154 lines
6.7 KiB
Markdown
154 lines
6.7 KiB
Markdown
title: An alternative to annoying phone hotlines
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pub_date: 2020-11-29
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---
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author: Nico Schottelius
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---
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twitter_handle: NicoSchottelius
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---
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_hidden: no
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---
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_discoverable: no
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---
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abstract:
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Making technologies improve our life
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---
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body:
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## The phone hotline
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If you have a problem with your contract, if you want to have some
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information about your product or you just want to change some
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detail. By default, many companies nowadays offer something that we
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call "hotline". Or in other words: a voice based communication that
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allows to easily queue people.
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The motivation and how it works is rather clear: there are a finite
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number of employees, each of which can only talk to one person at a
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time. So if the number of requests is more than number of employees,
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then you are stuck in the queue. However this post is not about the
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annoyance of waiting in a queue and enduring little quality, down
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sampled classic music pieces.
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No, in this post I want to address a different fundamental problem:
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every time you call, you start a fresh conversation. You are likely to
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talk to a different person with a different background and probably
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not much knowledge of your situation. From a customer perspective you
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usually don't have any trail of previous communication. Actually, the
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company you are calling might record (and correctly announce it
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before) the call. However as a customer, you cannot easily record as
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well. Often it is also impossible to correspond with the company by
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email, so all written communication has to be sent in letters. In
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2020!
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Looking at it this way clearly shows how much power imbalance the
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innovation of the phone hotline is causing. But it could easily be
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different.
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## The classic way
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You might or might not remember when companies used to be smaller and
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you would request a service with the counterpart in person. Both of
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you know each other and are fully aware of each other responsibilities
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("I give you money, you give me a product or service") and also of the
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support process (A: "It did not work" - B: "I'll fix it!).
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Often the service provider was not far away, might even have been my
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neighbour. And it's really not good for our relationship if my
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neighbour does do what he promised to do.
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As you can easily imagine this does not scale nor work easily in big
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companies where staff is rotated or fluctuating. The old value system
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of being responsible on a personal basis cannot easily be
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transferred. This also means that the classic way is much more
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expensive in terms of time and resources, but the responsibilities are
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enforced by social relationships.
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## Mixing the two?
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So we could say that they are two extremes: one very personal, high
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quality, expensive and the other - well, you get the picture. Is it
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possible to improve the current situation and how can we get the best
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of the two worlds? Before answering this question, let me give you a
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short background of where we, ungleich, are and how we work, to show
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you how these approaches can naturally merge.
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## ungleich @ Digital Glarus
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ungleich is based in [Digital Glarus](/u/projects/digital-glarus/),
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a really old mountain valley in Switzerland. Majority of its buildings
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are very old (I'd guess most are built prior to 1900, many even much
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older), major businesses are industry, farming and also tourism. Many
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people here get up before 6 and start working latest by 8.
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We from ungleich on the other hand are working in IPv6 only
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networks connected by our own fiber or with long range wifi links. Our
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working hours are very flexible, can be morning, day, night, week,
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weekend - we are free to choose. Our topics are very technical by
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nature.
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These two approaches can contradict, but they can also work together
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very well. Like the two ways of communication.
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Interestingly our experience here is that they can easily be combined:
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many people living in Digital Glarus have what we call an "old value
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system". If you offer a service towards people in Digital Glarus, you
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need to take responsibility and be trustworthy. Otherwise the word
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will get out within a few days and social enforcement will result in
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no more work for you.
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While this might sound cruel, you could actually call this "social
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quality assurance". Actually a bit similar to what we see in social
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media, just lower scale.
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And how does this look like in reality? People here want and need to
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be convinced that you are trustworthy. You are having in
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person meetings (before corona), one person will make a protocol and then later send
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it for verification back to the other party. If something is noted
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incorrectly, the protocol will be amended and again verified.
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This ensures that trust is built and also that both parties, the
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delivering company as well as the customer are playing on eye level.
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## Combining old values and new communication
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Let's come back to the original problem: we shifted from high quality,
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individual services to mass produced in-transparent
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communication. Technically and organisational, it is not necessary to
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provide a worse product or service if it is mass produced. It just
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happens to be the case due to technical limitations in the beginning.
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So let's go back to the hotline problem: we advocate a simple change
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that costs little for companies to implement but restores trust and
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quality in communication:
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**Every support hotline should be, by default, accompanied by a text based
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ticketing system that sends users a protocol and let's them interact
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with you on a text basis.**
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So how does this work? The agent in the call center will make notes of
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the phone call - they are already done nowadays, but unavailable for
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you. Some of these notes might be internal ("The customer does not
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know the difference between the power button and the reset button -
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always advise to push the button on the right") and are not for
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sharing. However, **the key points of the conversation must be sent to
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the customer**. This way, as a customer I can easily react and correct
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statements that have been incorrectly recorded. With a trail.
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Furthermore in a later stage, as a customer, I also have a trail and
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the ability to respond to the previous conversation by text, giving me
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the opportunity to add to the trail. And to built trust on the way.
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Obviously, our suggestion here is not rocket science. In fact, it is a
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very easy, natural and cost effective measure to be more transparent
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and to built mutual trust.
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Some companies might try to argue that it is too complex or too
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expensive to implement such a system. To prevent that argument from
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being true, we have added a [Hosted Support
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System](/u/products/hosted-support-system/) to our product
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list. Nobody needs to get it from us, but anybody can. And thus there
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is no excuse, not to have it implemented. It is a very similar
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[approach to not have an excuse for not having
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IPv6](/u/products/ipv6-vpn/), but that is a story for
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another day...
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