There are little tricks businesses and government
agencies play on people. If you know more of what
goes on, it will leave you less confused and less
aggravated for what it’s worth. You can only do your
best. There are lots of things that most customers are
not aware of in the practices of the companies that they
intend to do business with. Listed are the most
common practices all callers should be aware of.
When they claim to have “high call volume”, they
have overly low staff. Most companies have no interest
in making provisions for whatever volume they may
have.
Many times, there are agents that give out a phony
name, number or use a phony accent as so you can’t
report them, and tell you that it’s for security reasons.
Very rarely do you get ever get disconnected, but
very often agents will hang up on you hoping you will
think that you were disconnected.
Any person that answers with a greeting that ends
with “please hold” will very rarely get back to you.
Thus, it is very unprofessional for them to answer this
way. Most people who do it are cutting down on calls to
answer, feeling like they are cutting down on work, not
knowing who is at the other end of the line.
If you call a party with automation telling you to call
back during hours stated, and you know you are calling
within such hours, it would be because the party you
are calling has either not opened up their lines for
business, or have closed their lines prematurely.
You always have to assume that when you leave a
message that it will not be taken to the party you want
it to. People from big companies and government
agencies have no incentive for taking any messages of
any kind, no matter how important they are. The
standard time for professionals to return phone calls is
72 business hours and 24 business hours to return
emails and text messages.
Finally, the 24-hour customer service is not what you
think it is. Many companies contract out with
independent call centers abroad that contract with
several other companies. If you get one of those call
centers abroad, you are not actually calling the
intended business, but a call center that they contract
with. Independent call centers abroad are not part of
the company, but under contract are authorized to do
customer service interactions on behalf of the company
you are trying to do business with. Agents at these call
centers have a desktop, a phone and a pack of
manuals to answer customer questions, and nothing
more. Independent call centers abroad have contracts
to business with over sixty companies (mostly
American), and each agent is assigned to do business
with customers from all of the companies their call
center contracts with.
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