These days, getting in touch with a customer support representative has become difficult, if not impossible.
Companies are cutting staff and phasing out call centres to cut costs, leading to dramatically increased wait times. Contact numbers are hidden on their websites, to be discovered by only the most determined. And once they get through, they must overcome an army of robots designed to stop them from speaking to anyone.
Sometimes, reaching a real person is just not possible. Corporations have directed consumers to chatbots, email, FAQs, and other good old “figure it out yourself” options — all in the name of efficiency and, ultimately, profit. Now, companies are claiming that artificial intelligence will fix that.
Against this backdrop, the phone call has become something of a status symbol.
Want to talk to a company representative? It’s a privilege, not a right.
Companies have made it so difficult to connect with a human being that customers — especially younger people — have come to view a phone call as a premium product. Gen Zers don’t like talking on the phone unless it makes them feel special and important.
McKinsey recently found that when millennials use premium brands or services—say, an expensive credit card—they’re actually more likely to call than millennials and just as likely as baby boomers. The experience feels like a concierge service, helping them jump to the front of the line and offload the work they’re trying to do onto someone else.
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Airlines used to have separate phone numbers for high-status passengers — and in some cases they still do. Even now, if a premium customer doesn’t know the magic number, they’ll still get better and faster phone support.
However, this happens in other industries as well.
- Verizon charges $10 as an “agent assistance fee” if a user pays a bill by calling customer service.
- AT&T and T-Mobile also charge for a similar service.
- The only way to get 24/7 phone support from Yahoo is to pay for it.
“It’s becoming really easy for companies to position phone access as a premium,” says Michelle Kinch, an associate professor of business administration at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. “It’s more expensive, and so it has to be profitable for the business.”
Kinch studied how increasingly automated customer service was affecting customer psyches, and found that in a stressful situation without human contact, panic can only worsen. When people are nervous—which often happens when they’re trying to contact a company representative—they crave human interaction.
Just knowing they can talk to someone if they want makes them feel better.
She recently worked on a small study looking at the use of AI in customer service and noticed that people interacting with virtual agents reported more anxiety immediately afterward than those who dealt with humans.
And it shows. Many have found themselves in a situation where they, say, confirmed a charge to a credit card using a bot and then wondered if that confirmation was saved. And in a high-anxiety situation, like canceling a trip or making a financial transaction, people just want to be able to talk to someone if needed.
Companies could, of course, invest more in call centers and hire people to talk to customers, but that would require spending money, which is exactly what they want to avoid.
Sometimes you just want to explain your problem to someone so that someone can solve it.
Cover photo: Unsplash
Source: rb.ru
