Customer service communication
By: Ram Deshpande
Tags: Urbanclap, Telephone, The Elusive Pimpernel, Customer Service, India

<First published on Facebook on 8 September 2018>

How to spend a Saturday? May be on the phone trying to get hold of customer service representatives from four different companies — a bank, an ISP, an ecommerce company, and a new age start-up.

Since the recession of 2008–09, the main goal for the head of any customer service division is probably to reduce cost. This means he or she had to get the same job done by employing fewer people. A conflicting goal would be to still provide great customer service. Conflicting goal = ‘Yahan bhi lagegi aur wahan bhi lagegi’ = ‘You are screwed here and you are screwed there’ (the damned elusive pimpernel! Ha!). The jugaad solution (to still get a salary hike eventually) entails confusing the customer using an automated voice. If nothing works, the solution is simply to not answer any calls. Yes, people have done that!

A smart individual can confuse a customer deliberately and a stupid individual can do it without any effort every time. Thus, when an automated voice was to be programmed, the stupid route must have been a natural choice. They called it Interactive Voice Response (or IVR).

This IVR could be considered Neanderthal Siri or Alexa. A million years after machines take over, they will look for their ancestors. These future-pre-historic IVRs will be discovered as some software fossil. The machines will then fight among themselves over their origin. We will then win the world back. The IVRs, therefore, have some utility. We just have to wait. They will provide some purportedly soothing music even though our call is important to them.

Coming back to the customer service division head’s strategy, the best IVR is the one that makes the customer have self-doubt.

IVR: enter your account number followed by the hash key

<Customer keys in exactly that.>

IVR: sorry (said with just the right amount of a foreign accent, mostly British), we do not have this number in our records.

<Pause>

Press 1 to check if you really know numbers

Press 2 to check if you know the ABC song

<Hangs up>

Navigating the IVR reminded me of driving in Delhi 16 years ago. There were few street signs and no GPS back then. Everyone carried the Eicher road map. Legend has it that new road construction would be stopped if the map book had already gone into print. I had gone around India Gate five times to find Pandara road (sometimes there just aren’t enough dead emperors). Was it the fifth exit or the sixth as per the Eicher map? That’s how I ended up (and am still here) in Gurgaon instead of Noida.

I spent my Saturday going around IVRs of four companies.

The bank gave me self-doubt.

The ecommerce one was pointless because an email arrived before IVR could complete its spiel. The ISP IVR made me apply for a new connection after taking my current connection as input.

The new age start-up’s IVR was the best. It simply said hold on. I got a real human talking to me in no time. My problem was solved in seconds. It was UrbanClap. Congratulations to UrbanClap for having good customer focus!

Other companies, it’s OK. I know you are fine with execution. Just that your customer service executives are the modern day scarlet pimpernel.

We seek him here, we seek him there,

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere!

Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?

Where is that damn elusive Pimpernel!

He gives the Frenchies nothing but frustration

Popping in and out each week!

Spoiling every lovely execution

LA! What cheek!

- The Scarlet Pimpernel (1997 musical) based on a 1903 play of the same name.

<I haven’t seen/read the play. This was used very well by Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm. I saw that>