10 Things I Hate About Call Centers

Lately I got to thinking about call centers and it occurred to me that this is a customer service model which simply is not working. The word that keeps coming to the surface is marginal. The fact is I don't think I know anyone who doesn't cringe at the very thought of placing a call to a call center of just about any kind. I call them phone farms, because they conjure up the same kind of images of mass pandemonium and chaos that you might find if all the animals of a large farm were suddenly let loose in a 100,000 square foot building to magically man the phones in little cubicles. There are so many reasons why the average phone support farm has become so over-extended, ineffective, and no longer useful.

I don't have the time here to fully elaborate, but let me state for the record that the sad and pathetic idea that is the modern customer support center has just about run its course and will soon weigh down on the companies which run them like the bloated Albatrosses they are. Why are call centers no longer working? Oh, where can I begin!? Let me just summarize with 10 things I really hate about them.

#1. Too Many Layers and Menus
People call customer support for different reasons. Some need Tech Support; some need Sales, some Billing, etc. So it makes sense to have some kind of menu to get you where you need to go, but now it's getting down right crazy! Press 1 for English, then press 4 for support for Product A, then press 1 if you're a partner (or hold the line to become a partner), next press 2 for this, then press 3 for that, and on it goes! Of course then there’s my personal favorite…after traversing several layers of options sometimes you get something like "if you need help with product B (hey that's me!) please call hold the line . . . click, click, Thank you for calling Blah Blah Blah – back to the beginning you go! You've got to be kidding me!! Too many layers! Too many menus! Too many problems! The trend, more and more, is to funnel all calls to one central number which only makes these menus fatter and more cumbersome. Please people!! Just give me a number to call for what I need!

2. Voice Menus -- EEEK!
Maybe it's just me, but the idea of pretending to have an intelligent conversation with a computerized phone system is ludicrous! I think we're supposed to be impressed by the "humanized" interface, but for me it's laughable at best and most of the time it's down right annoying. They're cumbersome. They're slow. They're weak! If you're like me you want to multitask as you navigate the menus of a call center. Voice menus won't have any of that! They demand to be front and center. If you try to use speakerphone while you perhaps read your email -- forget it! The slightest distant sound like the blurring of a fax machine in your office or a conversation in the next cubicle is enough to throw the stupid thing into a fit of confusion. They are hard to understand. They are wordy -- too much useless chit chat. I don't know about you, but I don't like to "talk" to a phone system. I'd rather bush a button and get on to what I need. Some systems allow you to press buttons for the voice options instead, but many do not. This is especially frustrating when you come armed with all the steps to navigate the phone maze (e.g. 1-800 # + 1 + 3 + 3). Many of these so called "modern" systems don't allow you to make button selections mid-sentence into the worthless queue dribble that spews from the voice messages. I want quick choices, not phony conversation. I especially hate the open-ended voice prompt which says something like "What would you like to do?" It drives me up the wall!! Give me some choice you worthless piece of junk!! You end up speaking in the kind of disjointed "keyword speak" that sounds so ridiculous and so unlike the normal flow in intelligent conversation that you may as well be pushing buttons anyway and do away with the charade altogether.

Many call centers have these "voice command" systems and the business managers who sign off on them must mistakenly feel that they somehow improve the company's image as "high tech" or on the "cutting edge." I've got news for them; most of us aren't impressed with these things in the slightest. The truth is we hate them! This kind of user interface has a long way to grow and won't be viable for years to come and perhaps will never be suited for this kind of application. These voice systems only serve to frustrate the caller with an unpleasant experience right from the start which is only painfully tolerated and a lot less impressed by the technology.

#3. On Hold Time is Atrocious!!
So you navigate the ridiculous maze that is the menu system (voice or not) and at last you get a live person. What happens next is evidence of the most blatant disregard of your time that can only be out done by perhaps a trip to your local ER. You wait and wait "On Hold!" Let me give you some numbers . . . 45, 37, 24, 55, 67. What are these you ask? These numbers represent the approximate wait time I've spent "on hold" in minutes during recent customer support sessions handled by various call centers. You say 67 minutes on hold! You got it. I'm not making this up!! Sure I didn't wait that long before I got a live person, but when you count multiple hold times taking into account the cumulative hold time during the course of the call it all adds up. This of course does not count the time I'm on the phone talking with a real person or making menu selections. This is just "on hold" time! In total I've easily spent a couple of hours in heavy Tier 2 and tier 3 tech support calls and so much of that time is waiting on hold in between live people.

You say, why do it? Why wait so long? Well, this is a good question. Sometimes you can just look at the clock and say, "forget this, I have better things to do" and hang up (and I've done that plenty of times). But there are time when you're in a real fix and your only solution is to deal with the call center (tech support, billing, or whoever). And guess what? They know it! You're stuck with the phone farm as your only option. So it shows as they deal with you during a call session. You say, well doesn't anyone monitor this stuff. The answer is yes and no. Of course any good call center will monitor phone queue statistics looking for various indicators, but I guarantee you that your total "on hold" time is the not high on the list (most likely not even calculated). Trust me, no one in management will care about your hold time even if it were being logged by the system. Yes, you hear the message "this call may be recorded for training purposed", but the truth is this "training" is about how to drive profits and not how to improve the caller experience. They listen for “bottom-line” indicators during these call reviews. And so it boils down to profit just like everything else. Just as every shred of cost is squeezed out of the corporation to drive profits the patience of the customer who contacts the call center is taken to the very threshold of tolerance as hold times get longer and longer.

#4. Information Stored in Queue is Lost in Transit
Don't you just hate it when you are prompted for various information by the phone system (account number, phone number, product information, etc.) and when you finally get to the mediocre rep on the other end the first thing out of their mouth is "may I have your account number, phone number, product information, etc.?" It's enough to take you to the brink! What did your piece of trash system do with the information I keyed in 20 minutes ago!! You ask. I need to verify your account, they snap back as if to say "what's so unreasonable about that?" 2 Things -- first, why ask for information in the queue that will not be used during the support conversation. This is asinine! It’s more common than you think and at first I used to bring it up during my conversations with the support people, but now I don't even bother. The best I ever got was "Oh, I think the system uses that information to route the call..." You "think?" I say. “How can you possibly not...never mind.” Second, if you need to verify account information (which is reasonable) DON'T ASK FOR THE SAME INFORMATION that was keyed in the system earlier by the caller. It's just asking for trouble!! It's not that hard people...THINK!! Again, more evidence that the call center mind set is not really that interested in improving the calling experience. It's all about dealing with the masses in the cheapest way possible. Quantity, not quality.

#5. Speak English people!! Come on!!
There are 3 things that prompt me to hang up immediately when I finally get a live person on the other end of a call to a call center. The first is blatant incompetence on the part of the rep (I can usually sniff this out in about 15 seconds). I usually respond by saying something like "I'm sorry, I have the wrong support rep" -- click. The second is a rude and/or abusive support rep. In this case I ask for their full name and end with something like, "thank you, I'm done with you now" -- click. No, I don't expect to really have a recourse to report this person, but at least it makes them think (if for but a fleeting moment). The third thing that prompts my quick disconnect is that I simply can't understand them. I've learned from experience, it's just not worth your time (not to mention the extra stress). More and more what passes for English is an utter disappointment. I know it's not the support rep's fault. They can't help it that the phone farm’s management is content to put people in a situation dealing one-on-one with English-speaking customers who often have complicated issues yet just 8 weeks ago the rep couldn't speak a lick of English. I really don’t think I'm exaggerating! With far too many of these call farms the language barrier just gets wider and wider. I'm not talking about idioms and euphemisms here. I'm talking about the bare basics of forming a sentence! These folks are not ready to carry on a conversation in a bus station let alone a conversation with an English-speaking customer at a call center. I've tried to drudge through too many of these conversations. It’s down right painful. The lingual disconnect just drives me crazy and when I hear that broken debauchery of the English language upon the start of our "conversation" I’ve learned to politely excuse myself and call again. Honestly, this is a pretty good strategy because there are so many of these phone farm people that you could get a different rep every time -- even if you call the phone farm 10 times in a roll.

#6. Tier Support is too Low-End Skewed
Good people don’t come cheap. That’s the bottom line and a key reason these phone farm tier support pyramids are so heavy on the low end. They employ thousands of mediocre handlers with minimal skills for their tier 1 support, while their tier 2 and especially tier 3 staff is incredibly thin and often impossible to reach. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, dealing with these first responders is painfully difficult. So often there’s nothing they can do for you…you know it and they know it. The phone farm demands we suffer though the charade. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens when you hire an army of low-skilled, low-paid, tier 1 support personnel most of whom come armed only with a high school diploma and a weakly scripted sequence of steps which spoon feeds them the words to say and the actions to take for every single call. Many of these are pleasant enough and often enthusiastic (just like the screeners who hire them want them to be), but the truth is they are being asked to do the impossible. There are just not enough people at these calls centers who truly understand enough to be helpful. Have you ever just carefully listened to these people? Listen for what’s behind the script. As you take into account the bevy of scripted replies and memorized statements that these drones put out you’ll discover a sad truth about the decaying idea that is the modern call center – they really don’t get it! The corporate VPs have some how convinced themselves they can still drive profits and continue to placate their customer base with only a façade of a support system. I predict this house of cards is coming down soon!

#7. Incident Logging is Deplorable
This is the thing that nearly drives me to the point of madness!! Why in the world would you pay for an expensive incident tracking system for your call center and not put it to good use?! You know what I’m talking about. You place your 5th or 6th call to the phone farm and drill down the menus and drudge through the first and second responders to finally get to your tier 3 support person after waiting in queues and enduring marginal assistance and at last you get something like this…"Hello, my name is unintelligible, how can I help you?" After an awkward pause you say, "what? Didn’t clueless reps numbers 1 and 2 pass on ANYTHING I spent the last 25 minutes detailing to them??!!!" And of course you know the answer – not a chance! Why do they do it?? Why in the world do they do it?? And so many of do it too!! I just can’t understand it. Log some info, PASS IT ON!! It’s very simple. Okay, then you get a hold of yourself and read off an incident number which is often met with a vacant "Hold on just a minute." About 120 seconds later you get “…so you want to add blah blah blah to your service…” Shock followed by speechless amazement overtakes you. “What?!!” You say. “What are you talking about?” Then you remember needing to add blah blah blah to your service about 2 years ago and you discover somehow THAT’S what comes up when they pull your incident using the incident number you so diligently recorded about 2 days ago for the problem you’re calling about now. "Do you have ANY information about my CURRENT situation?" You ask. "...No sir, this is all I’m seeing, but I am able to assist you...what can I help you with?" It’s as if what you have just conveyed was something trivial like “so I hear there’s more snow up your way.” Your grip tightens on the handset and you image it’s someone’s neck at the phone farm. Anyone’s neck, there’re all guilty!! It doesn’t have to be this way. It all comes home to me that beyond the obvious clueless state of the reps at the phone farm; apparently the ineptitude goes all the way up the food chain. It’s clear that the VPs that install and manage these centers don’t get it either.

#8. Hurried Reps with Edgy Attitudes
When you take a closer look at these organizations you’ll soon discover what does matter to them – numbers! Yes, it’s all about the numbers and the funny thing is it’s not the kind of numbers that matter. Apparently there is a critical disconnect between the board room and the phone farm VPs that really believe that the success of the company depends on how many callers the reps handle within a given period of time. Actually it’s part of the pop culture at the phone farm. A rep who handled 50 calls during a shift has more value than a rep that handles only 30 calls. He’s the one who gets all the applause and high fives. It doesn’t matter that the rep who handled 50 calls ticked off about 35 of those customers in the end -- customer who may look elsewhere in a heartbeat if given a better choice in terms of service.

It’s this environment that breeds the hurried and edgy support rep. These people really get under my skin! They speak in quick bursts of monotone disjointed phone farm talk and are always ready to move on to the next call – ready to add to numbers. With every new question you pose or attempt at clarification they become more and more edgy. No quite rude, just on edge – needing to move on. All they want is to close your call and it shows.

#9. No Exit Strategy for the Clueless Rep
It’s bad enough that these phone farms are staffed with such a glut of tier 1, bare-bones support reps. What really gets me is how more and more of these low-skilled reps are expected to handle just about everything a customer needs. It’s a losing posture for anyone to be in. You’ve been there I’m sure. You call these people and get into your issue and the awkward silence and inept responses clearly show they don’t have a clue what to do for you. They don’t understand the product you’re calling about, they don’t know how to make changes on your account, they can’t explain the errors you’re getting, and on it goes. Of course they don’t understand! They’re marginal to begin with. That’s why the phone farm hires them – they come cheap! For the life of me I can’t understand why any organization would put any of its people in a losing situation where they don’t have the skills or even a preplanned procedure to bail them out!! More and more of these mediocre reps have no place to send you, no answers to give, and no meaningful solution for you – no exit strategy. They simple wave their hands in utter defeat with some weak replay like “I’m really sorry…I don’t know what to tell you.” Are you kidding me?! That’s all you’ve got?! No solutions, no recourse, no escalation – dead end! How did we come to this?

#10. Is There Anything Else I can Help You With?
No matter the nature of the call or the kind of assistance provided. When it’s all said and done you often hear those 9 ridiculous words “Is there anything else I can help you with?” It’s a stabbing reminder that the whole experience was just scripted joke all along. Right down to the finally comment. These people spew out this laughable statement even when it doesn’t apply. This is especially discrediting to the company when on those rare occasions you actually get pretty good support at the phone farm. To end it on that note just ruins the whole experience. In a way it sums up the entire call center problem nicely. A question that is just as meaningless to the caller and the rep who is forced to pose it. The phone farm is all about pretending – going through the motions.

Back in the good old days when a call to a company’s support team was really helpful, you got the sense that the company understood what mattered -- you the customer. They also communicated with their support that they wanted you back and perhaps a few of your colleagues. Back then you had product specialist who knew what they were doing and knew how to help you or how to get you to someone who could. Maybe there were only a few of them back in those days compared to the armies they have now, but that didn’t really matter. For the most part, they helped you with your issues and you felt pretty good about it. Today it’s all just window dressing. The phone farm has evolved into nothing more than a shell where behind the surface it’s more fake than real. The whole decaying system is ripe for demise.