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PC Call Centers Garner Lowest Satisfaction Score
Lucas123 writes "The University of Michigan took its first American Customer Satisfaction survey and found that of six industries measured for the Customers' Call Center Satisfaction Index, the PC industry received the lowest score, according to a Computerworld story. 'According to the survey, nearly 73% of the people who have bad experiences with their PC companies' call centers said they will consider purchasing their next PCs from another company, while 85% of customers who had their problems resolved by calling a PC call center said they would continue doing business with the company. Other calls centers included in the survey included banking, cell phone service, cable and satellite television, and insurance.'"
...I don't even try. It's pointless.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Wow, worse than cable service call centers? That's sad. I bet it's because of all the industries included, the PC industry has the most complex product and the most complex problems. Banking, television, insurance, and even cell phone service are all pretty straightforward. But PCs are such general purpose devices that the issues are bound to be more complex.
Of course there's the other obvious problems of poor call center training, etc. But that just compounds the issue.
Developers: We can use your help.
That a great start, but then.
1)want to make more money
2) cut back on call center
3) profit!....this quarter.
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I had a friend who once worked at an AOL call center in the Mac division. Real transcript: AOL: "What type of Mac do you have?" Caller: "Uh...tangerine?" Maybe the callers think the service is so shitty because they don't know that the problem is fixed or because they can't provide good enough information to the agent to get it fixed. I've had 10 times the problems with cable company call centers than I have with any other, including PC manufacturers.
No - #3 will have a short stay at his company, moving on when it becomes obvious that all his management chain cares about is his average handle time, not the quality of his support.
The problem is that the margins in the PC industry are razor thin, and with the number of people needed to man those phones, they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
Retail customers aren't willing to pay for quality tech support. [Corporates are though.]
Even if they were able to pay them more (which they aren't), you aren't going to get good people who know what they are doing to sit on a phone all day every day dealing with angry/frustrated customers. No one ever calls tech support to tell them how happy they are with their purchase. I was a tech for a year, and it was horrible. You only get angry/upset people talking to you, and most of the problems can be resolved by following a script.
Add to this the PHBs who measure your performance based on average call times (not in actually resolving issues) and you get yourself micro-managed into mediocrity. Good people don't like being told to do a shitty job, and they will leave.
If you've got the skills to be a good tech, you can make more money doing a job that is more satisfying somewhere else.
When you become a part of the average big soul-sucking support center, what passes as productivity is **precisely** tracked.
Read the following carefully.
-No caring.
-Know nothing. They provide scripts. Don't _ever_ deviate from the scripts.
If you are with me so far, read on carefully.
Call center productivity is *NEVER* measured by customer satisfaction. It is measured as calls per unit of time. Period.
Take a moment to comprehend the implications of the previous statement before moving on.
If you meet/exceed the calls per hour (or whatever) then another component of your productivity is the number of parts shipped. More parts bad, less parts gets you an atta-boy from your manager and maybe even a shiny nickel.
Finally, a call center is most profitable when there is a queue. Fewer support people processing more calls per hour = profit & productivity.
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That's the thing -- people DO read manuals if they're good manuals. if they flip through it and it's just page after page of "Thank you for purchasing one of our products" with a list of all possible specs and languages, they're going to assume it's crap.
If it was actually relevant to their computer and covered the basics, they would know it was a reference. Sadly, good documentation (and I mean good, not just "listing everything") is usually one of the first things cut, despite the amount of money it can potentially save.
This is because computer tech support is actually a pretty specialized skill. It isn't something like calling visa where they have a flowchart of 5 problems in front of them.
Unfortunately, the people running the call centers don't realize this. They give their employees the same sort of flow charts that are given in "non-specialized" fields.
There are people out there with the skills required to to these jobs very very well. Some companies, like intermec (mobile computer manufacturer), zebra (industrial printer manufacturer), or CLI (provider of dumb terminals for As/400 systems) hire very very good people. I have even gotten the same person on multiple calls who recognized me "Hey RYAN! did you get that battery charger replacement i sent you?"
Unfortunately, it hurts the bottom line to pay skilled labor, so the end user ends up suffering.
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The reality is that PC support is inherently more complex. There are more moving parts in a PC. The end user has far more ability to alter the proper operation of the system but changing software and components. There's a hell of a lot more that can go wrong in a PC, it's much harder to diagnose, and that is why customer satisfaction is low.
When was the last time you installed more memory on your cable box, or upgraded the operating system? Cell phones are getting more complex, but by and large they are self contained systems that don't get modified much either. I'm sure that customer satisfaction will decline, the more phones become like PC's.
It's just the nature of the beast.
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