I sat down to watch the finale of my favorite sci-fi series on a recent Sunday evening when I discovered that I had been locked out of my TV streaming service. After struggling to find a solution online, I fired off a tweet asking the company for help. The company responded a few minutes later: "I'm so sorry you're having trouble connecting to your account -- DM us your phone number, and we'll have a customer service representative call you back soon." I DMed my number, and asked, "Why can't you just help me here? And how long will it take to get a call back?"
No response.
After 10 minutes, I gave up and just called them (my least favorite way of getting help). I waded through a complex phone menu, then waited on hold for 20 minutes before finally getting through. Though the representative was very nice and resolved my issue quickly, it was too late -- I was incredibly upset that I'd wasted almost an hour of my Sunday evening for a pretty simple issue. I didn't care how sorry the company was, or how friendly the agent was when I eventually got through. I especially didn't care for hearing "your call is very important to us" every two minutes as my evening dragged on. I just wanted my problem solved quickly and easily, and ideally without having to actually speak to anyone. The same holds true for countless others today. Welcome to the era of the bullshit-proof consumer.
Almost anything is now possible at the touch of a button -- ordering a taxi, controlling your home, running your business or even finding true love (or whatever kind of love you're looking for). But, customer service has fallen behind. Inspired by the Zappos model (phone anytime and speak instantly to a highly motivated customer service agent), many brands started training their agents to deliver the best possible service; to throw away the script and to be human, emotive and caring. But, maintaining this level of service at a large scale is expensive -- so expensive that the same brands began to make it increasingly difficult for consumers to actually speak to the agents they'd trained so intensely. Phone numbers became buried deep in websites, and phone menus were designed to encourage people to give up before they actually got through to anyone.
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https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/320202/
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