As business services increasingly go online and become subscriptions, more and more businesses must have call centres. I'm sure managing a call centre isn't easy, particularly with a pandemic and work-from-home regulations. However, I doubt anyone who sets up, runs and manages a call centre has ever had to use it from an outside line. There is a special place in hell, with scarce exceptions, for call centres.
Over the last few weeks, I've had the misfortune to need help with some subscription-based online software we run at some of the businesses I work for. These are mission-critical applications, and the fixes are not something one can do based on the limited portal access that most third-party services offer. This means a dark descent into the netherworlds, otherwise known as the telephone call centre tree.
Connecting to a call centre is terrible enough. One company I deal with has a “artificially intelligent” voice recognition software to help. It never works properly and isn’t very smart at all. One must go through the cycle of repeating oneself several times to the computer that doesn’t understand before one is given an option to bypass the voice recognition evert time one calls in. This ML voice makes Apple’s Siri voice assistance sound like Einstein - and that is saying a lot.
Once through the automated voice of frustration, one must wait for an operator after punching a series of menu commands that all seem to lead to the same call queue. During the wait, one is placed on hold and subjected to music designed to eliminate your will to live and drain your potential to ask anything complicated or meaningful of the call centre staff.
If you are lucky, the service provider will have a call-back option. Most aren't this lucky. One may give oneself a bladder infection while holding onto the hope that the call will be coming through at any moment and the very real fear that if you miss the call, you'll be back to the start of the process and have to argue with the voice assistant again. A call-back option is a computer's guarantee to call you back in twice the promised amount of time and always at the worst possible time.
If you are unlucky, you'll be forced to wait. Likely you'll be told that the wait is due to *higher than anticipated* call volumes. Unless the anticipated call centre volume is counted at midnight, the reality is that companies understaff their call centres to save money. It just can't be that everyone always calls at the same time as me, no matter what time or what day I call in. I reached one service and was told that wait times were between 5 and 6 hours…and this for a time-sensitive and mission critical system. Quick responsive service to fix problems...not.
What can I say about Hold music? Usually, it is distractingly cheery and upbeat to the point that it's hard to concentrate on any meaningful work while listening to it. And you simply can't turn down the volume or you’ll miss the soft-spoken person that finally comes on the line. One service I use has static that affects the music at one point in the song (and yes, they have one 5 minute track that continually repeats). Seriously, after an hour or two on hold, one may consider if it's possible to slit one's wrist with a staple.
The quality of answers, should you ever persevere in holding on long enough to talk to a real person, isn't generally good. Many years ago, support offices were locally staffed by experts in the field. Today, remote options and, I'm guessing, high employee turnover due to the economies of outsourcing have made experts few and far between. And why should anyone worry? There is little accountability to front-line reps if they accidentally cut you off. What are you going to do - call back to complain? Even my responses to customer satisfaction surveys detailing the depth of awfulness in some of my encounters go the great aggregator in the cloud, from which never a reply shall emit.
I recently had a series of 5 phone calls to resolve a problem created when a call centre employee made an incorrect change that had other, terrible consequences. I can't even count the hours on hold I've had to endure. The lack of accurate and timely follow-up is terrible. The number of times I had to call and speak to a different person and start detailing the problem from the beginning, including recounting what each of the previous call centre employees had told me. It really is horrible.
And God help you if you need to get transferred to a second-tier support analyst. More hold music, no background information passed to the new person, and all of the same silly verification questions again.
I'm sure that managers of call centres mean well. Or, perhaps, that they are complete psychopaths who get a kick out of creating infinitely frustrating mazes for callers to navigate. I'd love to think the former. But until they have to listen to three hours of their own hold music and realize precisely what the experience is like, I do believe there is a special place in hell for them. That is if they ever can get through to the call centre that Charon, the ferryman, is now using.