RSS
Twitter
Customer Support Emails? We're Supposed To Respond To Them?
from the that-would-take-time... dept
Who really needs customers after all? Apparently, plenty of companies online have no problem ignoring them. A new study has found that 15% of companies do not respond to customers' e-mails at all. Another 14% only respond partially, and plenty of others don't respond in a reasonable amount of time. We've seen similar stats before. Of course, what's most interesting is that those other studies have shown that the very same companies respond very quickly to sales requests. It certainly seems that some companies have their priorities out of whack. Your customers are the ones who you know are willing to give you money. Shouldn't you treat them in a way that will make them want to give you money again? Maybe the problem is just that there are no humans left in customer support.
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
No Subject Given
which topic are you talking about? Answering machines on phone support, or ignoring customer emails?
Because quite frankly, I've worked on phone support, and I'll gladly let a machine do that for me. People want humans on the phone so they have someone to bitch at and tear down because of their frustration. Machines don't care.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Thank you for your comment
Dear Anonymous:
Thank you for taking the time to respond. Your comment is very important to us. At the moment, both of our Customer Support Associates are assisting other valued customers.
Using the touchpad of your telephone, please enter the serial number of your processor, your mainboard, your telephone number, the book of Genesis (King James version 1.1 or greater) and your Product Registration Number, in that order, followed by the pound sign. The Customer Support Associate who handles your call will completely ignore these entries, but it will give you something to do while you wait.
Calls are handled in the order received. Because of heavy call volume, we estimate your current wait time is ... 14 years, 3 months, 23 days and 14 minutes, or the expiration date of your warranty, whichever comes first.
In the meantime, please listen to the cheesy music. We'll remind you that you're on hold every 2 minutes with ads for our other fine products so you are assured you're still in the queue.
Please hold...
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: No Subject Given
No, people want someone on the phone who actually has a clue as to how to solve their problem and not some clueless third-world minimum wage script-reader who is paid by the call, not whether it the problem was successfully resolved.
I call tech support as an absolute last resort because my time is too valuable to waste sitting on hold and 99% of the information I can get from a tech support phone call is available online anyway.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Mess them up
I work at a call center. If the company outsources the tech support they have certain times they are susposed to answer in. So if you want stay on the line for 3 hours or 4 if that is what it takes cause it screws the company offering the tech support. Here, eds, we have to pay the company if we dont have a good average answer time.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Its not all bad
I am lucky enough to work in an environment where all email is handled and as quickly as possible. Our customers are incredibly thankful for what we do for them over the phone. We don't even have a VRU or a phone menu; the customer calls, the phone rings and they are talking to tech support. Most of our customers that switched from another software always tell us that they can not believe how much effort we put into it. At conventions and stuff we have our current customers hanging around our booth telling new prospects about their experiences with us. Its funny because our competitors still don't understand that, and they still get angry when they see their customers come talk to us.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Well Roxio was included in this survey obviously
I love the fact you have to connect to their servers over the internet to validate your serial number and they dont tell you that you can only install your producton your machine 5 times. So what happens after the 5th time, you get a neat little window telling you to buy more installations!! Oh yeah, no information as to how to buy them or get this reset as Norton does because they are doing the same thing.
So I sent an email to Roxio customer service. It took a week to get an autoresponse telling me I would get a message in the next few days. Its been another 3 weeks now since I got the autoresponse. I sent a message complete with their ticket number, and its been a week with no further response.
Needless to say, I have decided NEVER to buy another Roxio product again. Furthermore I took the software back to the retailer for a refund and tell them they should consider only selling products which were serviceable. And yes, BestBuy took the software back with their apologies for the inconvenience. Let's see how Pinnacle does...
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Support
Well, in some cases it's plain old simple Corporate Politics. No, it's your division that's suppose to do that. No, your division initiated the project so your suppose to support it. No, IT is not going to answer questions on how to use product X (even though nobody else could help them -- that's just not important).
Unfortunately I've seen this several times over the last few years. Oh, and usually this happens *after* the product is already rolled out :)
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
CD recording software
When booting up new Dell computer with Widows Vista basic. I get the following message (this driver is blocked ue to compatibility).
Can you explain please and tell me how I get this message off my screen.
I am an old lady and new to computer using, but am enjoying proving that is "life in the old girl yet"
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Add Your Comment