tedm at ipinc
Nov 17, 2009, 10:44 AM
Post #13 of 13
(1013 views)
Permalink
|
J.D. Falk wrote:
> Jason Bertoch wrote:
>
>> I've been hit with that response on a number of occasions. However,
>> I've found that if I reply, pointing out their obvious error, I get a
>> positive response. Probably wasted effort, though.
>
> Customer service drones get measured on how quickly they can make the
> questioner go away, so when someone replies it reflects negatively on
> them. When that happens enough times, their bosses notice, and they get
> reeducated or replaced.
>
> Have any of you ever worked in large-scale customer service? It sucks,
> and there's a LOT of turnover -- which means a lot of newbies making
> newbie mistakes.
>
I have friends that did and I used to work in IT for Central Point
Software (PC Tools, etc.)
Whether it sucks entirely depends on the approach taken by the company.
Years ago, companies were allowed to ignore tech support costs, and so
practically all of them regarded tech support/customer service as a
cost-sink. So for every widget you sold, your profit was sale price
minus cost-of-manufacture.
Then the IRS and the SEC got together and put the kibosh on that, and
today, companies are required to book tech support costs in advance.
So, today, every widget you sell your profit is sale price minus
cost-of-manufacture minus advance tech support costs. Your not
allowed to bury those costs in manufacturing or ops. The upshot
of all of this is that companies that file taxes in the US basically
have a constant amount of money that MUST be spent only on tech
support positions, it's illegal for them to divert this into
stockholder profits.
As a result of this these days a lot (but not all) companies have
backed off on the old attitude that tech support is a cost sink,
and the more enlightened companies now use it as an opportunity to
sell you more stuff. (nobody is going to buy anything from a
company that isn't helping them solve a problem)
At CPS I had a great experience as I watched that company go from
a large in-house support department, which had very low turnover,
and pretty contented employees, to an outsourced tech support company
(corporate software, now defunct) which was the pressure cooker
model with high turnover. This was done to save money, and it
did - for a while. Then, the side-effects of that move came back to
bite them in the ass and it was one of the contributing factors to
them going out of business so fast and being acquired by Symantec in a
firesale, once step ahead of the bankruptcy court.
Ted
|
