Trying to Reach Customer Service? Call? Email? Text? Carrier Pigeon?

About a month ago, I purchased a new iPhone 6.  I was eligible for a new phone and my iPhone 5 was about out of juice. So I opted to make the move and upgrade technology. I went to my local provider and met with the sales rep. I was told about which plan would be best for me and, as we all do, I signed on the dotted line. That’s when the trouble started.
 
First, I started getting notes about high usage. This seemed odd, because while I have 3 phones on my account, two of them belong to two old but savvy ladies.  And as savvy as they are, I know that neither of them has taken up texting or video streaming. I knew I hadn’t either.  Hmmm…Then I got the “you’ve used your quota for the month” note less than halfway through the month, and then I got the bill, which was considerably higher than normal.
 
Initially I didn’t blow a gasket. I looked at the bill and figured I’d call and make things right. It was only after I examined the bill and found no phone number on it that I went berserk.  How in the world a) could I have been signed up for the wrong plan despite my clear (at least to me) explanation of what I needed and b) can I fix this problem if I can’t find anyone to talk to about it?
 
Not content to merely walk off into a haze muttering expletives, I opted to reach out to well-respected contact center analyst and overall telecom prognosticator Sheila McGee-Smith.  “Are contact centers going away?” I asked, not optimistically. Truthfully, I’ve always believed that deep down such entities, initially placed in “cube farms” have primarily existed for the purpose of insulating companies from their customers, and not for actually serving them, but now, are they really disappearing?
 
Ms. McGee-Smith responded directly.  “I’d asked too many questions in one,” she said. “First,” she said, “the vendor that you’re working with is likely still working in the last century with burdensome processes and procedures. But that’s really not the question.  This isn’t a problem that’s limited to one vendor.“  I couldn’t agree more.
 
She continued. “There’s a lot of data in 2015 on consumer preferences for customer service in contact centers.  In a recent global benchmarking report report, Dimension Data is predicting that over half of interactions in contact centers will be digital in nature by 2016. Those interactions could be digital chat, could be email, could be SMS, but they will not be ‘find the 800 number and call.’”
 
Companies are forever trying to build a closer relationship with their customers.   In early generations of customer service, a consumer could look at the bill, make a call and, with any luck, speak to an agent who could help.  Within the past decade, call or “contact” centers have evolved dramatically, supported by massive technological innovation such that the agent with whom a customer interacts may not be in India or the Philippines as he/she was five years ago, but may be sitting in his/her home office in a suburb of Des Moines, just looking to work for a couple of hours while the kids are at school.  Further, much of the interaction, particularly with younger consumers, may not involve any kind of audio interaction, and may be handled entirely by webchat, text or mail.  As for the letter?  I think that disappeared with the last episode of “The West Wing.” Or maybe “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
 
So I guess this is, at least in part, an age thing, and in another part, a convenience thing, and in another part, a cost-containment thing.  Ms. McGee- Smith said pointedly, “Companies are trying to meet customers where they want to be met, but sometimes they’re trying to reduce costs and not being customer-centric.”  So essentially, it’s really a question of finding that delicate balance between actually providing service versus providing a [lower level of] service cost effectively.

With Millennials, the ideal relationship from the company’s perspective looks different than does the company’s relationship with customers from previous generations. “Millennials are not quick to pick up the phone to talk—they’d rather message either by text, chat or even video. It just doesn’t occur to them to call,” said Ms. McGee-Smith when we talked. An unintended consequence of this generational difference  is that when someone has to at least try to reach out and touch a real person, the consumer’s problem is generally more complex and requires more active participation by a knowledgeable, quality call center agent—a costly resource to the entity providing the service.
 
The successful contact center needs to balance competing needs: making a variety of easily accessible self-service options, utilizing a variety of technological platforms, available to consumers, and, when needed, having agents available who are sufficiently sophisticated and informed to resolve complex consumer problems.  From any way you look at it, most contact centers have a long way to go.
 
Post Script:     How did I resolve my issue?  I did finally find someone at the wireless service provider who could help me solve my problem, which is why I didn’t reveal the name of the provider here.  But it was a too long and twisted road to find him.