Stuck in an Endless Tech Support Loop

Stuck in an Endless Tech Support Loop

One of my greatest pleasures is spending countless hours waiting in vain for a customer service rep to help me with something that should have taken ten minutes but will ultimately suck several hours of my time. Ah, the joys of waiting on hold.

One of my greatest pleasures is spending countless hours waiting in vain for a customer service rep to help me with something that should have taken ten minutes but will ultimately suck several hours of my time. Ah, the joys of waiting on hold.

[The following is a true story, with no exaggeration, of the time I spent over five hours trying to get help from a tech support representative. – TEJ] 

I had completed what I hoped was my final draft of my newest humor book, THE SECRET TO SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS.  I was using Amazon’s publishing division called Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). I had compiled a list of questions to which I needed answers in order to fix several book formatting issues their online system had flagged.

I decided I needed to call their tech support team for help. I located their CONTACT US page in less than 12 minutes simply by navigating through an endless series of menus that required me to answer several series of questions until the website finally unlocked the secret passageway to its elusive CONTACT US page.

This page offered me several options: I could submit an email (“please allow 72 hours for a response”). I could initiate an online chat (probably with a web bot). I could pour through their voluminous online community forum containing scores of article links, none of which would be directly on point. Or I could request a call back from a tech support agent. I think I’ll go with Option D.

I clicked the button to have a tech support agent call me. Twenty minutes later my phone rang. The readout indicated the call was from Amazon / KDP. Oddly, it only rang once and then the call dropped. I tried to call back the number on my phone, but I reached an automated message: “We’re not able to accept incoming calls to this number. Please visit our website to request a call back.” 

I then navigated the maze back to the CONTACT US page. I clicked on the button to request a call back – again. That triggered this message: “Our records indicate that you have already requested a call back. Please wait until you receive that call.” Arrgh!

I waited thirty minutes. No success. I clicked on the “Call me” button again. Up popped the same notification as before. Feeling stymied, I tried their online CHAT to request a phone call. Within a minute Agent Adrian generically typed, “How can I help you?”

I explained that I had requested a call, then the call dropped after one ring and the system would not allow me to make another call request. “Could you just tell someone in your tech support department to call me?” I pleaded.

Agent Adrian typed back, “I’m sorry but this CHAT feature does not allow us to talk by phone with the customer.”

“I know that,” I wrote back, frustrated. “I get how online chat works.” I pounded away at the keyboard, trying again to explain my dilemma and that I just wanted to have someone from their tech team call me.

Then, like a broken record, Agent Adrian, who by now I was fairly certain was a bot, typed, “I’m sorry but this CHAT feature does not allow us to call the customer.” Instead he / it offered to help me via their web-based chat utility. I wrote back that I had literally 20 questions and I doubted he / it would be able to respond to all of them via chat. But he / it insisted that they were happy to be of service.

See this happy, chirpy fellow? This is Adrian, or Brad, or Bart. This friendly support agent will be happy to assist you via online chat. He’ll be polite and responsive, usually replying to your questions within 5 minutes. There’s just one thing he won’t be able to do: Solve your problem. Because he’s a bot.

See this happy, chirpy fellow? This is Adrian, or Brad, or Bart. This friendly support agent will be happy to assist you via online chat. He’ll be polite and responsive, usually replying to your questions within 5 minutes. There’s just one thing he won’t be able to do: Solve your problem. Because he’s a bot.

I copied and pasted my long list of questions into the chat message field and pressed SEND. Seven minutes later, the Agent Adrian bot resurfaced: “I’m sorry, but you will need to talk to a member of our tech support team. You can request a call back by visiting our website. Thank you.” He / it then abruptly closed out our session. WTF??

I then noticed that during the time I was bonding with the Agent Adrian bot, I had received an email from KDP tech support:

“This is Jennifer from KDP customer support. You had requested a call, but I called and there was no answer. If you would like to speak with a representative, you can visit our website to request a call back.”

Seriously? I guessed that enough time had elapsed to take a chance and try clicking on the “Call me” button again. I guessed wrong: “Our records indicate that you have already requested a call back. Please wait until you receive that call.

I tried using the online chat app again. After I explained my situation and implored them to have someone from their tech support team call me directly, the Agent Paul bot offered this by now very familiar feedback: “I’m sorry but this CHAT feature does not allow us to talk by phone with the customer.”

The website referred to this as their Customer Service department. But as I reflect back on my experience, I think “Customer Severance” department” would have been a more appropriate name. Then the Agent Paul bot, no doubt programmed to follow the tech support chat protocol handbook to the letter, offered to try to help me via Chat. I explained – again – that I really needed to talk to a LIVE PERSON BY PHONE!

Finally, Agent Paul relented and agreed to try to find someone to call me. I’m pretty sure Agent Paul was going to be summarily fired for violating Online Chat Policy Rule #1: Never let the customer talk to a live human being. Or perhaps he’ll just be rebooted and upgraded to a more recent security protocol. 

An hour went by. Noone called. So I tried their “Call me” option one more time. This time, to my surprise, it accepted my request. Twenty minutes later, I received a call from KDP tech support. Interestingly, one minute later, while on the phone with KDP tech support, I received another call – also from KDP tech support. Not wanting to risk my first call dropping, I ignored the second incoming KDP call. I went into great detail describing my issues. Then I asked Agent Maria, “Maria, do you understand my situation?”

Agent Maria did not respond. I repeated my question – four more times. No reply – unless you consider the dial tone that followed to be Maria’s reply. The call got dropped. Crap! I saw that there was another email from KDP tech support. It said they had just tried to call me but I had failed to pick up.

I went back to the KDP website’s CONTACT US page. When I tried to request yet another call back, yup, you guessed it: “Our records indicate that you have already requested a call back. Please wait until you receive that call.

It went on like this for another hour. Finally, I received another call from KDP tech support. This time the call did not drop. This time I was actually able to present all my questions to an actual live person. After describing my problems in exhausting detail for 10 minutes, tech support Agent Thomas paused and explained: “I’m in first level tech support. I can’t help you with your issues. You’ll need to talk to someone in Senior Level tech support. Would you like me to transfer you?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be most curious to see what rabbit hole this sends me down,” I muttered under my breath. Agent Thomas put me on hold. Ten minutes later someone came back on the line: “This is Thomas again. Would you still like to continue to wait to speak to a Senior Level support agent?”

“Um, yes, I would. Thank you.”

“Okay, please hold.” The next sound I heard was the soothing, familiar melody of … of another dial tone. My call had been dropped. Again. It’s now been over five hours. I’m still waiting to talk to someone about my issues. I’m sure they’ll be calling me back… any moment now.

That’s the view from the bleachers. Perhaps I’m off base.

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© Tim Jones, View from the Bleachers 2022

Business Lesson #84 – How to write an apology letter to upset customers

Business Lesson #84 – How to write an apology letter to upset customers

Last week, we talked about how to handle situations when your customers complain about a product defect, such as, “How come when I use your curling iron, it causes my hair to evaporate?” Of course, the best policy is to blame the problem on the customer or someone else – when in doubt blame it on al Qaeda terrorists … or Congress. You can read last week’s brilliant business advice here.

When all else fails you may have no choice but to eat crow and admit some eensy weensy tiny bit of responsibility for the problem, such as “in rare cases, some inconclusive studies have suggested that there could be a remote chance – and by remote we mean almost less than 50% – that our artificial sweetener could cause an eensy weensy tiny bit of permanent blindness and complete hearing loss in Hispanics and Pacific Islanders under the age of 70.”

In these situations, you need to craft a very carefully worded, corporate earnest and sincere apology letter – one that comes from the heart, with sincerity and earnestness – preferably ghostwritten by a professional apology letter writer in a high-priced Manhattan PR firm, who knows just the right caring words to say in order to avoid a costly class action lawsuit.

When crafting your company’s sincere official apology letter to customers, make sure it contains all of the following six elements:

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Business Lesson #83: What to do when your customers complain

Business Lesson #83: What to do when your customers complain

Corporations do a lot of things well, but one thing that some of them could use a little help with is how to say I’m sorry when they screw up. Historically, like George Bush, most companies are not very good at saying “I’m sorry. I screwed up.” Recently some very familiar names have been getting a lot of practice in the fine art of the apology: Toyota, BP, Goldman Sachs, Apple Computers, anyone who has ever held public office in the state of Louisiana, and for my friends in Seattle who follow baseball, the 2010 Seattle Mariners. You see, corporations aren’t perfect. They’re human, just like you and me (at least according to the U.S. Supreme Court).

As most of you know by now, I am an award-winning business expert. (And by award-winning, I’m referring to the time I won a white ribbon – fourth place – in my tenth grade business project for my idea of starting a company that sold over-priced coffee with fancy names in stores with dim lighting, smooth jazz and wireless Internet. Curse you, Howard Shultz.) I want to help those entrepreneurs who are planning to make a bone-headed business decision by offering you my expert counsel on the steps required to effectively apologize for your future mistakes.

Corporations don’t intentionally set out to anger and alienate their customers – unless they’re a healthcare insurance provider, that is. Usually it’s just that a good idea gets implemented poorly. Or some unintended consequences occur which nobody in the marketing department could have possibly anticipated. Like when that cereal company – whose name will be withheld so they won’t sue me – decided to do a promotion with a national hardware chain – whose name will be withheld so they sue me either – and they decided it would be a neat idea to include a packet of one-inch nails in every box of say, Fruit Loops cereal. Who knew that the folks in production would forget to actually put the nails in a pouch to keep them from separate from the actual cereal contents?

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My Sister Betsy, AKA Bad Betsy in a Previous Life

My Sister Betsy, AKA Bad Betsy in a Previous Life

That’s my sister, Betsy Jones – on a good day. She’s 52 years old, but on most days acts 24: carefree, fun-loving.  But on a bad day, stay away from her because she is cursed with absolutely the worst luck of anybody I know. Take a good close look at this photo. You may think she’s on the verge of snapping – about to lose it and leap over the wall, with a one-way ticket to Crazy Town. And you would be correct.

You see, Betsy has had, well, a rather challenging life, to put it mildly. Imagine Winnie the Pooh going on an “explore”.  He comes upon a sign that says “This way to ‘Honey, Goodness, and Nice People’, that way to ‘Hell’s Burning Dungeons of Despair.’” Of course Pooh follows the sign toward ‘Honey’. Problem is, by the time Betsy gets there, the wind blew the signs around. Uh oh. That’s the story of Betsy’s life – “Blown by the wind.”

You know how some people lead a charmed life? Well, I think Betsy was put on this planet to balance out the scales – singlehandedly. It’s like Betsy has a sign on her back that reads “Go ahead, kick me again – but could you kindly do it before I get back up? – it will save me another trip down.”

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