Screw live chat, I'm calling customer service | Hacker News Reader

Screw live chat, I'm calling customer service

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36 pointsneeharc51 comments

Just being a devil's advocate:

"Hi, I bought the VHS tape for this movie, but I don't actually have a VHS player. Can I get a digital download instead?"

If you purchased a box with a DVD in it, shouldn't you ... have a DVD drive?

Of course, it's in Adobe's interests to give you the digital download anyway, since you're a loyal customer ... but should you have an expectation that they provide you with the software in a format other than the format it came in when you bought it?

He mentions that he bought the software when he had a Mac/PC with a DVD drive. Now, he no longer does. Buying a new computer shouldn't mean he has to re-purchase software to be able to install it.

So? Get a USB device or perform an external backup before switching to the new computer. There's nothing more hypocritical than geeks feigning technological helplessness.

The larger point is that it was a customer service issue. If he called and still couldn't get the download link that'd be a company wide issue. To get answers from people just following scripted text is baffling. When a customer contacts you, it's an opportunity to wow them not matter what the issue. "Oh sorry not only can't I help you, here is a script that me, my supervisor and manager all copied to you. Have a good day" I'm glad their call service actually was helpful unlike PayPal's.

This part I agree with - the text chat should have been consistent with the phone support. I posted because I thought a (valid) request for greater convenience was being presented as a case of injustice. I imagine that the text support correspondents were silently thinking 'we didn't make you buy a laptop without an optical drive, did we?'

That's a bit disingenuous. Adobe CS5 was released with both a digital download and a DVD option. In fact, when the digital download was active, you could go purchase the retail box, enter the key in Adobe's site, and download CS5 that way.

But this is all entirely besides the point made in the article: that outsourced customer service is terribad when they don't actually have the resources/training/motivation to fix problems.

It's not a great analogy. A VHS tape goes for $5 (Blu-ray about $20), while an Adobe product can be priced for a few hundred dollars. I'm not surprised he expected more.

This is software. You don't buy the DVD, you don't even buy the software.

You buy the license.

The license isn't bound to a delivery format, and in 2013 downloads are the common delivery formats for anything other than console games. If any party is being deliberately obtuse, it's Adobe.

But it is bound to a platform.

If you've bought Creative Suite and they've since released a new version, they won't do a cross-grade, so there's a thousand-dollar plus penalty for switching from Mac to Windows (or vice versa, though you could run Windows in a VM).

From my viewpoint, it wouldn't have been a huge deal if Adobe didn't offer a download version of software purchased on DVD. That's understandable, IMO. What is maddening about this is that the answers you receive may vary based on the support channel you use. That's more than a little crazy, and Adobe isn't alone.

I suspect that for a lot of companies, "Live Chat" isn't as much about helping customers as it is avoiding the costs associated with a phone-based call center. Chat agents can chat with multiple customers at once, because chat users are more tolerant of delays that would drive call in customers to hang up.

     "I work at a software company and am an engineer by profession
     so i know this is technically possible"

I hate it when people say this. Just because you also happen to work for a completely different company in the same industry, it doesn't give you any insight whatsoever into how things operate anywhere else.

The point he was making is that he knows that it is possible to supply a digital download link. I think it absolutely does give him the insight into the range of things that are possible within the industry. Whether or not the company is willing to provide such a thing is a completely different question, but technical possibility is what he was attempting to communicate...

Every time I have ever used live chat it has been horribly slow, obviously outsourced, textbook/flow-chart driven, and almost entirely worthless. I have spent hours upon hours dealing with people who can not communicate clearly from Hostgator to Comcast and had almost every experience end in failure.

Similar to the author, when I have called a US-based customer service number and spoken to a representative, my problems are either resolved almost immediately or I receive a very clear explanation of what the issue is (usually at this point it becomes apparent that I've misinterpreted something).

Another option that can sometimes work well is tweeting the customer service or brand account. I kind of hate that customer service is being pushed to 140 characters or less but I think the perception of what it means to be "good" at social media results in companies over-delivering or at least being very mindful of customer needs. This has been my experience with Comcast.

my live chat example from Comcast: https://gist.github.com/jfsiii/4450046#comment-712192

I think you could probably qualify this with the statement that most Fortune 500 companies are more willing to outsource live chat out side of the US because it's easier for a non native speaker to chat than to talk on the phone. Outsourced support leaves individual reps with pretty little power, and worse support for edge cases.

I am not sure what the right solution for this is, but many small-medium companies without outsourced support teams do quite a good job providing chat support. (i.e. Bonobos, Joyant, Rackspace, Gilt Group, Trunk Club, etc..)

I guess the real question is more about how do you scale good support when you grow. Especially when most people see support as a cost center. (Not every CEO wants to be Zappos)

I think it has nothing to do with live chat vs phone calls and everything with incompetent/inconsistent customer service.

I'd personally prefer live chat to phone call any day - at least it gives me a transcript I can refer to later, quote in emails, etc.

And you cannot buy an external DVD drive why?

Granted, Adobe's failure to provide for downloadable installation is pretty pathetic, but there is a workaround.

Because I don't see the need to use one, except in the extreme rare case like this one. I find it annoying that they expect me to buy one.

Visit friend who has DVD drive

Supply friend with favorite beverage or meal

Connect shiny new Mac book pro to friend's computer

Install over network connection

Or do it at work. Or have someone rip the ISO and transfer it through the cloud. Or any number of other methods. Was the economic value of the time you spent arguing with Adobe staffers less than the cost of a workaround like this?

There 30$ and if you don't have one you can use a friends as they don't exactly break on use.

I don't get how people are missing the point of the article. Its about how untrained their chat support is, not about buying an external DVD drive vs not buying one.

On the other hand, it's entirely likely that the next company will have untrained phone support and better trained chat support.

Or that the same chat support might have solved his problem right away, had he spoken to a different rep.

Support is always a huge crap shot.

Seems kind of wasteful to buy an external DVD drive that will only likely ever be used once for this one case.

Is a $60 superdrive really worth more than just hopping on the phone?

$60 Superdrive? Or, you could escape Appleland and pay a lot less:

http://www.newegg.com/External-CD-DVD-Blu-Ray-Drives/SubCate...

The author is beyond hope, and has willingly hobbled himself despite knowing that this could be an issue. I don't think mere things like reason, logic, or prior planning enter into this.

It won't be used just this once though, there are tons of things still on DVD/CD. He even mentions in the article he wife needed one to install Microsoft Word.

Plus a "superdrive" is just an over-priced Apple branded version of a generic USB DVD-RW/CD caddy. The Apple one is £61, the Samsung one is £25.

Anyone who buys a "superdrive" is a huge sucker.

He even mentions in the article he wife needed one to install Microsoft Word.

Nope. That was a core of his argument - Microsoft did let her download Word, taking the DVD license key as evidence, so why wouldn't Adobe do the same?

Not everyone has the money to spend on products that they shouldn't have to buy and will probably only use once.

They're like $30 on Newegg--I'm sorry but in the real world physical media ain't over with.

I would just download it from The Pirate Bay and use my license key. :)

I was just thinking that. Or I'd borrow another computer, make a .iso, copy it across and mount it.

Its almost as if they expect you to do this nowadays.

If you wanted to troll you could say, "Oh wait! I've found the download. Incase anybody else asks it's http://piratebay.se/...

I wonder the legality of this. Given most pirated softwares come with a patch that has to manually applied before/after installing. Wouldn't you remain in the grey area until you apply that patch?

That patch is only applied if you don't have a license key. You just torrent the software, use your license key and you're done.

Making copies of the software is not a crime. Using the software without a valid license key is.

I bought CS4 a while back on adobe.com and I dont have a way to download it again now (new computer) so I guess its either upgrade to CS6 or go without it. Really makes me rethink buying shit not in physical form.

You should call their customer service. It's just their live chat you should avoid.

Do you guys feel like live chat is a bad support medium? Or just that it is easier to outsource badly?

I hate phone support, so I'm curious. Phone support is expensive (to run), costs more time for the customer, and often forces you into a horrible DTMF IVR or an at best mediocre voice recognition IVR.

Give me web chat any day. Easier authentication, easier info transfer and I can be on hold in a way less intrusive manner so I don't mind wait times as much.

To me, unless you're selling me hardware I want you to be a web chat first support company.

I prefer live chat, but more than half the time I've used it, it hasn't worked for various reasons. Sometimes it's similar to the OP, sometimes they ask you immediately for a phone number to call you, etc.

It's getting better. It's incredibly frustrating when customer support personnel aren't empowered to help you regardless of the medium of communication.

I think this is more of an outsourcing/language barrier problem than a live chat problem. I had a similar situation calling an outsourced support arm for US Airways. I called and I just needed to get my voucher applied to a domestic flight and the guy simply could not figure it out.

What I did figure out though is that if you press the number for "International" travel, you get someone in the US (Apparently US Airways thinks International traveler support shouldn't be outsourced). She was able to apply my voucher in under 5 minutes.

I've never had anything other than comically bad customer service from live chat systems.

I remember trying to renew a domain that was due to expire very shortly (can't remember the company sorry) and getting a nonsensical error in the renewal process. It took 10-15 minutes for the chat person to reply each time and the most conclusive answer I got was "don't know".

If you have another Mac with an optical drive, you can very easily share the drive over your network: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5287 . Or, rip it to an ISO on another machine and put the ISO (or just its files) on a thumbdrive.

This is aside the point of your blog post, but IMO it is entirely unreasonable to assume that you'll receive a digital download when you've bought a software on DVD.

I'm a huge proponent of DRM-free and open software. But think about this: It just happened to be that you were dealing with Adobe, who have the resources to make huge digital downloads available. What if the software on your DVD was made by a small company who can't afford to host multi-gigabyte downloads? When you bought the DVD, it was with an explicit assumption that you could use the DVD in a DVD drive.

Finally, yes, customer-service chats suck (except for Amazon - I continue to be amazed by how awesome their service is), and calling a company up is almost always more effective.

In today's day and age I think its reasonable. Even when I bought it, I knew I could download it online and use the same license key. That was an option until Adobe released the new CS6. Further, this download is still available to you if you bought the digital download. What I couldn't understand is why they would not provide the same service to a customer who buys via DVD.

Amazon's EC2 service's most expensive data transfer to-internet option is 12 cents per gigabyte. So at most $1 to give a customer a direct download of a product with no marginal cost that he paid hundreds of dollars for. I think it would be reasonable to expect a small company to do this too.

Does anyone have info regarding how much it costs to do customer service inhouse versus using a third party call service versus using a third party live chat service? I suspect that live chat is far cheaper.

This is exactly why we are building our company SaleMove for sales not customer service

Can't you just download the trial version of CS5 and register it with your box serial?

They don't have the trial version of CS 5 on the website. Only CS 6.

"I’m somewhat of an Adobe fanboy"

So, there is no such thing as "fan" anymore? As in, if you like something, do you have to be a "fanboy" or "fangirl"?

Also, nobody understands the difference between "fan" and "fanboy"?

my blood pressure spiked just reading this...

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