"We value our customers" while you're on hold is obvious BS. They could hire ppl, ofc, but it's vastly better to have so few bugs & so good a UX that you don't need so many people to provide support. These orgs pay the price for not having a culture of quality in angry customers.
When I worked at Claris (Apple spinout led by CEO Bill Campbell), new employees were encouraged to sit at help desks for a while first. That way whenever we made a design feature the question was ALWAYS asked - how many tech support calls will that decision generate. We know the cost of tech support. 4 calls and we had lost our margin on the product.
@amkhosla @allenholub is that 4 calls per feature? Or 4 calls per customer over some time horizon?
4 calls period. If your margin is $40 4 calls will bring you to 0. (These are 1991 numbers)
@allenholub @jarrett @verizon
The cost of tech support is non-trivial. So much so that my very last startup attempted to solve that:
First customer was Palm Pilot, then Activision, then Apple, then the Airlines, etc as we built... Palm proved our model worked when a caller said "Thank you" at the end of the call, on our fourth call. We tried to sell to Verizon. They didn't buy, LOL
So having sold unsuccessfully to verizon, and having sold successfully to AT&T, I can tell you tech support is not their main worry. Marketing costs to get your account is. So threaten to quit Verizon and you'll be surprised at how much they want to help.
@amkhosla @allenholub @jarrett @verizon John Seddon wrote books including "Beyond Command and Control" on his experience teaching managers to see how the way they run call centers and support is costly and ineffective. And how employee empowerment improves service and cuts costs.
https://smile.amazon.com/Beyond-Command-Control-John-Seddon-ebook/dp/B07Z7G79J9/
@allenholub @amkhosla @jarrett @verizon we'd never treat you like that Allen
@amkhosla @allenholub love that question...