Why the Customer Call Experience Sucks

Why the Customer Call Experience Sucks

We all probably had many bad call experiences, and I am sure there are many complaints out there, but today I want to constructively discuss why, and hopefully, it leads to a discovery of viable solutions.

Today, I got injured while using a product and was unsure how serious the injury was. Therefore, I needed to contact the product’s manufacturing company. Since I was traveling, this also involved medical insurance and travel medical insurance issues, so I had to make a remote call.

The first pain point is not knowing whom to contact. The relevant information is very unclear, especially when it involves the manufacturer, medical insurance, and medical service providers. Each institution has numerous different phone numbers, and each number handles different matters. Finding the right contact person is extremely difficult.

Dialing the wrong number wastes a lot of time. If you dial the wrong number, you might have to go through a long process of waiting, providing information, and conversing for ten to twenty minutes, only to find out that the phone number is wrong and the department does not handle the issue.

Limited service hours add to the frustration. If it’s a medical-related call, once you need to transfer, the first step is waiting. Due to staffing shortages, sometimes you might be told that it is not business hours and to call back during working hours if the other party is not available 24/7.

Navigating through complex menu options takes a lot of time. If you call at the correct time or if they are available 24/7, the first issue you encounter is the complex menu options. For example, choosing a language, selecting a department, etc., which takes several minutes to complete these steps.

Providing personal information repeatedly is both insecure and tedious. Even if you select the correct options, sometimes you still need to provide personal information, such as a social security number, phone number, or credit card number. Each time you encounter this situation, you need to stop and provide the information, and this process is very insecure. If someone is nearby, they might overhear this sensitive information, and the operator would also know your personal information.

Repeated identity confirmations and information entries are time-consuming. Finally, when you get through to a person, you often have to confirm your identity again, spell your name letter by letter, and provide information such as your social security number. This process is very time-consuming.

Poor phone signal quality can disrupt the call process. During one of my calls, the signal quality was poor and the call kept dropping. I decided to hang up and ask the customer service representative to call me back. However, they were unable to successfully return my call. This might have been because I was traveling, or perhaps their system couldn’t make international calls. In any case, the process of having customer service call me back was very unreliable.

The entire process can consume a significant portion of your workday. By this point, it usually has taken up half an hour, which is one-sixteenth of an eight-hour workday. This not only consumes time but can also disrupt other work plans.

Non-personalized solutions provided by customer service can be very frustrating, especially after requesting so much personal and private information. Today, what frustrated me the most was that after finally connecting to a customer service representative, they asked for my personal identity information and detailed information again. They then provided a non-personalized solution, similar to what I could find in the user manual, rather than a personalized solution. I felt very frustrated because these are the same information I could find in the manual, and the customer service didn’t tell me beforehand that I needed to provide this information to get help. It was a waste of my time.

In summary, calling customer service is filled with uncertainty, complex processes, and long waiting times, which makes the experience very frustrating. Today’s experience made me deeply understand these issues, and if they can be solved, it would greatly improve the user experience.

Note: This article is based on my experiences and thoughts, with assistance from my AI assistant (ChatGPT).