Bad customer service biggest blow to office productivity, part 1
Sorry, but I need to rant. I am on hold because I am on hold. Again. This company, like all the other companies I’ve had to speak with over the last few days, is “experiencing “a high call volume.” This is code for “we didn’t hire enough people to answer all our calls and prefer to keep people on hold for upwards of 20 minutes.” I’m sure part of this is in the hopes that people will go away and not bother them. What they don’t realize is that people who just hang up instead of getting help are probably busy packing up their product to be returned to the store. I play a little game with myself while I wait. If I can get the product packed up before the customer (un)service rep answers, I hang up and return the item. I then buy from the competition, if at all possible.
It started last week. Now, Mercury goes into retrograde on June 15th, though June 1st started the shadow period. Merucy is the planet of communication , which means that during the retrograde period, miscommunications are likely to happen until the planet comes out of retrograde on July 24th. I always notice miscommunication and technology glitches.
So first, I get a horrendous cell phone bill for the third month in a row. So I call Telus, and as a platinum customer, which means that I get overcharged a lot by them, it seems, I get to speak to an agent right away. Well, after going through an exercise where I have to give them all my information twice. (Their systems don’t talk to each other, I would guess. Turns out that the long conversation I was sure I had - about switching to the North American plan that avoided roaming charges while I travel - never happened. I guess I must have dreamt all those details about the per-minute charges and how the roaming scheme works. So while I’m waiting on the line (thank goodness I only hear the message about the “fast service promise” once), I play the game of “if I can find an equally good plan online while holding, I’m going to find some sucker to buy my contract and I’m out of here”. But damn, they answer just in time and I work really, really hard to be polite to the nice young man whose job it is to deal with grumpy customers all day.
Then, I call BC Hydro. I can’t seem to get into my online account. BC Hydro has some bizarre system that doesn’t let you choose your own user name and password. So I am constantly forgetting mine. And though I have used the “forgot your password” and “forgot your username” links dozens of times, and entered them into the login fields, and clicked the “Remember Me on this Computer” box, somehow they’re never there when I go back, or they’re there but don’t work. So I try to talk to someone, but am put on hold for a long, long time, and finally get looped around until I am disconnected (by accident, I’m sure - nudge, nudge, wink, wink). So I send off an email to request that I want to opt out of their ineffective online billing system, damn the renewable tree branch each a year that my paper bill uses up. Because if it doesn’t work, and I’m behind by one month’s payment, BC Hydro sends a disconnect notice. (Yes, that’s right, one month - a whole $64, and they’ll cut you off, baby!) Ah, but they have an email address, so I sent off an email, trying hard to be politely annoyed, a uniquely Canadian trait, to say that they should switch me back to paper billing until their online billing works to my satisfaction. A day or two later, I get a reply from someone and yes, they will switch me back to paper and remove my user ID from their system. And at the bottom of the email is the standard blurb asking me to ... wait for it ... sign up for online-only paperless billing today.
Next, I call the Future Shop, where I bought my computer, to see about my laptop, which is overheating like crazy. Their computer department doesn’t answer their phone, and I get looped around and around in circles several times until I get disconnected. Eventually, I call back enough times to get through to a general number where an operator puts me through, where the line rings and rings, until I get disconnected. But I persist, and someone with a voice that sounds like he’s under legal drinking age tells me that I should back up my hard drive because if I bring it in, I’ll have to leave it there and they’ll send it out to be looked at. Now, I’ve heard the horror stories about laptops coming back two months later, and I can’t survive without my laptop for more than a day or two. So now I’m motivated to figure out my problem before resorting to the drastic step of dropping of my laptop for who knows how long.
There were a couple of other phone calls, as well, all in the same vein. At some point, I found myself arguing with an auto-attendant, where the software prompt(er) wants me to press a button that won’t work, and I’m shouting into the phone, “It’s broken!” while the others in the office are shouting out suggestions that eventually lead to, “Agent! Agent!” I believe it was VanCity, now that I think of it. They’ve changed their menu structure, and there is no menu item for “all those complicated things that don’t fit in the menu items, so just let me talk to one of your bank of people who probably won’t be able to help me anyhow but at least it’s a step closer to someone who can.”
So there goes a half-day of productivity. I don’t think we should be worrying about outsourcing as a threat to North American productivity. Instead, we should be worrying about the lack of customer service that sucks away our productivity time. Now that is a definite threat to my personal productivity! Today’s tally: Billable hours: 2. Time-sucking activity due to poor customer service: 5.