this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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Unpopular opinion and rant: Us, the consumers, brought this on ourselves. Not intentionally but it was a slippery slope.
No one I know did ever ask the sales representative "does your customer support answer within 5 minutes and will I always reach a representative with att least 10 years of experience, that has the authority to make real decisions?". No, but we were all very interested about the pricing of the service/product.
Then these "Please press 1 for...." happened.... and no one of us really cared about the change because the service providers offered a much lower price than the ones with customer support representatives with 20 years of experience. Since all of us went for the cheapest provider, the other ones had to cut cost to be able to offer their service on a competitive price level. So then there were no one offering competent support with representatives that knew their shit. And it slowly continued to go downhill...
So here we are with shitty services, which we pay for, where we all are treated as cattle.
If people at least started to ask for better customer support there would someone, who wants to climb the corporate ladder, creating a PowerPoint presentation with a real VIP Service Level. Of course it will cost more money, because real people cost money, but we would att least get what we want.
But no. Consumers will still go for the lowest price.
Interestingly, at least where I live, in my experience, the more expensive ISPs, TSPs etc. have worse, almost evil, customer service than the smaller, cheaper providers. Maybe the smaller providers can't afford the most evil money-saving customer service systems, and that's what makes them better?!
I have the same experience as you do, but there's a reason that the big ISPs continue to be big: The majority of customers seems to prioritize a lower price than a better level of support.
(Also, I'm not just talking about ISPs. I meant customer support in general and how the view has changed from "keeping a customer is much cheaper than gaining one" to "cattle, cattle, cattle. If we lose one, there's hundreds to gain".)