I Hate Telephones

Megalith

Megalith

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Screencasting app Vidrio developer Jim Fisher has blogged about his hate for telephones, ranting that there are few things he fears or despises more. “Everyone complains about companies’ customer service being terrible. But the companies are not the real problem here. The problem is the medium. The problem is synchronous communication. The problem is the telephone.”

When I reached a human, he tried to put me through to the loans team. “I’m sorry, sir. The loans team is not available at weekends. Please call back on Monday.” If this were a textual chat, this would be no problem: I would send a message to the loans team, and they would answer me on Monday. This is not how the telephone works. The telephone is synchronous. Because callers like myself are only available outside work hours, but the receivers are only available inside work hours, the two can never sync. I hate telephones.
 
First world problems.
Besides most companies offer both telephone and electronic customer service, so you can write them instead of calling them if you want to. But you didn't since you know that turn around time on the phone is quicker.
 
Bullshit. The problem is not the telephone. The telephone works just fine when you have a competent human being on the other end.

Text chat better? Well - Maybe for the outsourced agents in India/Vietnam/Eastern Europe since they can't speak English. It isn't any better for the customer though.
 
So, this fella is upset loan related customer assistance is not available on weekends. He obviously hates it when people aren't there on his days off. Does he have lunch breaks? Regular breaks? Smoke breaks 5-10 times a day during the work week?
No, he wants people to be available for him to tend to his personal matters. 24/7 no less. Nobody knows if he might need assistance at 3.30 am. So, all corporation s need to staff their help desks just in case he and people like him need something.
 
Megalith said:
If this were a textual chat, this would be no problem: I would send a message to the loans team, and they would answer me on Monday.
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Haha hahahahaa.... oh wait, he's serious? Let me laugh even harder....

I take it he's never dealt with say, Comcast text chat? Hell, I had better experience with Ubisoft text chat support earlier this year.
 
Wow, if only you could send a message to someone such that they could read it at a later date.... wouldn't that be grand, something like mail back in the old day, but an electronic form of it. I know I'll create it and call it "mail E"!!!
 
I worked as a telecom engineer for more than 8 years running a call center of over 500 agents. I can see where the author is coming from. Most call center methodologies are outdated. They think that customers love IVR systems. Even ones that have voice recognition/response are frustrating. It is known fact that most people that have an issue want to deal with talking to someone. There is something to having a conversation in which all the nuances are not easy to convey over electronic communication. So far the best method for reaching customer service I have seen implemented is the one for GoogleFi service. You can schedule a call back. You can choose asap in which they throw you into the current call queue and call you back when its your turn or to have them call you back at a time of your choosing. You never have to call anywhere to do this and you are not wasting your time sitting on hold. It was all done via the support app on the phone. They also had chat and email options.

Side Note: If you dont mind pigeon holing yourself into a niche market you can make some good coin if you are competent with Genesys Software.
 
Scanned TFA. Sounds like the author has a phone phobia. Not the technology's fault. To a couple of his points, a lot of the corporate automated answering gizmos suck at offering the option you need if you are needing to contact support. And I have found that many businesses that love putting an automated voice system between the caller and a human, totally fail at dealing with a simple answering machine used to screen unwanted calls.

And businesses are making it increasingly hard to find a support email address or a contact phone number. They make you fill out a "Support Request" that often requires setting up a user account.
 
The real problem is that guy living beyond his means needing a loan in the first place. He should've STFU and paid cash outright.
 
Hate telephones too. I prefer anything that phone conversation.

Luckily I moved out of my country and my old telephone SIM card doesn't work here. So I have a good excuse why not using telephone.
 
M76 said:
First world problems.
Besides most companies offer both telephone and electronic customer service, so you can write them instead of calling them if you want to. But you didn't since you know that turn around time on the phone is quicker.
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Not necessarily. It really all depends on the organization. I can only go through phone for my local DMV. There is no electronic customer support.

Other times, they have both, but only allow phone for certain issues. Support for your account? Both. Cancel your account? Phone only.

vr. said:
The real problem is that guy living beyond his means needing a loan in the first place. He should've STFU and paid cash outright.
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Yes, because everyone buys their cars or houses in cash. It'd a vastly retarded idea anyways. Not when you can have you rmoney, making money.
 
It's a good thing I don't have synchronous chat capability with the author of that article or else I'd let him have it. :D
 
krotch said:
Yes, because everyone buys their cars or houses in cash. It'd a vastly retarded idea anyways. Not when you can have you rmoney, making money.
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No, the retarded idea in practical terms is the fact that you can generate money with money. As in creating no product, but making a profit.
 
I tell ya what, when you run your own business and the website specifically states 9:00 to 5:00 - Closed weekends, and client's ring at midnight....

...Well, sometime's I hate phones also.
 
M76 said:
No, the retarded idea in practical terms is the fact that you can generate money with money. As in creating no product, but making a profit.
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Products don't need to be made, to make profit. There's things called service. A lawn moving business isn't selling you any products, but are selling you the service of cutting your lawn. In this case, the service you are providing is a money loaning service.
 
Wow, guys, come at me: I wholeheartedly agree. I hate phone calls and yet I need to make them because so many places (at least in Canada) will absolutely not do business any other way. Want to book just a hair more complex trip with Aeroplan? Hell, just get the airline specific PNRs with them? Let's not mention banks and authorities -- CIBC for example has a chat but it doesn't have access to banking, it's a sales chat, utter useless. It is a serious waste of my time and also what you do not think of are language issues: I am not a native speaker and while I have no problems reading, writing and conversing face to face, phone calls are a special hell. If I need to pay something over the phone it means I need to find 30 minutes of my time (during work hours as the article rightly says) when I will be available to no one else, communicate sixteen digits in English across, spell my name and so forth. This usually stresses me out enough that I just don't do it.

Hail to https://gethuman.com/ and https://getmagic.com/ for taking these calls off my shoulders. Contemplate this: I would rather pay a few ten dollars (!) than to make a phone call. It's that bad.
 
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In my experience textual chat always results in canned responses that are never adequate, at least were corporations are concerned.
 
krotch said:
Products don't need to be made, to make profit. There's things called service. A lawn moving business isn't selling you any products, but are selling you the service of cutting your lawn. In this case, the service you are providing is a money loaning service.
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A service is a product as well. Yes you can say that providing loans is a service. But that's not what we usually refer to when talking about shuffling money.
 
which we why we are still glad that there is a physical sales and service shop in your neighborhood. (if you are lucky)
if he thinks emails are better for conveying complicated scenarios, a face-2-face conversation is even better. Combined with sms-when-your-number-is-near system, it's not so inconvenient. Or just pay someone $10 to stand in line.

businesses which has little competition or little legislative oversight don't give a crap about customer service, unless it is you who is overdue in Bills. (wow, daily human calls!, letters! , texts!, emails! ) After all, consumers had allowed the corporations to be kings these days, by proxy of the people they voted into office.
 
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M76 said:
A service is a product as well. Yes you can say that providing loans is a service. But that's not what we usually refer to when talking about shuffling money.
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A service can be a product or it's own thing. It's based off whoever's definition you go off of. I just go by the government. So for me, a product is a tangible object. Either way, you are still providing a service, albeit one you aren't really thinking too much on. Leave it in savings, buy CDs, get mutual funds, etc. It's you loaning your money out to a company and the company in turn, providing you a return.

I don't see how money shuffling isn't usually referred to as a service/product. That's literally all a bank does. Shuffle money. Banks in turn call it their service or products.
 
theBrownLlama said:
which we why we are still glad that there is a physical sales and service shop in your neighborhood. (if you are lucky)
if he thinks emails are better for conveying complicated scenarios, a face-2-face conversation is even better. Combined with sms-when-your-number-is-near system, it's not so inconvenient. Or just pay someone $10 to stand in line.

businesses which has little competition or little legislative oversight don't give a crap about customer service, unless it is you who is overdue in Bills. (wow, daily human calls!, letters! , texts!, emails! ) After all, consumers had allowed the corporations to be kings these days, by proxy of the people they voted into office.
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Well, since I moved into California (1981) and I'm not a Democrat, no one I've voted for has gotten into office! Also, both major parties seem to have no issues with letting businesses become monopolies.
 
I can definitly agree there are certain situations where text service is simply far easier. Everytime I need to conctact my webhosting, for example, I just do it through livechat, and our livechat window sits on the side of my screen while I get other work done. It relieving to me knowing that someone is working on my problem, but that neither of us need to be working on the problem or synchronizing together in real-time. It's also nice that once we're done I have a log of everything that was said that I can save.
 
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