Customer service phone lines are the seedy underbelly of the under-the-API economy. Every minute you spend on hold waiting to talk to somebody who can help you is time spent in hell on earth. And there’s no exit. Even listening in feels toxic in a second-hand smoke way.
Conversation
1. Take the most complex technological systems ever built
2. Trap and funnel all exceptional action/information needs automation can’t handle to a call center
3. Staff that center with the lowest paid people you can get away with, in the cheapest geography possible
4. Profit
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For extra credit, layer byzantine automation with voice menus and voice recognition between callers and the minimum viable humans they are trying to get to.
Then size the system for half to a third of mean call volume or whatever because caller time is free to waste.
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Why this happens:
1. Post-sales for even non-monopolistic products is a de facto monopoly
2. CAQ > LTV for a lot of categories and much of the LTV is booked in the first sale so loyalty is not worth earning
3. Unhappy customers can be branded Yelp crazies because a few are
