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PHRoG
April 28, 2009 6:00 PM
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Hahaha...Dark Crystal FTW!!!!

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4 replies
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Julia789
April 28, 2009 10:33 PM
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@PHRoG: One of my favorite movies as a kid! Just bought the DVD for my own kid, who is eight.

I love how many of the strange plants and animals in the forest are modeled after ocean creatures. Really neat idea.

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catastrophegirl chooses not to fly
April 28, 2009 8:02 PM
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@PHRoG: i just love that picture because my mom's friend worked on skeksis construction under jim henson.

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rockasocky
April 28, 2009 8:00 PM
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@PHRoG: That movie scared the crap out of me as a child

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Wit is periodically disensouled
April 28, 2009 6:07 PM
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Ha. It might help, but the big thing would be teaching cs reps not to assume everyone on the other end of the line is an idiot or the scum of the earth, and certainly not to start off treating them as such. Also, although possibly linked with the rules thing in this video, not to get so peeved when someone asks a question that wasn't anticipated in the script.

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NightSteel
April 28, 2009 6:27 PM
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@Wit is periodically disensouled:

I have to disagree. I think the 'big thing' would be convincing megacorporations not to fire CS reps for making exceptions. CS reps would probably be a lot less cynical if they didn't have to treat everyone on the other end of the line like an idiot because they will get fired if they do not.

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Canino
April 28, 2009 6:50 PM
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@NightSteel: I have to disagree with both of you. :)


The \"big thing\" would be to hire people actually capable of making decisions (with guidance and within parameters) and not trying to pay the lowest wage possible by hiring people who maybe have a high school education and who have no work ethic.


I could go into a big long story about when CompUSA started their new call center circa 1999 and the incompetents they hired because they couldn't find good people to work at minimum wage...let's just say it was a beautiful disaster.

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magstheaxe
April 28, 2009 7:14 PM
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@Canino: Agreed!


When the managers of the call center I worked at in the '90s decided they needed to save money, they made the decision to slash new hire salaries by _not_ hiring college graduates and instead going after the barely-made-it-out-of-high-school crowd. Result: their employee turnover quadrupuled, customer satisfaction dropped through the floor, and the call center essentially fell apart.


There's an old saying: \"If all you pay is peanuts, pretty soon you'll only be able to hire monkeys.\"

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theblackdog
April 28, 2009 7:02 PM
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@Canino: Ding Ding Ding! Add that they should also stop hiring people who regularly come home on their lunch break, smoke a bowl and then go back to work (yes I knew call-center workers who did this) and things might get better.

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alexcassidy
April 28, 2009 10:54 PM
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@theblackdog: Wow... they had the sense to go all the way home? Must be nice

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dragonfire81
April 29, 2009 4:06 AM
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@alexcassidy: The ability to make decisions is only part of the equation.

When I worked at a call center, I had the ABILITY to do many things, I could give a $200 discount, hook you up with a cheap phone, give you free texting, discounts, all sorts of stuff.

But we were heavily discouraged from doing so. I once gave a credit to someone who had been transferred EIGHT times and was REPRIMANDED for doing so because apparently I wasn't supposed to just \"Throw money away\" on useless credits.

So even though I have the ability to help you, I am cut off at the legs by management who refuses to let me do so in many circumstances. We were supposed to make money for the company above all else.

I didn't like this at all, I'm just telling how it was. It's not always that the agent is not empowered to do something, just that management heavily discourages going above and beyond in most all circumstances.

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johnva
April 28, 2009 6:08 PM
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This sounds like it's right on the money, and expresses a lot of things I've said for awhile. Mindless obsession with rules is a hallmark of authoritarianism, over-obsession with bureaucracy, and stupidity. It's infected corporate America badly, and it's even worse in the public schools (largely because public schools are a place where the people being governed by the mindless rules have little recourse or right to stand up against them).

Unfortunately, I don't feel like watching a 20 minute video right now. Anyone else annoyed by the proliferation of video news and articles online? At the very least, transcripts should be included as an alternative, as I can read a helluva lot faster than I can watch a video of someone talking.

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Ubik2501
April 28, 2009 8:17 PM
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@johnva: I'm with you on both points:

Championing mere obedience to rules above what makes the most sense economically, ethically, practically and intellectually is the best way to ruin your business or organization, and there needs to be a whole lot less of it in this country.

And I'd really love it if more websites put transcripts with their videos, as I love to read articles but usually prefer not to have streaming video and audio going at work, plus it takes up a lot more time.

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Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!)
April 28, 2009 7:45 PM
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@johnva: \"Anyone else annoyed by the proliferation of video news and articles online?\"

Yes. I skip a lot of sites/news stories that have video/audio only. I can't always have noise going at my computer, and it takes for freaking ever.

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johnva
April 28, 2009 8:14 PM
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@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle): It's also usually lighter on the actually deep content, just like television news vs. say, a newspaper.

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runswithscissors
April 28, 2009 6:29 PM
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@johnva:
I bet that's because a lot of corporate workers are in the same boat as me;

My boss wants unquestioning, immediate obedience first and foremost. A team of people doing exactly what the boss says is a sign of secure power (which leads to money and more power).

Anything or anyone who goes against this culture is \"dealt with\" (fired, forced out, etc).

The rest of us have learned to obey and never question, no matter what we know or have experienced before. Even if we're right, even if we save the company a ton of dough - we've disobeyed. And that will not be tolerated.

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LegoMan322
April 28, 2009 8:24 PM
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@runswithscissors: Ohh shit...we must have worked together before...I am usually the one who is \"forced out\" due to the fact once a boss shows me that all they want is power, I have no respect for them and never will...

I hop around from job to job....donations?

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NightSteel
April 28, 2009 6:31 PM
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@runswithscissors: And this is exactly the attitude that has to change before front line employees can have any meaningful autonomy.

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johnva
April 28, 2009 6:35 PM
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@NightSteel: Agreed. If I were running a business, I would try to institute a \"no drama\" workplace rule and fire anyone who violated it.

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superberg
April 28, 2009 10:12 PM
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@Frank Murphy:

No, no. The term you are looking for is \"less profitable.\"

Companies have profited for decades on the face-to-face model. Then they started firing up Excel to see where they could cut costs, and didn't think about the consequences.

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dragonfire81
April 29, 2009 4:02 AM
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@superberg: I always thought customer service meant that I was supposed to, you know, solve a problem to a customers satisfaction within reason.

Boy was I wrong.

When I worked at the call center, they made it clearly on that we although we were called CUSTOMER CARE, our job was to MAKE AS MUCH MONEY as possible for our company.

They didn't outright tell us to break any rules, but it was easy enough to figure out those that did (say by adding things to customers accounts they didn't ask for) earned fatter commissions and were treated better by management. Also, they weren't punished for their actions either.

It's the same mentality at my current job, what matters most is our ability to make money for the company, even if we have to screw over a customer or two in the process.

I don't necessarily like it, but it's what I have to put up with to keep the paychecks coming.

I wish more businesses practiced true customer service, but when every CS rep is a salesperson in disguise, that's rather impossible.

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RecordStoreToughGuy_starcommandseries.com
April 28, 2009 7:00 PM
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@johnva: Yep. Were that boss working for me, and I got wind that he could have saved the company a significant amount of money but didn't because he viewed it as a challenge to his authority, he'd be out on his ass, and the guy who had the good idea in the first place would be replacing him.

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Riddar
April 28, 2009 6:21 PM
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@johnva: I tend to think talks like these lose a lot if they were just put into a transcript or article, which is why they don't write up the transcripts themselves.

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johnva
April 28, 2009 6:26 PM
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@Riddar: Maybe so, but I still think that news sites should have both options. I'm not against video...I'm against it being the only method of accessing the content.

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Chris Walters
April 28, 2009 6:16 PM
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@johnva: Great idea for a new website, if someone wants it: transcripts of videos and speeches.

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johnva
April 28, 2009 6:23 PM
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@jdmba: Perhaps companies shouldn't be outsourcing something as central to their business as talking to their customers. I understand the theoretical business case of outsourcing things that aren't part of their core business competency, but no business wants to piss off their customers.

The problem is not outsourcing per se; it's the idea that people who are untrained and unskilled in a company's actual business can make competent customer service personnel.

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RecordStoreToughGuy_starcommandseries.com
April 28, 2009 6:15 PM
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I just had a vision of faceless companies sending hordes of Garthim to capture our wallets so their Skeksis masters can drain their essence to fuel their evil magic.

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nwaasob
April 28, 2009 6:54 PM
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@RecordStoreToughGuy: Let's play into the partisan hatred with this. Aughra = Obama, or Aughbama, if you will. Garthim are congresscritters. That would make normal citizens the Podlings. The Skeksis must be bank CEOs (and their ilk). I'll give Kira as Oprah Winfrey. Who, then, are the urRu (Mystics)? Who is Jen? Most importantly, who is Fizzgig?

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jdmba
April 28, 2009 6:17 PM
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Outsourced call centers will never be able to rise to this level, regardless of how good the idea is. The centers have people who simultaneously render services for multiple companies, and all they CAN do is read a script, for lack of any specific knowledge.

In addition, it is virtually impossible that these undertrained overtasked individuals will be given any type of unilateral discretion.

The only way to outsource is through a script. Once the outsourcing ends, only then can Mr. Schwartz's ideas ever hope to be put into play.

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RandomZero
April 30, 2009 2:07 PM
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@jdmba: I presume you speak from a position of vast experience and authority on the subject? I write this from a third-party call center. Our entire script: \"Mention the company's name in your pening, and reconfirm info the client gives you.\" That is it. We've got extensive training on all aspects of the business, including the parts we are explicitly forbidden from working with, so we'll be able to keep our clients informed. The company I take calls for decommissioned their in-house customer service center last year - not because of costs, but because customer satisfaction was MUCH higher with us. I've personally spent two hours off the phones entirely, researching the best solution for a single client's needs.


So, yeah. The problem isn't outsourcing, it's CHEAP outsourcing. The company we're working under pays a hell of a lot more for us than they would at any of the big three - and they get what they pay for. The problem is that not every company is willing to make their decisions on customer satisfaction instead of cost:profit ratios.

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B
April 28, 2009 6:22 PM
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If by \"when to make an exception to every rule\" you mean \"when they apply to me\" then yes. Cause I am a special, delicate flower.

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Frank Murphy
April 28, 2009 6:39 PM
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But that would not be profitable.

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Acolyte
April 28, 2009 6:53 PM
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All the scripts and the rules exist so as to help companies reduce their liablities. Well meaning advice given from a CSR's point of view can at times do more harm than good even though not intended that way.

Not to say that CSRs should not be given latitude as it does help but you know how corporations are, cover the bottom line above all else!

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johnva
April 28, 2009 6:57 PM
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@Acolyte: Correction: \"cover the short term bottom line above all else\". Bad customer service can erode the business' brand in the long term.

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Canadian Impostor
April 28, 2009 7:03 PM
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People who work in call centers are mostly unable to be trusted to make good decisions for the betterment of a company which is why a script is given to them. They can't be allowed to have the discretion to \"do the right thing\" because people would walk all over them for discounts which is why the system operates as it does.

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bilge
April 28, 2009 8:36 PM
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@Canadian Impostor: No, a script is usually given because it's cheaper than actually training folks about the products.

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magstheaxe
April 28, 2009 7:17 PM
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@Canadian Impostor: And how come the people who work in call centers can't be trusted? Because the managers hired the lowest-wage employees they could find, people with little-to-know education or work ethic.

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Tyler Laing
April 28, 2009 7:13 PM
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@Canadian Impostor: The assumption is that practical wisdom would disallow discounts as a general procedure, and only be used when it really applies. Here's an example of practical wisdom from CSR reps.

A customer had just signed up for a new phone account, and then discovered he had to go to India, on family matters. So we called up Rogers, and asked if there was anything that could be done for the 3 months he'd be in India. The reps gave him a 3 month credit, and extended his contract by 3 months, thus making his trip be cost-free for his canadian cell-phone account. That is the kind of thing CSR reps should be allowed to do. Happy customer, positive story.

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Jay Gonzz
April 28, 2009 7:36 PM
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If a call center employee had Knowledge and wisdom, one would hope that it would be enough to escape employment at a call center..

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Ubik2501
April 28, 2009 7:40 PM
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Alternate article photo: Aughra shouting \"QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, TOO MANY QUESTIONS!\" into a headset.

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Andrew Halpern
April 28, 2009 8:08 PM
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There's an interesting word I found out about in Britain, called 'jobsworth.' Pretty much summarises the whole idea about blindly following rules.
[en.wikipedia.org]

Definitely need this word in the USA.

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HogwartsAlum
April 29, 2009 12:27 AM
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@Andrew Halpern:

That is great. I loved the song in the article.

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dantsea
April 28, 2009 8:47 PM
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At one Seattle company's call center, we gave frontline staff actual company credit cards and access to other financial resources to help them resolve any exceptional customer issues. Not a card at the supervisor's desk, not something they had to ask for and get permission to use, an actual plastic card they could whip out and use to make things right.

The guideline: Use your best judgment, but keep the customer.

Yes a form had to be filled out (it's still a business, of course there were forms) and yes, there was review. If someone dropped a few grand on a customer issue, we'd certainly want to know why, but we didn't sweat the (relatively) small stuff and just assumed the rep was doing the right thing.

We figured that the card would be used to cover about four percent of customer issues, but in reality it was used less than one percent of the time. What we did see were reps making more and better use of other tools we had provided (the card accompanied a sea change in call center policy, it was part of other training and \"empowerment\" initiatives) knowing that they could do anything they needed to do to keep the customer. Morale and confidence spiked dramatically.

Give people on the job some dignity and trust and respect and even if you're not at the top of the pay scale, they'll do a lot more for you and in turn, for your customers. It wasn't rocket science to figure this out.

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bluewyvern
April 30, 2009 4:51 AM
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@dantsea: That's a beautiful story.

*wipes tear from eye*

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TechnoDestructo
April 28, 2009 8:48 PM
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What is the most annoying sound in the world? The opening cacophony of every TED video. That is the most annoying sound in the world.

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David Thatcher
April 28, 2009 10:08 PM
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This will never happen.
The insatiable desire to quantify and benchmark will not allow it.
I have worked in a number of call centers and so has my mom.
Some people evidently have no understanding of how much of an iron grip METRICS have on call center mgmt.
SCRIPTING also rules over call centers because it is embedded in call QA procedures.
Finally, the general attitude towards phone reps is very poor- uneducated, slackers, mouth-breathers, etc.- even inside a company. Then there is the prevalent view that call center work is something you only do for awhile then move on when you can. When this is the view you take of them, employee development takes a back seat to flogging them over METRICS and SCRIPTING.
That's the real world. The company doesn't care about you, they care about profit, and they care about making you think they care. Same goes for the employee.
Consider telecommuting. Companies can't bring themselves to do it. Not even the federal government can get more than 2.5% of its workforce telecommuting, even with formal programs in place and a target adoption rate of 10%. Why? Because American management doesn't trust their employees. The chump sweating away on the hamster wheel getting nowhere is valued more than the guy who finished his work and chilling out- OMG you aren't working we are going to write you up!!! Get off that d--- internet and do something!!! Oh you finished your assignments? Go sweep the bathroom!!!

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johnva
April 29, 2009 2:12 PM
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@David Thatcher: Again, as I explained in my post below, I think this is tied to the short-term mentality that is rampant in America. We need to figure out a way to reform business so that they start looking at the longer-term, big picture again. As I mentioned in my other post, I think a big way to do this would be to reform executive management compensation. If you stopped paying executives based mainly on short-term results, then maybe they would stop running the business in ways that focus mainly on short-term results over long-term health of the company. Maybe you could do something like have executive pay be based on a long-term average of how well the company has done under their watch, plus an additional amount for each year they work there (so that they have an incentive to keep things working over a long period of time, and not screw up so badly they get fired).

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Acolyte
April 29, 2009 1:03 AM
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@David Thatcher: Sadly I agree with you. I worked for a while for a call center ran by a big bank that got quite a bit of the bailout money (fill in blanks). Anyway they got quite a bit of pleasure from doing what they could to clamp down and hone their measurements of metrics.

You had a certain amount of time allowed in between calls to make notes and I heard they even took that away, basically one call ends and the other rolls in; too bad for you if you havent finished taking notes. Flex schedules were a dream, most you were allowed is 30 mins diff a few times per month.

I work for a small non-profit and my CEO is the old school type. If you are not in the office you are not working, she doesnt approve of people working where she can't see them; end results be damned.

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Anonymous
April 28, 2009 10:19 PM
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I had to deal with this as an addiction counselor at Free and Clear (phone based quit smoking support). I had to ask questions that had painfully obvious answers - like asking a someone who says they have 3 months to live if they are planning to get pregnant in the next 3 months - if they don't answer they don't get nicotine patches - If I don't ask I could lose my job. The wisdom is there some of the time, you're just not allowed to use it for liability reasons it seems. Can't stand it!

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exconsumer9
April 28, 2009 10:49 PM
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Yeah, great idea, but will never happen. Companies are not interested in actually delivering customer service. This is why the system is designed to prevent any actual customer service from taking place.

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JulesNoctambule
April 28, 2009 11:05 PM
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I just love that this is below the story about the guy at Jimmy John's being told that he couldn't have Dijon mustard because there wasn't any, despite the fact that the mustard was in front of him and he offered to pay for it.

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MooseOfReason
April 28, 2009 11:40 PM
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So Barry Schwartz is advocating deregulation?

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catastrophegirl chooses not to fly
April 29, 2009 12:41 AM
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i just spent most of the day in a training session that introduced my company's new quality monitoring program. obviously there's a lot more detail but the big winner for new procedure is:
no more numbered scores - it's all about how actually satisfied the customer is during the call and if their needs were really met.

sorry guys, i don't work for a big corporation, bank/credit lender, airline or cable/telecom. it's a super specialized niche and i hope none of you ever need to call us.

but at least i know one customer service phone center is using common sense

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bohemian
April 29, 2009 12:53 AM
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Companies did this to save money. Call centers are seen as wastes of money. Companies find a certain level of customers leaving to be just fine as long as they can find enough new suckers to join during the same quarter.

Most big companies don't care if they solve your problem or not or if you leave as long as there are enough new customers showing up.

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johnva
April 29, 2009 1:59 PM
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@bohemian: The problem is the ultra-short-term mentality that a lot of companies' management seems to have these days. Why bother retaining existing customers, if you can just get new ones? After all, the existing customers won't necessarily make you money right away. This same mentality is the reason there are so many companies that really don't value any portion of their business except for marketing. They cut R&D, benefits, customer service, quality control/assurance, etc to the bone, and hire more marketing drones based on the \"reasoning\" that marketing is \"making\" them money while those other things are \"costing\" them money. Yeah, maybe in the short term...but that same mentality may destroy a company in the longer term.

I wonder how much of this BS is tied to the unreasonable compensation (heavily tilted towards stock options) of top management at large corporations. They demand immediate results because that's how they personally stand to gain the most. They cut long term reinvestment in the business because they don't really care about that as they plan to sell their stock before it tanks.

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Anonymous
April 29, 2009 1:25 AM
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Unfortunately, the ability and willingness to blindly follow rules is often a requirement for keeping the job.I've worked in several places over they years where idiotic management policies pissed off the customers, and more than once gotten in trouble for refusing to uphold these idiotic decisions.If the company is run by idiots, they hire people who are required to shut off their brains during working hours.

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AvenueOfTheStrongest
April 29, 2009 2:50 PM
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[en.wikipedia.org]

Aristotle summed it up nicely.

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malvones
April 29, 2009 3:30 PM
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I recently had to call Omniture, the \"leader\" in web analytics, to have my work account login reset. To make a long story short, the rep. terminated the call saying \"good luck with that,\" and nothing was accomplished. After having been kept on hold, of course.

I've heard rumors we're switching to Google.

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Rosasharn
April 29, 2009 11:17 PM
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That may be common sense for the field you work in (hard to say without specifics), but it's not for mine. I work for a cable company and it would be silly for me to be punished because a customer isn't satisfied due to an outage, not getting a month of free service, having a PC issue, and other issues that are beyond my control.

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Rosasharn
April 29, 2009 11:20 PM
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Hmm, the reply button didn't work.

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Rosasharn
April 29, 2009 11:22 PM
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Why would you need a college degree to work in a call center? Why would anyone with a college degree want to work in a call center?

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