Dealing with modern companies! Grrr!

[grumpy52]

I expect to deal with a real person ,either face-to-face or via Email.
So many times you start off dealing with a bot then get passed to a web chat ,often with the person dealing with several people at once ,the communication is very stilted and so often doesn't give you what you want or solve the problem as many are working from a script on a computer . They often have little knowledge of the product ,service or subject .
Once in a while you actually deal with a real person who has knowledge and expertise to solve your problem effectively. These people are getting very rarely.
How do others deal with this frustration?

[Opapayer]

If they gave you that, then they’d be uncompetitive on price in the modern world. People want stuff cheap, but expect top level service. The two are pretty much incompatible.

[wolfracesonic]

grumpy52 said:

How do others deal with this frustration?

I usually get more frustrated! Though it is a joyous feeling on the odd occasion when get to promptly deal with someone who is absolutely on top of their product or service, usually smaller/medium companies where this is found: the larger corporates continuing there long march towards ever greater enstification

[captain_cynic]

I like it when I can sort things out with a company without having to deal with a person.

People are annoying and more often than not, completely useless.

[wombleh]

I try to never call help desks. The majority need to rename themselves as “desk” to avoid being sued for false advertising. If there’s a problem, sort it myself or change to another company.

[Skii]

Opapayer said:

If they gave you that, then they d be uncompetitive on price in the modern world. People want stuff cheap, but expect top level service. The two are pretty much incompatible.

This.

[Linksmas]

I think the compound adjective is ensttification. We want things to cost less, so companies remove the expensive part - people.

It's not just modern companies. More self service tills at Tesco, RAC/AA taking longer to arrive, no humans at the call centre - or if they are that building is 6,000 miles away and the line quality and local accent add a layer of complexity.

[vikingaero]

"Your call is important to us....................."

[Gary29]

This sums it up perfectly:

https://youtube.com/shorts/WDmc-Nqonws?si=tsLA-O1h...

[98elise]

captain_cynic said:

I like it when I can sort things out with a company without having to deal with a person.

People are annoying and more often than not, completely useless.

So do I, but sometimes you need to speak with an actual person, and one that knows their stuff.

[captain_cynic]

98elise said:

captain_cynic said:

I like it when I can sort things out with a company without having to deal with a person.

People are annoying and more often than not, completely useless.

So do I, but sometimes you need to speak with an actual person, and one that knows their stuff.

There in lies the problem... Getting one that knows stuff.

Usually you get an L1 flunkie who had a few days of on the job training who can reset your password and other simple things you should be able to do online.

Getting to someone who knows things is difficult (sometimes impossible *cough*Lufthansa*cough*) as you need to pass through layer of layer of people. Sometimes the entire system is set up deliberately to make you give up (like trying to cancel your payTV and I feel that cough coming back).

This is deliberate as we don't want senior engineers doing password resets. Hence good systems are set up that you can make a ticket and then have the right someone contact you.

[Ed Boon II]

The company I contract for have removed all of their tier 1 agents, globally and now rely on chatbots.

This is great if you want to change your address, what's the lead time on so and so or ask if a certain vehicle is available in spotted pink etc

Trying to get through to the Tier 2 agents is almost impossible, the bot seems to have no failure to answer threshold, it just keeps going round and round.

Great, you've made a huge cost saving, but does nobody at the top actually test the user experience?!

I thought Sky were bad, but this company make them look highly efficient.

We might as well go back to blaming Covid 19, at least that was a genuine excuse for piss poor CXM

[alscar]

I find "deliberately " mucking up the automated phone menu numbers gets you more often than not put through to a real person.

[Spare tyre]

I worked for a small IT company, someone could email call knock on the door - we would fix their issues usually right away

Got purchased by a big boy

Now they have to register on a portal, jump up and down, spin around clucking etc and we don’t find out about their issue for 3 weeks or something equally as daft

Productivity down massively

Work load and pissing into the wind up beyond belief

[Sargeant Orange]

I had the misfortune of having to ring Aviva yesterday to add a vehicle to the policy and keep the existing vehicle on temporary cover until it goes back. A fairly regular everyday occurance you would think?

After having to Google the phone number (as aviva pages point you to chatbots) - the first two agents I spoke to, who I could barely understand, were bloody useless. I simply hung up and tried again until I found someone remotely capable.

I agree with the OP, it's becoming a race to the bottom unfortunately

[grumpy52]

My frustration has been brought to a peak this week by a courier broker combined with a freight company. The exact area that I used to work in so I recognised when I am being fed B/S .
Booked a collection of a pallet from a spares company in Devon to be delivered in East Kent. All done online and straight forward, even to emailing the parts company the labels to go on the pallet. Supposed to be collected on Monday and delivered on Tuesday.. not collected on Monday, nothing on tracking system of the broker or the freight company. Contacted the broker via their chat system and eventually told the the pallet wasn't ready , utter B/S it was ready on Saturday. Rescheduled for Tuesday, same result and same excuse via the broker chat system ,they don't have phone numbers on their site or give out contact details of the branch of the freight company branch . Same result on Wednesday, same excuses. On Thursday I contacted my neice who is a branch manager at a different location for the same freight company. She was not happy with me for not letting her know after the first failure. She is under the same regional manager as the branch concerned.
Apparently rockets were launched in the direction of the west country. Pallet was collected before end of play yesterday and the freight companies tracking system updated including photos. The brokers system is just showing booking data .

If I didn't have an insider who knows how long I would be battling with chats and bots .
I now understand why my neice is a trouble shooter for the company, she will be spending a few days in the west country in the coming weeks.

[Roofless Toothless]

[wombleh]

Ed Boon II said:

Trying to get through to the Tier 2 agents is almost impossible, the bot seems to have no failure to answer threshold, it just keeps going round and round.

To be fair, I had identical experience with first line offshore support. They blindly follow the script and if it says the problem is X....that's it....you're getting no further.

[Terminator X]

I keep pressing zero until I get to a real person. Fonejacker was correct about this way back when.

TX.

[grumpy52]

It's irony that most customer service departments that use bots ,chat rooms and overseas call centres rarely offer anything like a satisfactory service . Especially if they say they are transferring you and you wait and wait then get cut off .