customer service experiment

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, a 19 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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onto today’s topic: customer service experiment 📞 

as much as i hate making calls with customer support, it doesn’t take much to make a representative’s day.

if you were the one taking calls with (mostly) annoyed customers all day long, you’d probably be fed-up and exhausted too. you’re probably annoyed for a valid reason, those banking services aren’t the most intuitive … but that person you call in your ticked off state is just trying to do their job and can’t do much beyond what they’re instructed. 😭

you’d be surprised just how far treating the other end like the human beings they are will get you in that call.

today, a lot of the customer service interaction is automated so it’s easy to fall into the habit of robotic conversation. after all, those online chats are quickly becoming ai-driven and phone calls are automated by keypad commands. more specific requests, however will lead you to a human representative and that’s where you once again enter the land of variation. 😇 no matter how standardized a process is, human emotion inevitably influences our actions to some extent.

i tested it out today when i was trying to change my flight booking on expedia. i ended up needing to join an online chat with a representative and decided to go through the process twice (i was bored …). the first time, i just replied with the prescribed, monotonous answers. the second time, i replied with more enthusiasm and appreciation as i would normally in a real conversation.

guess what the results were? it went something along the lines of:

1) hi, unfortunately we can’t process any cancellations with this specific airline. you will need to contact the airline your flight has been booked with.

2) hey! we can change your flight according to your airline’s policy. the fee would be $x, would you like to proceed? 😁 

i was surprised by this difference. honestly, i probably would have eventually gotten the 2nd answer if i contacted my airline afterwards, but i saved so much time by just being able to do that directly through expedia.

all it took was a “thank you!” and “no problem queen.” ;)

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