Every now and again at work, I have to call tech support for one or another of the companies we deal with. And it's inevitably a long hold. Why? They believe that only customers will call them - people whose money they already have. So they don't believe they need to spend a huge pile of money adequately staffing their phone lines. Because, worst-case, they pay for shipping to themselves and then shipping back to you. And a bit for repairs on the one you shipped to them. All of which, again, is less expensive than an adequate customer service team.
It means I spend a lot of time on hold.
I have never called a single company anywhere at any time that has decent hold music, so I end up listening to a nearly eternal loop of bad eighties music remixes. That is "bad covers of bad music."
And that's only if I'm able to get through the phone tree to reach the hold queue. Too many phone trees have dead ends that will hang up on you.
When you eventually manage to get a human being, they are experts at not giving you any information or feedback. And at causing long conversational pauses to make you uncomfortable enough to just agree to whatever they want.
They don't usually have the power to actually help you, either. Even if your product is actually damaged or defective. For that, you need a supervisor. To get a supervisor, you get to listen to their pathetic pseudo-music again. For hours at a time.
There are vendors who, I swear, only have one customer service representative. And one supervisor. And they take turns answering calls. Instead, the company spends their money on a complicated phone tree with dozens of lines.
It's one reason I buy a lot of Toshiba products - I've never had a problem getting a human being on their phone trees, and their customer service reps seem genuinely able to help.
This endorsement, by the way, was not paid for. It's genuine. Toshiba's tech support trees are everything I wish everyone else's was.
Because what everyone else has really has to go.
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