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Originally Posted by joecrisp
Why does customer support suck so much at any company? It's usually a highly stressful, low-paying, heavily-monitored and virtually thankless job. Trust me, I know. When I first got out of college, I had a couple of customer support jobs in the ISP and software industries.
Because companies that provide high-maintenance products such as cable service are required to keep such a large customer support staff on hand to handle high customer call volume, they can't afford to pay much money to each individual support rep. This means the people they hire for those jobs aren't exactly holding advanced degrees. It also means the people they hire for those jobs generally don't stick around very long. I lasted all of about 3 months on my first job as a technical support rep for a dial-up ISP. On my second job, as a customer support rep for a software-maker, I lasted about six months. And trust me, I'm not the exception. The turnover rate for these kinds of jobs is exceedingly high.
Why? Imagine being the most pissed-off you've ever been about any product or service you've ever bought. You call in to give customer support absolute hell. But because there are 500 other customers trying to call in and give customer support hell at the same time, you have to wait on hold for 10 minutes. Now you're REALLY pissed! By the time you actually get to hear a human voice, you're just bursting with fire and brimstone. Who gets to handle all that hellfire? Some guy just trying to get by, who has the unenviable position of having to handle about 100 to 150 more people just like you before he gets to go home and think about doing it all over again the next day. Most folks can't tolerate that kind of life for very long. Those that can-- or don't have any choice, like I did-- usually become pretty jaded, cynical and desensitized early on in the process.
That leaves you with basically two kinds of support reps: inexperienced, naive and sensitive (like I was); or jaded, cynical and desensitized. None of those qualities are really what you want in customer support representative.
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My wife worked in a customer service job for about a year right out of college. Imagine all that hellfire getting directed at her all day long, and then imagine being the guy she came home to in the evenings!
But still, DirecTV costs me significantly less than Cable. I pay $58 a month for one receiver with TIVO service, and a second regular receiver in the den. I get NFL Network, ESPN News, and a whole slew of other channels. And when I call them up for customer support, I've gotten nothing but friendly and very helpful people on the other end.
I think part of the problem being a rep at a cable company is that the cable company makes you so mad in the first place by charging so damn much. So like you said Joe, naturally callers are going to get mad at that. DirecTV customer support reps probably don't face as much anger from the get go, because in general, that company keeps people happy with it's core service. Maybe that's why their reps seem so friendly.