yourself a balanced person. Calm, calm when others lose patience. But this feeling goes down the drain if you call tech support. First comes the irritation. Then the face turns red. You will end up yelling words into the phone that will horrify your mom.
This is called support anger syndrome.
You are not alone. If you get into a loop - waiting on the line, interacting with automated systems, talking with a person who reads a useless script from the manual aloud, waiting on the line again - then such a specific type of influence on the psyche, according to psychologists, can provoke anger even in the most seasoned human.
Worse, exactly as you suspected, companies are quite aware of the torture that customers are subjected to.
According to a survey conducted last year by the industry's International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), 92% of customer service managers believe their employees could be more efficient, and 74% of managers believe that the company's procedures Prevents support operators from delivering satisfactory results.
Moreover, 73% of those surveyed said that the complexity of inquiries from customers is increasing because people become more technical and can solve simple problems on their own.
Many organizations have implemented a cost-per-contact accounting system. It limits the amount of time an agent can spend talking to you, hence the agony of switching between specialists and constant call hold ("please wait on the line"), explains Justin Robbins, who was himself a technical support operator. and now holds one of the management positions at ICMI.
“Don't even think that companies haven't studied how far they can go in providing the lowest possible level of service. Says Robbins. - Some organizations have even monetized calls. They specifically make it so that you have to wait at least an hour to talk to someone from the technical support, and while waiting you hear messages like “If you want to activate the priority support service, dial this number, and for a certain amount you will be connected to a specialist immediately ””.
The most notorious offenders are companies like cable providers, cellular operators, and Internet service providers in sectors where there is least competition and whose subscribers are bound by contracts or will experience significant inconvenience if canceled. Unsurprisingly, cable and cellular providers have traditionally ranked among the top companies with the worst customer support .
AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon Communications did not respond to our requests for comment.
It is especially frustrating when a conversation with tech support is like one-way communication, because you are not understood - you are either trying to communicate with a robot, or with a person who has been trained to speak like a robot. This is for perceived quality control, or because he is so poor in English that he is afraid to deviate from the printed script
it help desk jobs description.
"Not a single gap"
“It’s absolutely maddening because the nature of the conversation is that when I tell you something, I assume I’ll have an impact on the conversation,” explains Art Markman, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author. podcast " Two Guys in Your Head ." "And when you answer with something that has no meaning, it becomes clear that all the words I said had no effect at all on what was happening."
When events become meaningless and feel like they’re out of control, mental health professionals instinctively feel threatened. While you might want to think that you can act intelligently in such a situation, in reality each of us is just a collection of nerve impulses and primary responses. In a state of threat, instincts push you to take decisive action, but there is nothing you can do about it, because you are stuck on the phone, it provokes anger.
Of course, those companies that do have really good tech support often sell products or services at a higher price, or they may charge a fee for better tech support, so the cost of help is included, like with AppleCare and Amazon Prime .
You can also find great support in highly competitive markets like domain name registrars, where operators like Hover and GoDaddy get high ratings. Also good are “hungry newbies” who are trying to break into markets traditionally dominated by large national companies. Take regional ISPs and carriers like Logix and WOW , for example , they rank at the top of the user ratings.
Experienced tech support specialists and psychologists say that there are other ways to get better support, or at least make it more bearable. First, one should at all costs keep oneself in hand. Take a deep breath. Count to ten. Letting off steam on the tech support operator is not a way to speed up the solution to the problem. Rather the opposite.
“I definitely remember [during my support job] discovering personality traits that I didn't know about when I got irritated and used passive-aggressive behavior,” says John Valenti, a video producer in Rochester. he worked as a tech support operator for an Internet service provider from 2007 to 2012 to earn money for his graduate school. He made an absurd film about thisfor his thesis at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Valenti, like some other support workers who have posted confessions on the Internet, reports cases of rudeness when an operator puts a client on hold for a long time or "accidentally" disconnects it. It also happens that the operator helps to "fix" the momentary manifestation of the problem, but not its cause. Therefore, next time the person will have to call again about the same issue.
Also, do not bother with the requirement to call your boss. You will simply be switched to another operator, who will be warned in advance that the customer is upset, says Justin Robbins. Also, keep in mind that your words are recorded and later can be printed on posters that support staff hang on the walls to cheer up.
“I've seen companies make T-shirts with the cruel, terrible words people say,” Robbins said. He added that these T-shirts can be an incentive to improve customer support because they demonstrate how people can be brought to a state, "but they [T-shirts] can also just show that some people have really come out of the madhouse."
Customer support experts recommend using social media, including Twitter and Facebook, to contact the company rather than making a phone call. You can get an answer even faster through social media, not only because fewer people use such a communication channel, but also because your use of social media indicates that you know a way to convey your displeasure to a wider audience if your needs will not be met, or praise for good service.
To get the best service over the phone, it is recommended to dial the sales number, then you will almost always be switched to a local employee, while technical support is usually overseas with corresponding language problems communication difficulties [Indian technical support is common in many American companies - approx. per.
You can search sites like DialAHuman.com and GetHuman.com for help on which phone numbers and which numbers to press to quickly bypass the automatic system and switch to a person.
If that fails, there are mobile apps like Lucy Phone and Fast Customer.that will hang on the line for you and give a signal when a live person answered the phone. There is no need to accumulate anger listening to an annoying melody on hold .
Addendum : From the company's point of view, it is perfectly reasonable to keep the customer on the line for a while before connecting to the operator. It's a matter of balancing right. If you answer too quickly and too well, then the user will not learn, but will start calling for the slightest reason, even about the same problem that occurs repeatedly.
