Phone systems seem to have plagued my career, sadly this story is not about the beast in my previous tale. It is, however, about a similar evil system that was finally being replaced with a new and shiny model.
Because senior management enjoy bikeshedding, it was decided that the menu recordings should be recreated as part of the project. My Helpful Junior (HJ) had been assigned the task of writing down the existing ancient prose (via the only means possible, ringing the company support number), making a set of modifications (namely; different menu order) and presenting the resulting verbiage at a high-level project meeting between myself (the project lead) and the heads of sales and support. HJ arrived at the appointed time and placed a surprisingly meaty tome before each of us...
Head of Sales (HoS): What's this?
HJ: the phone transcript
Head of Support (SUP): Seems a little, umm, long...
She was not kidding, the first two pages were full of introductory text before, finally, presenting some phone options. It did seem a little lengthy.
HoS: (slightly aggressively) Why have you made it so long? That's not good customer experience
HJ: (quiver)
Me: Hold on (Having listened to HJ prepare his work, I'd already got a head start on this) it's not HJ's fault he has actually transcribed the current dialogue almost exactly. If anything he's reduced it in length
That resulted in the comical sight of us crowded around an iPhone whilst HOS called our own support number....
iPhone: Hello and you have reached $companyName....
(2 minutes 30 seconds later)
iPhone: ... Please press 1 for...
Yep, not kidding folks. Whoever had originally commissioned the system had recorded over 2 minutes of introduction for the support phone line. It got even worse as you dug through the menus; on average there were several minutes of (rather pointless) talking before you could get into a queue to talk to someone. In one example, you received a very outdated sales spiel before being dumped into the support queue (??).
Of course it was a premium rate number, I'll let you connect those dots.
After quite a bit more bikeshedding and an internal competition a new phone dialogue was finished. Which weighed in at a much more lightweight 10 seconds before giving the caller some options. Unsurprisingly it was a hit with the customers...
TLDR: Premium rate phone lines only work if you hold customers up for 2 minutes first
- User errantx on Reddit
Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3b04oi/please_wait_an_operator_will_be_with_you/
Been there and done that. You have experienced nothing until you have dealt with Blizzard Entertainment Tech Support hold times. Back during World of Warcraft's (aka WoW) vanilla days (pre-Burning Crusade expansion) wait times blew. I haven't had to call them in years, mostly because I stopped playing the game back in 2010, but at one time I was on hold for 2 and a half hours waiting for someone after previously being on hold for over 40 minutes and hanging up. I was waiting so long because I needed my account unlocked. They screwed up my billing stuff and long story short I had to call in to get it fixed so my account would be unfrozen and I would be allowed to play the time I had paid for. I just stuck the phone on speaker phone and sat playing board games with my at the time boyfriend.
I am glad for speaker phone options on cell phones. I usually just stick the phone on speaker from the get go while going through any introductory dialogue and only pick up the phone and turn off speaker phone when I actually get someone on the line. Even then, if they take forever I stick them on speaker phone because it sucks holding a phone to the side of your head for 30 minutes.
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