Call center complaints

Filed under Soapbox on June 21, 2004

A belated “Happy Father’s Day” to all our dads out there. This was my first Father’s Day. My wife and I played a game of my new LotR Risk, I mowed the yard, and we took my dad to Tony Roma’s for dinner.

I woke up this morning wishing it was still the weekend. That would mean I didn’t have to go in to the office. Working in a call center could be the focus of a blog all its own.

For example, I sat down at my desk, logged in, and checked email from over the weekend. I had more than 5 internal emails relaying complaints (customer and employee) about the company’s new website (the one I wrote 95% of the copy for). It’s a lot different than the old one, mainly because the focus is to draw in new customers, where the old one was like a homepage for existing customers. It’s a logical and smart move on the part of the company.

Of course, our existing customers are freaking out. It’s the typical response to change you get from most non-technically oriented people. However, there were some things Marketing could have done to alleviate the levels of frustration.

What really gets me is the internal response. There has been resistance from some of the technicians and their tone when responding to the complaints is unnecessarily negative. This serves only to feed the customers’ dislike of the change. No one likes to deal with someone shouting in their ear that they don’t know how to get to Google because we don’t have a links page anymore (yes, this was an actual comment from a customer), but the techs need to realize that having a website that draws in new customers means the company will have a better chance to grow, which means more opportunities and better pay for its employees.