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Comment by wouldbecouldbe | Hacker News Reader

I dont want useless customer support. Wether that's a human or a bot.

It's extremely frustrating to have a real issue, take for instance a plane cancelled or delayed when travelling with kids, and not being able to talk to a real person who can actually help. Let alone having to wait 30-60 minutes to get a hold of someone.

Nowadays most large organisations are structured now that it's impossible to have a conversation with a human who actually has the power to make a decision. All they repeat is info that's found online and tell you to fill in a form or email.

In that case a chatbot is probably better for both sides, mainly for the person behind the phone who doesn't get verbally abused on a regular basis.

Sadly best way to get helped by corps nowadays is to tweet to them.

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> Nowadays most large organisations are structured now that it's impossible to have a conversation with a human who actually has the power to make a decision.

In my experience it's equally impossible to have a conversation with a human that has a 1st grade level set of communication skills. You write out a detailed account of your problem and then get some copy/paste response back that has nothing to do with your complaint, and suggests that the person did not even bother to skim your complaint, let alone try and comprehend it.

It's probably not communication skills but workload. Their daily pay may depend on how many people they knock off, and an impulsive, quick response might work 90% of the time. If you're one of the 10%, they'll finally read what you wrote instead of skimming it quickly, hitting F6, and selecting the third option.

That has a lot more to do with the requirements laid out by their management than their communication skills. They stick to the script because they take performance hits if they don't, not because they don't know how to talk to a human.

Yeah talking to stripe customer support is like talking to gpt. Have to remind them every now and then to go back and reread the conversation.

When you outsource your customer support to a call centre where the people there have no power whatsoever to actually help you, who are just trained to get you off the call with a "if there's anything else we can help you with...", why bother? Support needs to be in-house, and the people doing it need to have the power to actually do something when you call them. Otherwise, it's just for show, it's ticking a box in some compliance or PR checklist

I agree. I've run a support team for a mid-sized SaaS company for many years and have so far resisted any outsourcing. Unsurprisingly, Support is one of the commonly cited high points of our product. The members of my team are well trained and knowledgeable and can escalate things easily so that the vast majority of customer problems can be resolved satisfactorily.

The challenge with resisting outsourcing is justifying the cost of it. I try and frame it as: what is the likelihood that a customer churns if their problem goes unresolved?

Of course in our case, each customer represents thousands of dollars in ARR, so that's an easier argument to make.

Same.

Few years ago, I was stuck at Dulles due to a snow storm and had to resort to online customer chat support via the United app. I only used it because United was pushing people really hard to use the app for support. I was connected with a support rep who obviously did not live in the states because he tried to give me an impossible itinerary. Anyone living in DMV area knows taking an AA flight from DCA that's about to take off in 40 minutes when you're currently located in terminal C/D in IAD is impossible.

My current gig requires me to travel more and now I am able to enjoy the privileges of dedicated support line for 1K. The difference is night and day; you not only get connected to reps who are obviously American, but also reps who deal with frequent travelers so they have contextual information to get what you need.

> Anyone living in DMV area knows taking an AA flight from DCA that's about to take off in 40 minutes when you're currently located in terminal C/D in IAD is impossible.

I don’t think you need to live in the DMV area or even need to be a human to figure this out…

You'd be surprised!

My thought process is that people who get contracted/hired to do cheap labor won't appreciate how big the US is (IAD to DCA is 40 minutes alone without inclement weather + bad traffic) and how TSA affects one's transit time.

But there are easy resources available to them to determine that. Google Maps alone would indicate that it’s pretty much impossible. I am actually surprised that their system even would suggest something like that.

For fun, I asked ChatGPT (gpt-4)…

Prompt: Can I get from Terminal C in IAD to DCA in 40 minutes?

Response: Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) are two separate airports located in the Northern Virginia area, near Washington, D.C.

The travel time between these two airports is approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour by car under normal conditions. However, this can vary depending on the time of day, traffic, and other factors. Furthermore, this timing does not include time for potential issues such as returning a rental car, waiting for a taxi or rideshare, airport security, and other possible delays.

Therefore, a 40-minute window to travel between these two airports and catch a flight is not realistic and highly risky. It's recommended to allow a much greater time buffer when scheduling flights with a transfer between these airports.

I'm sure they could if they really wanted to.

But for farm support center, I'd wager that they're just given SOPs to follow mindlessly or don't really care that much.

I figured out most of the airport acronyms... except DMV... Delaware-Maryland-Virginia? (Search focuses on motor vehicles, even with "-motor")

I always thought it stood for "DC Maryland Virginia".. basically the greater Washington DC metro area.

Yep. Poor Delaware.

Yes, also known as Delmarva.

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