Do you ever get the feeling that customer support people don’t even read what you’ve written? Here are 2 recent favorite interactions of mine. If you have some of your own, please send them in for my growing collection.
My email to MySpace support:
Everything on MySpace has turned to Spanish for me since I came to Colombia. I do not speak Spanish.
I clicked on “English” when it first gave me the option, but still everything is in Spanish.
HOW DO I GET MYSPACE IN ENGLISH SO I CAN USE IT?HELP!!!
MySpace’s answer
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:29:41 +0000
From: help@support.myspace.com
Subject: Re: Not Found (-4) – no subject found in database (-4)Hello,
It looks like there is incorrect or defective HTML code somewhere in your profile. Only if you have a Music account are you able to choose “safe mode” to locate the code and remove it. Otherwise, an avid HTML code user could look for the bad code and remove it themselves.To edit your HTML code, after logging in, go to “Edit Profile”. If you see code you did not include in one of your sections you should delete it. Another option is to delete the code that’s present and repaste the code to that section. One of these options should take care of the problem.
If this does not address your issue completely, please press “Reply” and provide any additional information you feel is relevant. Please do not alter the subject as it will be considered a new inquiry. For the most up to date messages about MySpace, subscribe to the MySpace Help blog! You get updates almost every day! Go here to subscribe. www.myspace.com/myspacehelp
Thank you for contacting MySpace.com.
My comment to AARP.org:
Any links I click to your site get redirected to your homepage. So it’s impossible for me to link to a specific article on your site.
E.g. I want to link to this article:
http://www.aarp.org/bulletin/yourlife/older_wise_bloggers
but it redirects me to the home page at
http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourworld/.How can I link to a specific article on your site?
-Stan
AARP’s answer:
Thank you for your interest in the new AARP.org web site. We apologize for the ssues you experienced during registration on our Online Community Page.
In order to verify your registration, please call our toll-free number 1-866-839-0463 between the hours of 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday.
We appreciate your patience with this matter and look forward to hearing from you. We hope to see you online very soon.
Sincerely,
Jessica
Member Communications
Member@aarp.org
It comes from having a script they follow. Companies don’t bother to staff their first level of customer service with people who are able and empowered to think on their own. Instead, they get a list of possible responses keyed of keywords in your email and they spit those back.
Really, why would you expect the people who touch customers every single day to have the initiative and drive to provide quality service to people who have concerns and problems?
Wow, I had a very similar experience with Yahoo recently. I sent a second message asking them to reread my first message and got a second completely off-topic response. So I gave up. then a day later Yahoo sent me a query about how my experience was using their Help system. I responded to that in polite but fairly strongly-worded terms and have not heard back. I guess they figure they got what they wanted.
They have their answers ready to cut and paste from an excel so they can be in and out of the issue with ease.Although it doesn’t quite happen like that and all they end up doing is pushing people away. I am interested to know what that error was that was…I love the extremely basic answers they supply. One would think if you are smart enough to set up your page you have a vague understanding of how the html works…
Stan,
I used to think like you. Then our phones started ringing nonstop with really stupid questions and hundreds of e-mails from @aol.com started pouring in, so we put our ‘expert’ customer service folks behind a set of more entry level customer service reps and gave the entry level reps scripted e-mails for first-line response. It’s all about the $$$ and there is so much spam, so many poorly written, vague e-mails and frankly so many people that barely know how to use a computer you have to do this to stay profitable. The idiots are ruining it for the rest of us. A while back a lady tried to place a phone order with her walmart credit card, when we told her we didn’t accept WalMart cards, she tried her Shell gas card. She seriously didn’t get it. Enough said.