My old person trait is that I think 'ghosting' is completely unacceptable and you owe the other person a face-to-face conversation.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Don't you think you could both be victims? Waiting for ages listening to a 13 second loop of music interspersed with "your call is important to us" might make people a bit more angry?
You should be mad at the people who gain financially from it, and could make it better for you and the customers, but might have to skip that third yacht for little Timmy.
I have very little faith that a lot of these people would be any more pleasant. My time spent over the last year in the chat department at my company is a major reason why. Chat, unlike phone, has little to no wait time usually. But maybe something about written word makes people even more vitriolic.
Of course I am upset at our staffing policies as well, and the company who is at the whim of the shitty investors.
Right? I see a very easy solution to this, which is, instead of telling the person to sit there and wait under the threat of losing their place in queue if they're not available when the magically shitty music stops playing, to just have the costumers state their name and problem and to then let them go on their way and have the call center itself call back the costumers once their queue position comes up.
But of course. Capitalism.
My company does hold callbacks. The system calls you back when your wait is done. So at least that is more pleasant.
I understand that people get angry when they have to wait in line for ages and usually due to something having gone wrong in the first place, but dumping that anger onto a hapless call center employee who's in many ways — like you said – also a victim of the same company is Not Cool™.
If I find myself feeling elevated by a company screwing me, I always start my call by telling the customer service agent that any frustration on my part isn't directed at them, but at the company and their policies, things I understand they have zero control over. If they're obviously foreign, I try to make clear that I think it's an injustice that they're paid less than their US counterparts and that I think they should be paid the US equivalent, because them being from another country does not make them any less of a human being deserving of basic respect and dignity.
Usually, having gotten that spiel out of the way at the beginning of the call, they are pretty understanding and by the time I'm done explaining I'm less elevated. If you're frustrated, it helps to keep in mind the power structures at play and direct your frustration and anger at the correct parties: the corporate suits who use customer service lines to screw with customers and avoid ever having to hear a customer complaint themselves.
What I really want is the corporate phone numbers so I can call the fucking jackass CEO at home and direct my fuming fucking self-righteous anger right under his stupid worthless ass. Because I'm well aware that they record calls and don't give one flying fuck about our complaints. They don't listen, they don't care. They'll care when I'm blowing up their personal phone at 3am demanding them to fix the fucking issue.
For that matter, I want to see the productivity data on the top executives. AIUI, companies like Amazon monitor and push employees to get maximum productivity. Okay, so if Bob the warehouse worker takes an extra five minutes on his bathroom break and misses his last delivery of the day, that'll piss off the customer and cost Amazon, say, $100 in sales. But by the same logic, if Andy Jassy takes an extra five minutes on his bathroom break and doesn't finish everything on his daily to-do list, that might cost the company $1M. So all the more reason to monitor his movements to make sure he's not slacking off.
The key is that executives don't really matter that much. The company isn't going to lose our on money of the CEO has diarrhea. The vast majority of work is done by the employees. Unfortunately, employees of the company can't just decide to give themselves bonuses and shit like the board can.