Every time I listen to Louis Rossmann, I realize we live in a world where not only do people not own most of the stuff that they use, they're HAPPY that they don't own most of the stuff that they use. Louis' latest video is about someone who got their car stolen in their driveway, with their kid still in the car, and when the cops called Volkswagen to see if they could locate the car, they said no because the person who got their car stolen had been a few days late on that subscription for the month, which while I get if the person herself had been late on the payments had asked that would be understandable, but it's the fucking cops trying to get the woman's car back with her kid in it.
Louis linked the article in the description of the video and apparently the thieves dropped the kid off somewhere and then just took the car, but regardless, I don't think if the police call a car manufacturer, they should make the person who owns the car pay up first, there should be an emergency exception, but they're probably trained (poorly, considering most customer service reps that aren't in banks/credit card institutions are shit), to strictly follow their script no matter what, which is pretty bad itself, but goodness is the world messed up.
Not trained, punished. Going off script can get you fired in most big phone support centers.
Yeah, this the "not my job" work ethic that's corrupting the West.
Don't worry a 32 hour work week will help with that!
...right?
Well, if customer support wasn't seen as a cost that should be given as little money as possible by ivy league educated MBAs, they wouldn't be the low paying high turnover soul sucking places to work that they are. They are so heavily scripted because they have to be, the people who work the phones know nothing about what they are supporting.
And often times the customer support is outsourced to a third party call center that covers multiple other companies so they know even less.
Of course, you can get support contracts even cheaper that way, which MBAs love.
I think its in a tango with the "customer is always right" idea that is making any action that isn't strictly adherent to policy (aka, you can't be punished for) a risky move.
Because even if you want to do the "right thing" and try to be good at your job, eventually a spoiled brat of a person will bring the entire weight of your company down on you with a minor complaint and you realize how none of that amounted to anything when the chips were down.
Exactly right. Call center work is the most depressing, soul crushing kind of work because your entire job is to get the person off the phone as quickly as possible. Helping them with their problem isn't even what you're graded on.