Good thinking, but why would you WANT to talk with a live person? Most of my calls to CS call centers have gone like this: Spend 5 minutes validating my identity with the automated service Spend another 5 minutes trying to reach a live person Spend another 5 minutes validating my identity with the live person Spend 15 minutes explaining my problem Live person transfers me to another department Repeat step 2 Repeat step 3 Repeat step 4 Repeat step 5 Hang up and immediately chug a glass of wine Take a deep breath and repeat steps 1 thru 10
It does take some time but it has always been successful for me. In my experience, the only people who can do anything are the customer retention people. So it usually plays out like this: 1. Call. Listen to call tree. Say "cancel my service." 3 mins. 2. Wait on hold. 2-5 mins. 3. Person says "Hi how can I help you." I say "calling to cancel my service." They say "ok I'm so sorry to hear that but I'd be happy to help. Is there a specific reason why you're looking to cancel?" I say "yes, I'm canceling because ___________"*. They say "well that's something I can definitely look into. Would you be interested in staying if I can address this issue?" I say "uhhh, well, yeah I might be." 2 mins. 4. Put on hold while they try to fix issue. Examples of issues I have had: promotional credit ended so my rate went up, billing discrepancy, internet keeps dropping (and I've already confirmed it's not a router issue), a competitor has offered me a deal for same rate with HBO for free. 5-10 minutes. 5. Person gets back on phone. And 95% of the time, my issue has been fixed. They also throw in fake benefits like "locking in my rate" even tho I'm month to month, or giving me a bill credit that I never even check to see if it actually happened. I say ok thank you for your help, I appreciate it. They say you're welcome. 3 mins. 6. Fin. If they weren't able to address my issue - very rare - I just keep talking and then hang up, as if I got accidentally disconnected. Then I try again with another call. Or, I just cancel it for real and go to someone else, if I'm to that point of frustration.
Very nice! Guess I'll give that a shot next time I have some kind of issue. What's ironic about the bold part is that I used to use that trick all then time......when I worked at a call center back in college. It would usually go like this: I would take a call minutes before my shift ended Person on the other end of the line would start explaining his very complex issue I would quickly figure out that this call was more than just a quick change of address and obviously going to take longer than 2 minutes I would say something like "I'm sorry to hear that, I can definitely help you with that. So you..." then I'd just hang up mid-sentence as if the call was accidentally disconnected Log in my notes that call was accidentally disconnected Log off and go home So I guess you can say that my bad experiences with CS are just karma.
