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A comment on Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor mortality ratings. Parent comment

Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by emodendroket on Saturday April 21, 2018 @03:46PM (#16893036)
When I was fresh out of a school I worked in a call center for a while. One of the most important metrics (and everything you did was measured) was the average length of each call. So it was common practice, when you got cases that basically were going to be long calls or ones you probably couldn't actually resolve (e.g., "I want the service back on but cannot pay"), to deliberately upset the customers so that they would demand a supervisor and you could transfer them.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by finaliteration on Saturday April 21, 2018 @05:06PM (#16893447)
I worked in a call center, as well, but they didn’t prioritize call length as a metric/KPI. Their number one KPI was “first call resolution”, meaning even if it took an hour as long as the problem was resolved the call was considered a success. I feel like it was a much healthier way to measure call center performance.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by jpatokal on Saturday April 21, 2018 @05:36PM (#16893573)
One support team I used to work with prioritized "first touch resolution" for email cases as well, so the agents would answer every case with a 16-page DYI flowchart listing every single possible problem and its resolution. KPIs are hard...
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by swiley on Saturday April 21, 2018 @10:14PM (#16894379)
Maybe I’m weird but that’s exactly the kind of response I would want.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by fphhotchips on Sunday April 22, 2018 @12:43AM (#16894747)
No, that's documentation, and it should come with the product or, in the modern era, be available online.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by tonyedgecombe on Sunday April 22, 2018 @02:15AM (#16894943)
My experience is most customers can't read past the first line of a response. The idea that they can get through a 16-page flowchart seems unlikely to me. And I do sell to a mostly technical audience.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by daurnimator on Saturday April 21, 2018 @11:40PM (#16894594)
That sounds great!

I'm reminded of https://xkcd.com/810/

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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by emodendroket on Sunday April 22, 2018 @12:51PM (#16897020)
Getting sent the manual doesn't sound that great to me.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by scottlamb on Monday April 23, 2018 @08:19PM (#16908725)
It sounds pretty good to me if it inspires them to write a manual that answers the questions support gets. Most products come with a "manual" that's useless for troubleshooting.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by auxbuss on Sunday April 22, 2018 @03:59AM (#16895194)
This is systems thinking in action. It reduces failure demand[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_demand

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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by emodendroket on Saturday April 21, 2018 @06:58PM (#16893821)
We rotated through all of them and our pay was tied substantially to them, which I guess also created an incentive to make it hard to get good metrics all the time on the part of someone else in the organization.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by kup0 on Monday April 23, 2018 @01:42PM (#16905626)
I moved from a call center where length was a KPI to one where it is not a KPI, and it makes a world of difference in the pressure/health of the office environment (and thus better outcomes for customers)

It is far better when call length is not a KPI. I would never go back.

IMO, if call length is a KPI, it's a key indicator that the company isn't willing to hire enough agents and is trying to apply pressure to shorten calls for purposes of coverage.

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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by russjr08 on Sunday April 22, 2018 @12:40AM (#16894736)
This is how my call center measured performance until upper management came in and shut it down. Now it’s 800s, or you’re out.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by smsm42 on Saturday April 21, 2018 @04:13PM (#16893184)
I'd also expect a bunch of "I'm going to transfer you... oops, pressed a wrong button and it hang up!" As a customer, I've had a fair measure of mysteriously hang up calls to support, I wonder how many of those are metrics-driven...
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by pmoriarty on Saturday April 21, 2018 @06:55PM (#16893810)
There was recently a story about a 911 operator being jailed for hanging up on thousands of calls.[1]

If someone could get away with it at a 911 call center, it could happen anywhere... and might happen oftener than we think.

[1] - https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/911-dispatcher-sentenced...

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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by briandear on Saturday April 21, 2018 @10:45PM (#16894455)
That Houston lady that did that didn’t care about metrics, she literally just couldn’t be bothered. “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by emodendroket on Sunday April 22, 2018 @12:12AM (#16894675)
I have to imagine there are differences between a television customer service line and emergency dispatch anyway.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by emodendroket on Saturday April 21, 2018 @04:37PM (#16893299)
Yeah, eventually they started measuring transfers as a metric, which indeed encouraged that behavior.

Of course some people would just say the issue was solved, falsely (which, you know, it was a little easier to get caught so it was higher-risk, in addition to being probably less moral), and there was also the X factor of how much you liked the customer, considering the extreme amount of verbal abuse the job entailed.

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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by ouid on Saturday April 21, 2018 @04:13PM (#16893187)
Does this mean that I can threaten to not talk to their supervisor?
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by justonepost on Saturday April 21, 2018 @04:53PM (#16893381)
Ooh good tactic. Mention something like ‘Got all day and I’m not gonna hang up until we get this solved properly.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by emodendroket on Saturday April 21, 2018 @07:00PM (#16893825)
I mean, in general, a hostile tactic like this is likely to get the agent to do as little as possible as he can to help you while staying within the rules. Plus in many cases the front-line agent doesn't have the permissions to do what you need anyway and has to transfer you to a "supervisor" (usually not actually one) or a retention guy to resolve your issue anyway.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by russjr08 on Sunday April 22, 2018 @12:42AM (#16894743)
I’ve even heard of some centers that are allowed to hang up on you if you try that.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by ahje on Sunday April 22, 2018 @06:04AM (#16895493)
The call center I used to work for expected us to give one warning for such hostile behavior, and then simply hang up if the customer kept being abusive and/or threatening.

In general its, simply a bad idea to be rude to the person you expect to provide assistance.

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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by emodendroket on Sunday April 22, 2018 @12:52PM (#16897032)
We didn't have that, but people had figured out a way to use the hardware to hang up and bypass the monitoring and would just use it.
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