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I think it comes down to scale and cost.

I've spent a bit too many hours in a call center, both as an employee, and a few years later developing the software that ran one.

In both instances, there were people there who really knew what they were talking about, and a lot more who read from a script. I was a script-reader my first month or so, before moving up the chain, and I was shocked by how often the script worked. Something like 3/4 of my calls were resolved with a one-line fix in a knowledge base I could search.

As I moved up, so did my pay, and I cost the call center more per hour (nearly double). So it made sense for them to a.) not have very many people like me and b.) to make sure that my time was spent only on the problems that couldn't be solved by following the script.

In fact, hell hath no fury as the per lower-level call center person who forwarded through a call to me that could have obviously been resolved if they'd just followed the script! I'd berate them in notes for not reading the numerous knowledge base articles I'd carefully prepared, or for not bothering to check a few simple things clearly outlined in their training before even engaging the script, or searching the knowledge base. They'd just wasted everyone's time. The customer who sat on hold waiting for me, the manager who had to approve the escalation, mine because I'd spent thirty minutes assuming they'd done their job when they hadn't (and double-checking just made the customer furious if, in fact, they had.)

You might think that it makes some fiscal sense for companies to ONLY hire people like me, and eat the cost as a marketing thing, or accept that by offering great support, they'll get better customers. But you literally could not find enough support people like me to handle all the calls if you tried.

So you hire relatively dumb, but friendly and resilient people, because that's what you can find. They're cheap and readily available. If one of them shows promise, you promote them. You try to find experts that are desperate for the job, but they're few and far between and generally come with baggage.

You work with what you can get, and optimize around it.

I disagree with this premise. The cost of quality customer support can easily be mitigated by factoring it into cost of your product.

"Software is eating the world"... and it's allowing companies to scale customer support more easily through active knowledge bases and better more intuitive searching. The 3/4 of calls that could be resolved with a one-line fix should never make it to a phone call, they should be directed to an online support tool that could more efficiently answer their question and if not then funneled into a call or chat system.

It isn't happening quickly, but more and more companies are understanding that the relationships customers build with companies matter immensely and those relationships often begin with customer support reps.

Quality, friendly support scales and you don't have to create a shitty work environment for employees. Look at companies like Rackspace or on a smaller scale, 37 Signals for proof. It's not just about finding "friendly and resilient people" it's about finding people who are passionate about your company's mission.

disclaimer, currently building http://awesomatic.com and tackling this very issue

While I love the idea, I am sorry but call centers are about driving the cost down no matter what, and generally, the call drivers for any institution are broken into fairly small manageable chunks to be resolved by a script :(

Most of the call center industry is just outsourced, especially in the usa, and all the vendors want to do is make sure they pass all their audits, and maximize their profits. That means they generally treat their people like farm animals, and they pay about as well.

Companies like rackspace or 37 signals have a very specific clientele they have to cater to, while most large companies pretend they want this, they do not have this market or this need. (not your website, the need of unique interesting people being tech support)

>The cost of quality customer support can easily be mitigated by factoring it into cost of your product.

Sure, but that only works for high end products. Apple might be able to get away with this (and, in fact, they do exactly this by virtue of offering free in-person support at their stores). But the high end is a miniscule part of any market. But Dell? Samsung? Do you really think you can sell ten million units and offer expert support for all of them?

The Rackspace and 37 Signals examples don't apply. In both cases, they can assume a certain level of competence on the part of their customer. My mom isn't going to set up Basecamp. My grandmother isn't going to be spinning 30 or 40 Linux VMs. Rackspace and 37 Signals offer excellent tier 2 support, with the assumption that you're competent enough to do your own tier 1 troubleshooting. That most emphatically does not apply to the vast majority of products.

"Directing people to an online support tool" doesn't work super well for people who have problems using your online tool in the first place, or if the product isn't a web site in the first place. Customer bases are different across products too.

Also, neither Rackspace or 37signals have scaled well at all. I'm a customer of both, and it's been fascinating to watch the quality of their support decline the bigger they get.

As for "factoring it into the price of your product", that's super silly thinking. Not all products have elasticity in their price, nor are all products capable of supporting both a company AND quality support. This is why so many founders end up doing support themselves.

Quality, friendly support scales

vs

or on a smaller scale, 37 Signals for proof

These statements don't match. Similarly, Rackspace is still a niche product - it's not providing services to the greater public.

Call centres are the modern-day factory job. They're where you go to work if you can't find a job elsewhere. No-one wants a career at one, so the staffing is either going to be high turnover or scraping the bottom of the barrel (or a mixture of both)

If you think you’re talking to an expert when you call a customer service center, you’re probably not.

I work at a company that is 2/3 customer support (in employee count) and prides itself in customer support compared to competitors.

Despite that, they all the get the same training on all the products. If you call in about a specific product, you just get the experience that a particular rep has with it (or has been trained on) or can find the KB. There is one team of specialized reps for a specific product, but that's it.

I was just talking to my team the other day about how much better I think it would be if all reps specialized in a specific product/area and then when calls came in they would be filtered and redirected to the right person.

The company pays those reps by the hour, so they lose money

In our case, the customer support is both support and sales, so the call center is actually a revenue generator as opposed to a cost center.

>This strongly affects my opinion of a company as a consumer. Some companies have great support.

In my experience, the entire _retail_ banking sector is devoid of 'experts'. They are all salesmen/saleswomen. (Yes, even those "Financial Advisors"!)

Apples and oranges. Createspace services a niche market and not the greater public. I've worked customer support in both kinds and it's chalk and cheese.