaint first. These agents are typically limited in the amount of redress they are authorized to offer to the caller...
So what about the idea that frustrating customers has consequences on customer retention and long term reputation? For example, some experts advise companies with upset customers to reach out to them directly to win them back. But, some companies have little regard for their reputation, especially those who control a large market share... companies with few competitors may find it worthwhile to alienate angry customers in order to save on redress costs.... This may help us understand why some of the most hated companies in America are so profitable and why customer service, unfortunately, remains so frustrating.
At one company "Any caller insisting on a refund was told to call the U.S. headquarters during normal business hours, generating additional tasks for any customer seeking more compensation...
"This design relies on the fact that some consumers are not willing to incur this hassle. When this happens, the company is off the hook for the additional payout."
As part of our research, described in a forthcoming article in the journal Marketing Science, we interviewed managers of call centers to understand how their customer service organization is structured, and the way it contains redress payouts. We found that most involve at least two levels of agents. The Level 1 agents take all incoming calls and hear each customer's complaint first. These agents are typically limited in the amount of redress they are authorized to offer to the caller...
So what about the idea that frustrating customers has consequences on customer retention and long term reputation? For example, some experts advise companies with upset customers to reach out to them directly to win them back. But, some companies have little regard for their reputation, especially those who control a large market share... companies with few competitors may find it worthwhile to alienate angry customers in order to save on redress costs.... This may help us understand why some of the most hated companies in America are so profitable and why customer service, unfortunately, remains so frustrating.
At one company "Any caller insisting on a refund was told to call the U.S. headquarters during normal business hours, generating additional tasks for any customer seeking more compensation...
"This design relies on the fact that some consumers are not willing to incur this hassle. When this happens, the company is off the hook for the additional payout."
A Little Piece of Advice (Score:1)
Just call your credit card company and issue a chargeback. One step, 15 minutes. They'll get the hint, I promise.
Re: A Little Piece of Advice (Score:1)
I have equivalent luck just writing my complaint down, stuffing it in a bottle, tossing the bottle in the ocean, and putting my fist through a wall. You should try it! :)
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I'm pretty sure that would cost you money. Not result in you getting your money back on the spot. Which is what a chargeback does for you.
Remember, the credit card company is actually on your side, because you pay higher rates in interest to them (in the general case, ignoring super-thrifty, definitively non-average US spenders). YOU are the customer they want to sell a product to (usury). It's worth it to them to whip misbehaving merchants into line.
Re: A Little Piece of Advice (Score:1)
That's not the way it works at all. The credit card company makes more on fees (and credit charges from other customers) from the merchant than they do from any individual customer.
Twenty years ago I did a charge-back of around $800 of goods purchased by a credit card from IBM. I did over the phone. Last year I tried getting $50 charged back from Mastercard and I was told I'd need to fill out a form and maybe (maybe!) they would decide to give me my money back. I laughed and told them they can charge the me
Re: A Little Piece of Advice (Score:1)
Document your attempts to get the merchant to refund you; then call your credit card company. 100% success rate here.
Most cc vendors will bend over backwards to refund you, they dont want you to switch, especially if you carry a balance.
Good advice (Score:2)
Re: A Little Piece of Advice (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't work if there company provides a service you require and has no competition. They'll just refer you to collections.
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It works just fine [slashdot.org], thank you. Charter/Spectrum here has no competition, and they can't very well send me to collections for a router there's oodles of documentation proving they refused to send to me for an entire year.
It works juuuust fine.
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Hi this is your local bank. I am sorry but I have to ceny your loan unless you want to pay me $300,000 extra dollars for high interest rates on your deam house your wife wants.
Your credit report shows you have been delinquent for years on your Charter account. How do I know you are going to pay me every month?
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Except that I'd win that lawsuit in a heart beat. I can prove I was fraudulently charged, and the credit card company was happy to assist. Also, my credit union account was established when I was a baby. They're not about to give me a headache over a loan--I have literally been their customer my entire life. Further, Spectrum called me back and said they corrected it, and wouldn't be billing me for that anymore.
Why would you encourage consumers to live in fear of corporations?
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I don't disagree with what you've said, but when it comes down to "I'd win that lawsuit" levels of effort it shows that they're winning anyway even if they lose in specific cases.
99% of people aren't going to take on some lawsuit against a large corporation. They already budget for fighting off these lawsuits and are really good at it, and you and everyone else have already paid for the corner cases they lose because those costs are built into their existing cost model.
I think some of the time business are
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Fortunately, I don't have to, because, statistically, the average American consumer pays a large corporation a significant fraction of their income (12% on a card or higher, because they need to make market rate and a bit for inflation). They carry a balance, so I don't need to in order to benefit from the credit card company--an enormous corporation--having a vested interest in not allowing disruptive merchants to drive away interest-paying customers.
In my case, there was no lawsuit, and I only needed to c
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You can challenge information you believe is false and have it removed from your credit report.
When you challenge it, they have to be able to prove the debt to continue pressing it. If it is over a charge-back, the charge-back being successful makes that close to impossible for them; the best evidence everybody has, including them, is that you were in the right.
If you clear the charge-back step, you already won. They have to win at that stage to have any hope, and their chances depend entirely on your CC co
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Unfortunately, the customer service departments at many large banks isn't much better than the customer service department at the cable company.
When you outsource that type of work to the lowest bidder, you're probably not going to find a junior mortgage broker who's going to want to fight an automated application rejection from the credit check program. They'll just move onto the next five applications and try to make up the loss in volume.
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Actually, if you are a Masshole, the Commonwealth's Attorney General's office has a consumer affairs that is supposed to handle this kind of "We're too big to care what you think" vendor. When I was in high school I had a friend who had an internship there sending out ominous letters to vendors like that. Usually that resolved things, because the Attorney General's letterhead gets the letter forwarded to corporate legal, who are well-acquainted with the Mass AG office's scalp-hunting ways.
The government
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Works only if you pay your bills with a credit card. That's not the case in many cases.
Even in Sweden where credit and cash cards are more common than cash you don't - you pay with a direct bank transaction.
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Bad advice. A chargeback means your credit record gets hit big time, and you now have a debt collector calling you and your family at all times of the day.
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In some cases, not even 15 minutes. Called my credit card to tell the delivery did not happen, in spite of the vendor saying it was delivered. Since the vendor was Amazon, they did not even ask if I tried to contact them -- they just credited me the money with no questions asked.
Take a look around your house (Score:5, Insightful)
You can no longer "vote with your dollars". At this point the only thing holding them back is a (very mild) threat of government regulation. Even that is viewed as just another minor expense buying off politicians.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, we can change this whenever we want. But it involves some trade offs. People have to become more politically active and their politics have to be more focused on economics.
Also, people have to band together and agree that _nobody_ gets screwed over. One of the chief problems we have is that folks want gov't regulations to protect them and their interests but lose interest (or become actively hostile) to anything that might impose the slightest cost on themselves.
This is encapsulated the the phrase "I got mine, fuck you". That shit needs to stop.
Re:Take a look around your house (Score:4, Interesting)
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Until recently, I despaired at the idea of voting with my dollars. But, the reality is, by choosing to use local or alternative online marketplaces, I can give my money to businesses and individuals who act like they give a hoot about me. I also started trying to actively donate to people, Patreon-style, because that's the world I'd like to live in--where a patronage model is sustainable.
I work for my money, and if I want to donate it to encourage someone else to do things that I enjoy or benefit me
re: shopping local (Score:2)
Buying and shopping local is great, in the sense you more directly help your peers keep food on their tables and put their kids through school, etc.
I'm not sure that it helps solve the problem of too many big corporate mergers and too many products made by the same few companies, though?
For example, despite all the prodding and begging for people to patronize our local restaurants, it's being revealed that many of them are really just preparing food that they get trucked in from a big supplier, ready to tha
Re: Take a look around your house (Score:1)
This. Even when there are competitors, when the market comes to the same conclusion (orchestrated collusion or independently arrived it), you're screwed. ISPs are the obvious one but almost all customer service now is garbage and consumers accept it.
That whole pre.ise that the market is an Oracle and consumers make good decisions flaws the entire system and you're beginning to see more and more of the results.
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tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg are putting more money into personal security
They have so much money the personal security budget is insignificant to them. Of course they are putting more money into it. From their point of view, it is a tiny cost and a major risk reduction.
Convenience, too (Score:2)
It's not laziness (Score:2)
And it's not like you have a choice. The company you did business with for 20 years gets bought out by a mega conglomerate again, you're stuck.
Whether you buy from Amazon, drive down to Walmart, Target, Costco, whatever. The stuff you buy is made in one of a few factories by a few companies.
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I work for a real, independent profitable retailer.
A real, independent profitable retailerwho makes the products they sell? Or are those all made by the same 7 companies that make all the shit sold by the big chain stores?
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And how likely it is that the raw materials on those products all come from the same handful of companies as everything else...
Re:Take a look around your house (Score:5, Insightful)
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Without standards of law enforcement, democracy is meaningless.
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While I don't disagree with your statement of big companies you maybe surprised that over 75% of people employed are small to medium sized companies. Also even the big companies may not be Amazon, Walmart, Microsoft, or Nvidia. Walmart actually is begning to get it's ass kicked in by Amazon because of customer service and convenience. My local Walmart is so short staffed and slim on employees to cut costs that it takes 1t to 20 minutes to check out! Fun when you are holding freezing ice cream in your hands
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That's just because economies of scale (Score:2)
It's why we're at levels
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Just my 2 cents
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you'll probably find that just 7 companies made 80% of the stuff you own. We gave up on enforcing antitrust laws and let companies merge whenever they wanted.
Then why do you keep buying from them? I've got products from scores of different companies and there are several companies I won't buy products from because of their past actions and poor customer support. If you're too weak willed or careless to take that effort, then frankly you deserve what you get.
I'll thank you very much to keep your damned politics away from me. It's the well meaning assholes that always screw it up for everyone else. You think you can build some utopia, but really you just end cr
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Re:Take a look around your house (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't help when government enforcers are spineless. My neighbors facility has accidents all the time. Slipping, cutoff fingers, broken bones, you name it. Yet, every time OSHA visits his place, they do nothing. Guy is still operating, accidents still happening. It's so bad, that my area has had 8 new Emergency Clinics built up (You don't just build up ER Clinics at the kindness of your heart). Meanwhile, every time OSHA visits my place, with zero accidents, clean floors, abiding to every standard possible, they always find something stupid (Like the yellow line on my floor is slightly fading away) and threaten me with 30 days or I get shut down. You can easily find facilities like I'm talking about on OSHA's own website, even some with daily accidents.
I'm sure if I threatened these OSHA and labor board inspectors with litigation and lawyers, they would stop visiting my place. But I'm not like that, so I'm an easy target for them to prove they're doing work. But they fear the facilities that are a problem because they're afraid of sitting in court for weeks at a time. Either grow a pair or put an end to OSHA, because you're not solving the problem, you're creating more problems.
So as such, what does this have to do with your topic with anti-trust? Same thing. The guys are afraid of lawyers and spending time in court. So enforcement is non-existent for dishonest people.
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Who said that phrase "I got mine, fuck you"? Can you provide a citation? Or is it something you made up and attributed to others?
One of today's biggest problems is making shit up, handing it to people you regard as the enemy, and telling them they hold this position they don't have. You then hate them for what you made up. It's called psychological projection and is rampant on the left today. A journalist just said that the Captain Marvel reviews are proof positive that we hate cinema.
Re: Take a look around your house (Score:2)
Are you making reference to these companies?
https://amp.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Because if you are, then your pantry must be filled with overly processed GMO'd crap.
There are hundreds of thousands of brands out there not owned by the companies listed in then pic.
Whether you chose to seek them out is another question. If you live in Europe, ironically your beloved small corner store brands are definitely owned by the same companies.
If you're in America, at least Walmart gives these small brands the opportunity
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you'll probably find that just 7 companies made 80% of the stuff you own
Which seven companies? (Looking around, it's definitely not true for me, but I'm in a weird situation).
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Math doesn't work like that. The other 20% could be made by any number of companies.
Not as expensive as losing customers (Score:2)
Call me old fashioned but I remember when we had to support IE 6 and write ancient code and screw 70% of people with modern browsers all to protect 10% of customers. Why? Would you tell 1 in 10 customers to fuck themselves? Of course not!
Same principle I apply when I used to consult or treat coworkers. If they do not like doing business with me then I should be fired. Plain and simple as work is a privilege. Customers are a privilege too not a right or a cost. Don't take care they will leave and go to a com
Re:Not as expensive as losing customers (Score:4, Interesting)
Customers are a privilege too not a right or a cost.
Well...yes and no.
I've fired more than a few customers who were, for one reason or another, too much trouble to work with. I never missed their business and wouldn't take them back even if they offered to pay double.
The fact is that the customer isn't always right.
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In the end you maybe worth enough to get a new customer tomorrow. You may not also if you have bills to pay. Also saying no to a few customers all the time will keep cutting them until you have none left if you aren't careful which is what poor customer service will do. It is a risky proposition that any large organization can't afford to take.
I ended up sucking it up and getting a regular job for that reason for stability. But I know if my ticket que gets too high or I make the wrong person mad I can get i
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Wasting your time on bad customers drives away good customers. I am not going to wait 20 minutes while you deal with some entitled asshole before you deal with me. I am in the service industry and I will not deal with companies that waste their time trying to make happy those customers who are always whining in hopes of getting more stuff for free. If you want to waste time on the 5% of customers who will take up 95% of your time, if allowed, feel free. I just want a cashier who can ring me through.
Re:Not as expensive as losing customers (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasting your time on bad customers drives away good customers. I am not going to wait 20 minutes while you deal with some entitled asshole before you deal with me. I am in the service industry and I will not deal with companies that waste their time trying to make happy those customers who are always whining in hopes of getting more stuff for free. If you want to waste time on the 5% of customers who will take up 95% of your time, if allowed, feel free. I just want a cashier who can ring me through.
Wish you hadn't posted AC so this was more visible.
Neglecting good customers to deal with bad ones is bad customer service. Letting a shitty customer make your good ones feel uncomfortable or irritated is bad customer service. Asking your good customers to oblige a bad one is bad customer service.
Some people are just toxic, and will poison everything they touch. Good customer service is understanding that and not letting them touch your business.
A pub I frequent occasionally has a homeless guy come in and have a few drinks. He smells a little, but is quiet and his money is as good as anyone else's. Dude never gets asked to leave until he starts falling asleep on the bar. But the bachelorette party pre-gaming their night out? After they cleared half the bar with their yelling and screeching, they got asked to leave. Sure, they were going to spend a lot more money than that homeless guy, but it wasn't going to make up for the people who couldn't stand being in the same room as them. It also wouldn't be worth losing potential customers coming in for the first time and getting the impression that it's always a deafening madhouse and deciding not to come back.
Firing customers occasionally often is the best business decision to make.
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Customers are a privilege too not a right or a cost.
Well...yes and no.
I've fired more than a few customers who were, for one reason or another, too much trouble to work with. I never missed their business and wouldn't take them back even if they offered to pay double.
The fact is that the customer isn't always right.
This.
I live in the UK (originally Australian) and over here we don't enforce customer service, it's reciprocal. This means if you want good customer service, you be a good customer (and vice versa, if you are a bad customer, you'll get bad customer service). We don't treat service staff as menial labour beneath our notice, someone who brings you a meal or takes your order is a person and should be treated the same as any other person. Because we don't have a tipping culture, this means our service staff
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Does not feel new... (Score:2)
In my country (Portugal), most people own a smartphone plan with pretty much "unlimited" minutes (from 500 to the thousands). These minutes include calls to most numbers, including other phones and landlines.
You would figure company support numbers would be landlines, right? And indeed they are based on a landline, but practically every single support number in Portugal sits behind paywall so-called Blue (808-prefixed) and Unique (707) numbers in order to keep customers looking for support in check. No only
Re: Does not feel new... (Score:2)
Dell retired their express codes several years ago. Well at least for enterprise level stuff, no idea about their consumer equipment.
And it took the professors how many decades to ... (Score:2)
Same thing with mail in rebates (Score:1)
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Shit, Commodore was famous for this.
best buy did this with the hard upsells on stuff (Score:2)
best buy did this with the hard upsells on stuff
I guess it's too late for their study (Score:3)
but No Customer Service is a subset of Bad Customer Service.
It also is immensely profitable.
Why bother outsourcing your calls to a third world country (or US state where English isn't even a second language) when you can create "customer" interfaces that are designed to make it impossible to actually access?
Sometimes it's better to cut your losses, toss the offending hardware or software and do some reviews before you re-purchase.
Google for anything but heavily overpaid corporate support is a good example of this. Have you ever found a problem with a Google Service and tried to report or have it fixed?
There are other companies that are basically stealing anything you pay them for customer support.
They can't do anything about your problems, except bump them to "valued third party" support companies, who charge you even more.
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Google for anything but heavily overpaid corporate support is a good example of this. Have you ever found a problem with a Google Service and tried to report or have it fixed?
Are you talking about the services Google gives you for free (search) or services you pay them for (adwords)?
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Are you talking about the services Google gives you for free.
Free in a monetary sense of the word only - you pay heavily with your data.
Now - try to get some support for your data handling - it's not easy (practically impossible). Google manages to weasel out of providing a contact point for data protection/GDPR enquiries and fobs you off with boilerplate text that doesn't address the issues raised or questions asked.
I guess they can get away with screwing over the 'little guy' but sooner or later a governm
It's not an either/or proposition (Score:4, Insightful)
Profit = (sales) * (profit margin)
so is a function of two variables.
At some point along that scale, profit is maximized [wikipedia.org] The company is happy because it's making lots of profit. The customers are happy because they're getting stuff for cheaper because the company isn't wasting money on excessive customer service.
If you're a naive businessman who thinks you should make sure 100% of your customers are satisfied*, then yes having worse customer service will increase your profits Likewise, if you're a naive businessman who thinks cutting customer service expenses will always increase profit, then no, at some point having worse customer service results in decreased profits. Pretty much everyone who has run a business understands this. These professors would too if they'd spent some time running a business instead of only theorizing about them.
* (The phrase, "the customer is always right," doesn't mean you should give the customer whatever they demand. It means you're better off selling the customer what they want, rather than what you think they should get. In other words, what the customer thinks they want is always right. The phrase has unfortunately been appropriated by abusive customers trying to justify their excessive demands for service from businesses.)
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You're arguing as if consumers were one homogeneous mass. Truth is that your optimal support curve is probably a peak, the totally helpless/obnoxious customers are gobbling up support costs and the expert/specialist users are running into narrow corner cases that don't justify fixing. What you want is to make the bulk of your customers happy most the time with moderate effort. The rest? Some say please them, some say appease them, some say get rid of them. Sometimes you have not so great customers that othe
Steakhouse with buffet (Score:2)
But if they're a vegan at a steakhouse they won't ever be pleased, you can either try to make water not wet or have one token vegan dish and blow them off.
Steakhouses have buffets for precisely this reason. If a group is all eating together, and a minority are vegan, the minority are less likely to veto a steakhouse if it has a decent salad bar.
Short-term: yes (Score:2)
Long-term: no. You will get a very bad reputation and lose a lot of business if or as soon as people have an alternative. But that takes a while. With the focus of the MBA-morons on just the next quarter, they only see the short-term and think they are doing things right.
The average consumer... (Score:2)
... is a moron that will not punish companies.
We saw this in videogames 20 years ago with the rise of "MMO's", aka the idea of not owning the game software you are buying was idiotic and people fell for it. PC rpg's in development were rebranded and became "mmo's" with that steam was forced into half-life/cs in 2004 to steal the fucking game.
The internet has been the greatest force for corproate fraud, theft, mass invasion of privacy and destruction of human culture in all of human history and it comes dow
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This old crap again. MMOs can't be done at home on your little PC box, regardless of how fast your processor. Your box simply cannot handle the throughput of 10K people playing, much less 10M. That's what the fuck the first M stands for - MASSIVE.
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You are ignorant of the processing power a game with thousands of players require. No wonder you post AC, you know nothing and would be shunned and marginalized.
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You appear to miss blahplusplus's point. The primary reason that some games were engineered to involve "thousands of players" in the first place was as an excuse for tightening digital restrictions management. Otherwise, a private server could handle a few dozen players at once.
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No, primary reason it was a business opportunity (as is all major forms of entertainment) so big companies took it up with technology that can scale.
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True, an MMO could run on a single computer with a single player. However, MMOs are supposed to be massively multiplayer with perhaps 1500+ people playing at once, sometimes having 40+ people in a local area for a raid, along with the need to ensure that the servers never go offline (thus needing redundancies, etc.), which becomes the expensive part of maintaining the service. They also need multiple server admins that handle day-to-day problems with accounts (including data corruption, scams, etc.) and a
Customer Service improves with competition (Score:5, Insightful)
On the flip side, you look at the larger internet sales companies. There are fifty people selling the same product, and normally within fifty cents of everyone else. So if you get a crappy customer sales experience, you will take you next purchase down the road to someone else.
Good customer service is about triage and customer retention. If a customer has called customer service, you have already lost money on the sale because you have to pay a service rep to help this customer out. That help could be anything from hand holding, an exchange, refunds or gift cards. If the customer walks away from the customer service experience saying "This company fixed the problem in a pain free way and didn't complain or make my life difficult. I'd try them again." then you have a chance at another sale. If the customer is thinking "I got my refund but I had to pull teeth and sit on the phone for an hour", then that customer is going to reduce their shopping at that store and tell their friends about it.
In environments where the customer service rep is instructed to stymie or frustrate the caller: The short term goal of keeping the customers money is fulfilled. The long term goal of getting more of the customer's money fails. This adds to the fact that the customer service rep does not bring any perceived value to the customer.
So in a low competition environment, customer service sucks, because it is seen as not needed. In a high competition environment, customer service helps retain customers. Improved customer service takes a long time to see results; it can take months or years to see the results of a loyal customer base that is willing to pay an extra quarter on a product because they trust that customer service is not going to screw them if the product is wrong.
"Rainmaker' reloaded (Score:1)
Health insurance companies are masters at this (Score:2)
Health insurance companies are masters of this. They are great at denying claims. (It is part of our deny-care health care system, but that is too long to discuss here.) Sometimes you get different answers about the same policy, or you are told that something is not covered when it is.
Unfortunately, when health insurance companies engage in the behavior, it can cost hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and cause financial ruin. Even worse, delays can cause additional suffering or ev
This is how Comcast Works (Score:1)
Paypal / eBay. (Score:2)
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"We're the phone company. We don't care......" (Score:2, Funny)
not the reason (Score:4, Interesting)
I've worked closely with legal and HR for years and call center topics appeared regularily.
The real reason has nothing to do with the customers. Those 1st line call center agents are the lowest rank of the corporate ladder, many of them are temp workers, lots of them are badly educated and need absolutely everything spelled out for them. No surprises there, it's not exactly the kind of job someone eager for a career and personal development would choose.
From the company perspective, they simply don't want to give these people who barely care which company they work for too many options to hand out freebies. Many of these people just want to get the call over with, because they are rated by number of calls handled and such KPIs. So if you give them a shortcut such as giving a customer a refund and be done with it, they will routinely take it, even when they shouldn't. That's why they have low limits of what they can hand out, and the more pricey decisions go to a 2nd level where you have more qualified, better trained and more interested about the company (e.g. not temp workers) people.
Pay for the hassle? (Score:2)
If there were a law recognizing excessive hassle -e.g. anything > 1h- to be compensated at professional tariffs, then SP's behavior would change in a heartbeat.
Perfectly reasonably IMHO. Such law is prone to lobbying during conception.
Do your part (Score:2)
When you get bad customer service, make it unprofitable. Contact them again and again, deluge them with emails, until it costs them more to give you bad service than good. Don't just take it in the face, give it back. Escalate to someone whose hourly wage is significant. Open a case with the BBB. Share your story on social media. Do everything you can to be a total pill. Otherwise, they'll just keep doing it.
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Open a case with the BBB
Does that do anything?
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Open a case with the BBB
Does that do anything?
Yes. At least, every time I have used it, it has worked for me. I've used it to get a fair shake from Amerigas twice, to get my money back from Freedompop after exploring their little scam (and I got it ALL back), used it with Digital Path (a WISP) twice... I didn't try it on Gargoyles sunglassses though, probably should have. Those broke in like month one because they redesigned the hinges to be garbage, the fuckers.
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One word... (Score:2)
Cynicism 101 — the view from game theory (Score:2)
This is ridiculous. There's lot's of remaining capacity for people to vote with their wallets. What prevents this from working (much of the time) is the collective action problem: in the moment of truth, the vast majority of the consuming public dials into the narrowest of all "what's in it for me" explanatory frames.
Many people actually prefer to purchase from apex predators, because then you are certainly among the "in" crowd (soon to become an "inn crowded" into a manger of dung and straw, but this takes
Betteridge kryptonite (Score:3)
Looks like Betteridge has finally met his kryptonite.
Best wishes, Sir Ian: it was nice while it lasted.
"market economies" (Score:2)
Of course it's profitable to screw over your customers. Higher prices and lower costs is the golden goose.
That's exactly the kind of thing a free market is supposed to curtail. Competition should be able to take customers by offering better services.
But of course, the market is, in many cases at least, working as designed. For every person who loses out on their complaint, there are 100 or 1000 people happy to be paying 0.05% less for the goods and services they purchase by not having to "subsidize" the
Re: yes and no (Score:1)
But if your pool of potential customers is big enough and there is few competition, it's possible that not getting repeat customers isn't a business killer.
Also most customers never need customer support anyways.
Re: (Score:3)
It is like going to a restaurant and you get terrible service. You get up and walk out. They will be around for awhile. Eventually enough people will do that same thing. Where as the restaurant that gives good consistent service gets repeat customers and stays in business longer.
Not all restaurants rely on repeat business. For instance, restaurants that rely on tourists. In San Francisco, the worst restaurants are at Fisherman's Wharf, and along Grant Street in Chinatown. If you go down the side streets to where the locals eat, you will have a much better experience.
Re: (Score:2)
I used to go to a bar that and restuarant that got bought out by Joes Crab shack chain of restaurants. Food sucks and cost accountants now determine the food but hte prices remained high. The good rare European beers are dissapearing because folks from the marketing department said they should serve miller light and coors shit because that is what else the majority of people buy. ... but kept the same high prices where I can buy at the store or another local bar for half price.
Guess what? I only go there a
Re: (Score:2)
Guess what? I only go there a few times a year now instead of once a week.
Sure, they lose a few potential repeat customers. But most of their customers are not coming back regardless of the quality. So it is better to hire an unskilled chef, understaff the waitstaff, and serve low quality food that can be precooked and warmed in the microwave. The only fixed expense is rent, but you can save on that by skimping on seating and the leave the windows open to catch the breeze off the bay. Customers don't linger when they are freezing, so you can turn around your tables every 30 m
Re: (Score:2)
I used to go to a bar that and restuarant that got bought out by Joes Crab shack chain of restaurants. Food sucks and cost accountants now determine the food but hte prices remained high. The good rare European beers are dissapearing because folks from the marketing department said they should serve miller light and coors shit because that is what else the majority of people buy. ... but kept the same high prices where I can buy at the store or another local bar for half price.
Guess what? I only go there a few times a year now instead of once a week.
And when they declare bankruptcy, they'll blame it on millenials.
Re: (Score:2)
Why go there at all?
I have already figured out that if you want something good - then you usually find that in the small places that are "off the main path", because that's the only way they can stay alive - offer something good. There are shortcomings though - you could get a great piece of food but the selection of beverage may be limited to only a few decent ones.
Re: (Score:2)
People traveling may choose McDonalds but what they get is familiarity on the go.
It's also fast and inexpensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Going to a one-off restaurant that's overpriced and not good would be a worse decision than McDonald's. If I don't have time to research in advance, I probably wouldn't take the gamble either - and I like good food.
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't work so well on something you want people to keep buying and upgrading from you.
Re: (Score:2)
Many people simply have no alternative to comcast, they know the service sucks and is overpriced but the alternative is dialup.
Is quitting Comcast worth a 10 GB/mo cap? (Score:2)
At this point, I'd guess that Comcast has not received more than $10,000 from me, since I kicked them to the curb for their poor customer service.
Is kicking Comcast to the curb worth downgrading to satellite or cellular with its 10 GB/mo cap? Is it worth quitting your job, selling your house, and seeking employment and a house in a different city where an ISP other than Comcast offers affordable home Internet service with a cap more than 100 GB/mo if any?
Re: (Score:2)
The only alternative for Internet access in my town is Frontier, which has even worse customer service track record than Comcast.
After fighting with them for two weeks to get service set up to my new residence, even Comcast's customer service with their four appointment windows during working hours looks good in comparison. Even if they show up late, it's better than them not showing up at all. Twice.
Re: (Score:2)
Brings up the old Fidonet statement to my mind "you don't feed Bob Johnstone".
After all this is "news for nerds".