resolver
I recently had cause to make a complaint to a company I'd been a customer of.
I've worked in call centres, and I've managed customer service teams. I know exactly how those environments work and all the things that happen to stop complaints being dealt with, whether they're mistakes by the customer, mistakes (or deliberate mishandling) by the company rep, institutional failure... and so on.
I could write an essay on all those things, but I want to get to the point, which is this:
Even though I know how to approach these situations as a customer, it involves a lot of work for me. Dial the numbers, follow the IVR, get to the right department, take the rep's name, take a note of the time, explain your situation, leave your contact details, confirm your contact details, ask for a case reference, establish a timescale.... and that's just the initial call.
Then I have to set a reminder for myself, call them back, complain about the lack of contact, understand the escalation procedures and so it goes. I'm pretty good at it because, as I say, I know how it works and I'm doggedly bloody minded.
But for a lot of people, it's just not worth the stress of pursuing satisfaction by this method, and they give up. It doesn't take a genius to know that a lot of companies' customer service procedures evolve, deliberately or organically, to serve this dynamic; to present a wall of Kafka-esque bureaucracy that insulates the business's profits from the complaints of its customers.
So I was pleased to use a service called resolver which managed the whole process for me by providing a complaint template, automating the timescales and escalations for me and keeping track of all my correspondence.
I did, in the end, get refunded, and only after my issue went as high as the CEO, but hey, it worked.
My long-winded point is that this model of service, where a central system guides the user through a process in a way that minimises the risk of plausibly deniable "errors" and rquires the least amount of effort, initiative and emotional investment from the user seems a very good one to me.
Why could not this model be used to help people through legal processes, complaints to local councils, even disputes with neighbours and who knows how many other challenging situations.
I've worked in call centres, and I've managed customer service teams. I know exactly how those environments work and all the things that happen to stop complaints being dealt with, whether they're mistakes by the customer, mistakes (or deliberate mishandling) by the company rep, institutional failure... and so on.
I could write an essay on all those things, but I want to get to the point, which is this:
Even though I know how to approach these situations as a customer, it involves a lot of work for me. Dial the numbers, follow the IVR, get to the right department, take the rep's name, take a note of the time, explain your situation, leave your contact details, confirm your contact details, ask for a case reference, establish a timescale.... and that's just the initial call.
Then I have to set a reminder for myself, call them back, complain about the lack of contact, understand the escalation procedures and so it goes. I'm pretty good at it because, as I say, I know how it works and I'm doggedly bloody minded.
But for a lot of people, it's just not worth the stress of pursuing satisfaction by this method, and they give up. It doesn't take a genius to know that a lot of companies' customer service procedures evolve, deliberately or organically, to serve this dynamic; to present a wall of Kafka-esque bureaucracy that insulates the business's profits from the complaints of its customers.
So I was pleased to use a service called resolver which managed the whole process for me by providing a complaint template, automating the timescales and escalations for me and keeping track of all my correspondence.
I did, in the end, get refunded, and only after my issue went as high as the CEO, but hey, it worked.
My long-winded point is that this model of service, where a central system guides the user through a process in a way that minimises the risk of plausibly deniable "errors" and rquires the least amount of effort, initiative and emotional investment from the user seems a very good one to me.
Why could not this model be used to help people through legal processes, complaints to local councils, even disputes with neighbours and who knows how many other challenging situations.
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