Where’s the communication?

15 August 2007 in Business, Notes by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Why are you most likely to wait on hold when you call a communications company?

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Richard on 16 August 2007 at 3:11 pm

I’m sure your question was intended as amusing rhetoric, but here’s my $0.05 worth: it’s because all large companies seek to ‘streamline’ their operations by reducing human-to-human contact with clients. The larger the company the worse this gets, and telcos are among the giants. ‘Communication’ is a commodity to them, not an ideal; they might as well be selling ice cream.

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Stilgherrian on 17 August 2007 at 4:40 am

@Richard: Right on both points: a rhetorical question and the low-margin commodity nature of the product they’re selling.

It’s something I regularly have to explain to clients. They’ve chosen their ISP because it was the cheapest they could find, and then complain when the service isn’t up to the standard they want. They don’t understand that if they want someone to spoon-feed them information on the phone, that person has to be paid — and if they’re paying $19.95 a month, there’s not much left for that once you’ve covered the actual cost of the product (and the record profits for the shareholders).

Joined-up thinking isn’t as common as we’d like.

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