Never Send A Machine To Do A Human’s Job
A few years ago, due to a massive lapse in judgment, I actually bought The Matrix Online. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not kidding. I gave them my credit card number and everything. I didn’t actually start playing until the free trial ran out, so after about 2 weeks of playing on my own dime, I decided it was time to stop the madness. I went to the website to cancel my account, like you do, only to find there was no mechanism in place to cancel my account. It wasn’t even in the FAQ. Try to comprehend this. There is no way to cancel your account, and the game is hemorrhaging players faster than something that hemorrhages a lot in a short amount of time. How is this NOT a FAQ? How is this not an OPTION?!
I finally found a post in the forums—from a player, not a CS rep—that said the only way to close your account was to call their customer support line. And so I called customer support, and after waiting for (if memory serves) a goddamned ice age, I spoke to a really nice woman. We’ll call her Trinity. Upon hearing my request to close my account, Trinity robotically professed her disappointment that the game hadn’t lived up to my expectations, and she was authorized to give me a free month of play if I would stay. No? Are you sure? How about a Lexus? Still no? Okay, but before I close your account, I need to ask you these eleventy million fucking questions. And so because Trinity was my only hope to “unplug,” I answered her questions over the next (if memory serves) Pleistocene era. And finally the deed was done.
The take-away here was that Trinity really could have given a shit if I stayed or went. She got paid her state mandated minimum wage either way. She had a script, and she followed it to the letter, because the call was undoubtedly recorded for “quality assurance.” And although the game was so fantastically awful that I don’t think even my wild imagination can conceive of a scenario of return, any customer on the fence would have definitely been pushed out of the yard after running that hellish gauntlet.
Trinity and the people like her . The problem is that every single company in this industry has been running customer support the same exact way since day zero. You pay bottom dollar, and (with few exceptions) you get what you pay for. You give them retarded scripts they can’t deviate from, and you set them and their customers up for failure from the moment they answer the next caller in the queue. You don’t let the customer service rep interact with your customer, you let the process (created by people who do not, in fact, interact with customers) interact with your customer.
All of which is a long winded prologue to my main point: If you are one of the people responsible for perpetuating this eldrich cycle, you need to go read this:
Zappos has also mastered the art of telephone service—a black hole for most Internet retailers. Zappos publishes its 1-800 number on every single page of the site—and its smart and entertaining call-center employees are free to do whatever it takes to make you happy. There are no scripts, no time limits on calls, no robotic behavior, and plenty of legendary stories about Zappos and its customers.
…
So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period.
After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!
Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for.
So who are Zappos anyway? Are they some cool technology startup that’s going to revolutionize search engine techology or widgets for your iPhone that let you not only check the weather but control it? No. They sell shoes. They sell shoes for fuck’s sake. Shoes! On the internet. And they are raking in a billion dollars a year.
So think about this the next time you start lamenting the churn rate in your CS “pit.” (Amber’s tip ‘o the day: If you have a customer support “pit,” ur doin it wrong.”) The same goes for community support people. They work hard for you, and you know they’re clawing at your door just to get a foot in, so you you know you you could get them to pay you if it were legal. Which is why many of them stick around just long enough to say they worked for your prestigious ass, and then they go and get jobs in the real world.
And if you’re going to tell me “it just won’t translate to our industry,” then I call bullshit. Because the way you’re doing it now doesn’t translate to your industry. If you can’t make the numbers work after trying to make the numbers work, then fine. But a shoe company figured out a creative solution to their customer service issues. Certainly a company that makes worlds can do better.
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Great story and great find, Amber. This is what the cluetrain manifesto is all about.
My best customer service interaction in my life was when I lost my ticket for an airline at a layover. I had no time, so I bought a second ticket and got on the flight, and stopped at the desk waiting for the agent to sort it all out. When she walked up, I said, “I lost my ticket and bought a second one” She replied, “That sucks!!!” in a way that made me know that everything was going to be ok. It was ok, too.
You can bet that no manager will ever put “That sucks!!!” into a script.
great story! I never know Zappos till today, and I think the bribe to quit thing might be a great way to get semi free publicity. What’s the incentive for the employee to stay? Maybe it is better pay, I don’t know.
The story should be different for MMO companies, the best way to grow is not spend top money on tech support, but to spend top money on get better content.
Most players on MMOs probably knows computers better than the average tech support people, and they are in it for the content too.
…I liked The Matrix Online. Then again, I also liked the two sequels, so that puts me in a very select group of individuals with questionable tastes. Regardless, my excuse to the CS woman was that, while I enjoyed the game, I had effectively beat it in three weeks and I saw everything that could possibly be seen. I told her that, if they would add content, I would probably come back at some point. But, after that point, SOE took over and when I came back a few years later, they had apparently just removed content since they started working on the game. For some reason, there were still about 10k people on there, last I saw. Probably not too far off from SWG, at this point.
Anyway, I don’t think the quality of the CS in the game really effected it any. Good CS wouldn’t keep me around longer, bad CS probably wouldn’t scare me off. When I did resubscribe to the game, I wasn’t thinking about what a hassle it would be to quit again. But, thankfully, it was much easier to quit the second time around (which was nice, because I used that wonderful feature after playing for about four or five minutes).
I’ve done a handful of things in my CS-like position, but I’m usually pretty conservative because, yeah, I don’t want to lose my job. I like my job. I’d like it more if I had more freedom, but I don’t write the rules.
As for The Matrix Online: Holy shit. I remember being pissed off when I quit WoW because they forced me to specify a reason for leaving and wouldn’t provide a simple “I prefer not to answer” option. Having to call customer service to cancel your account? That’s .. insane. Jesus Christ. I’m seriously having trouble comprehending just how bad that is.
When I was working in retail, I always wondered why management seemed stunned that their customers were routinely dissatisfied by the customer service they received. It was clear to me: the employees could tell they were not being valued. It stuns me that so many companies seem to have lost the idea that having a good product == making money. For many companies, customer service constitutes a part of their product.
Also, wowpanda, the incentive for the employee to pass up the $1000 to quit is that they’ve found they like working there and want to continue doing so. They’re trying to offset the hassle of looking for a new job (which the employees in question only recently stopped doing) motivation to not quit a job. I know I’ve stayed in a job I hated because looking for a new job was a hassle. If they’d paid me $1000, I’d have jumped immediately, they’d not have wasted the next four pay checks on me and could have hired someone who cared at all.
Ah yes. Stiffing on customer service – the ultimate in short-term thinking. After all, CS doesn’t bring in the money, doesn’t push the product, doesn’t raise profit margins or increase shareholder value, so screw it.
But…and here’s the thing…a bad CS experience poisons the well for future sales. I’m not talking about monopoly industries here – like your unfriendly local telephone service provider – but competitive industries like, say, computer sales.
So, here’s my horror story. I buy a multimedia laptop 3 years ago from a well-respected company (the name rhymes with Newlett Fackard) and about 2 months into the purchase the screen begins to act…funny. It blanks out, a restart doesn’t get it to restore…I do the sensible thing and go to the Website and file a ticket. I’m told to call. I call and get an individual who is obviously outsourced (i.e. from a different clime where elephants parade through the street and everything has curry in it, or so I’ve been informed from careful watching of Indiana Jones movies) and following The Script. Have you updated your drivers? Yes. Have you rebooted? Yes. “Do it again anyway.” So, there’s four hours of my life gone with no real resolution except “run the restore disk.”
I run the restore disk. It still doesn’t work. By this time I’m pretty sure it’s a video card issue – since I have worked with computers For Freaking Ever and have actually built a few in my day – but I can’t seem to break through the Wall of CS Indifference to speak with someone Not Following The Script. I call again…and I’m forced to go through the same damn Q&A even though they have my ticket in front of them and know that I’ve done it all before. This time I actually manage to get someone to agree to take the damn warrantied computer back and repair it.
Flash forward a month with the “repaired” system on my desk – same problem. Another two calls, the same damn script, another ten hours of my life lost, and lo and behold I finally get transferred to a senior CS rep in Palo Alto. They apologize for the problem and send me a new laptop BEFORE I’ve sent back my malfunctioning one…and the new laptop is even spiffier than the one I’m discarding.
However, even though I finally got a working machine, I’m not buying another Newlett Fackard computer. Why? Well, they could have purged their CS system completely, hired Rhodes Scholars to work the phones, pay each customer back for loyalty with scented oil massages and free Mimosas, but I’ve been burned by nearly sixteen hours of cross-Pacific telephone frustration and will take my couple thousand bucks elsewhere, thankyouverymuch.
So…the company saved by routing CS to the Subcontinent, pacifying shareholders and keeping expenses down, but they lost out on continuing sales and repeat business. Not only that, since I’m the “IT Guy” for my circle of friends and family, I am in a position to deny them a whole circle of sales by steering my “posse” away from buying Incredibly Expensive Electronic Devices from Newlett Fackard…including (by my casual count) three printers, two digital cameras, and another laptop.
@tannenburg: Just to bring your point around to the gaming sphere, if you’ve been poisoned on a CS experience while playing AcmeSoft’s “Everycurse,” then you are less likely to try out AcmeSoft’s next game, “Flem Wars.”
Exactly…for instance, I’m far more willing to go to Warhammer because of positive experiences in DAOC (although I know that nasty EAses has put its dirty little pawses on my preciousss…)
Phlegm Wars