I used to find the wide variety of customer-service-ratings-and-rants websites interesting, then depressing. Now I find them virtually useless as so many companies have outsourced their ‘service’ to mouth-breathing idiots in call centers domestic or foreign. It follows that companies employing this method provide inherently poor service since by definition there is no internal coordination or oversight. Comcast and DirecTV come to mind.
The phone queues are designed to get rid of you, the customer. The hold times are designed to get rid of you. The constant voice prompts to visit the company’s web site is designed to get rid of you. The ‘service’ reps have the usual 10 or 12-question litany that is mostly useless for them or you in answering a question.
Some bright spark decided the reps should coo soothing reassuring messages such as ‘I’ll be happy to help you with that’ even if/when the rep has no intention of or ability to resolve your issue. It’s phony, insulting and worst of all untrue because they are sitting in a call center receiving their paycheck from a third party.
Some companies have offered live chat which seems to make far more sense as one rep can handle 3-4 incoming requests but too often the same untrained dolt is on the other end hot-keying canned lines such as ‘Unplug the cable modem for 30 sec.....’
Those claiming capitalism is destroying the economy (a laughable assertion to begin with) should look at the monopolies and oligopolies like Charter and Comcast. When satellite came around the cable companies suddenly ‘discovered’ they needed to update their infrastructure. Competition and threats to their bottom line are the ONLY things these faceless organizations respect and/or fear.
You said — “The phone queues are designed to get rid of you, the customer. The hold times are designed to get rid of you. The constant voice prompts to visit the company’s web site is designed to get rid of you. The ‘service’ reps have the usual 10 or 12-question litany that is mostly useless for them or you in answering a question.”
You have to get “escalated” up the chain. Usually a level or two is enough to get someone who is American and knows how to speak English... LOL...
But, unfortunately, that does take time. I remember when I found out a long time ago that a speaker phone was a good thing to have for a lot of companies who put you on hold. When I first got one of those, they really weren’t out on the market, except through the phone company itself, and it was the “Charlie’s Angels” kind. So, I got that one. It had to be hard-wired by the phone company.
But, when I got it, it was wonderful. I could walk around the place and do other stuff and come back on when they were ready. I remember many calls that I had, back then, which would keep me on hold for an hour or so...