By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
“Operator…”
“Agent…”
“Help…”
“Rrrgh, just let me freaking talk to somebody, you son of a…”
If anyone had overhead me trying to call my internet provider’s support line over the past few weeks, they’d hear phrases like those, followed by the sound of my head whacking against the desk as hard as possible without passing out.
That’s right, friends, it’s another cliche article about tech support.
Late-night comedians have been telling jokes about tech support phone lines for generations, yet we still haven’t figured out how to provide customers with adequate assistance if they need help with a product or service they purchased.
Instead of getting better with time, it has gotten much, much worse. To borrow a quote from the late-great John Candy: “We’d have better luck playing pick-up sticks with our butt cheeks” than getting help from customer support nowadays.
Some companies don’t even list a number to call for support. They’ll refer you to an X account or a FAQ page that they swear will answer all of your questions. If there is a number, it’s buried under mountains of website fodder designed to steer you away from accessing assistance.
Perhaps they might offer you an AI bot to chat with online, or a link to download an app. Sometimes these options work. Most of the time they don’t (and no, I don’t want an app on my phone for my garbage disposal).
Finally, after hunting around like a seasoned private investigator, you might locate a number to an actual support line. Upon calling the number, the line usually plays hold music until a black hole swallows the entire universe and you’re spit out into the Upside-Down World. If you’re lucky enough to reach an actual human being, they are often surly and don’t offer much by way of help.
How I long for the laconic greeting, “Welcome to Costco, I love you,” as prophesied in the 2006 film Idiocracy.
It seems today’s corporate strategy is to get new customers through the door with slick campaigns and folksy promises, get them hooked on a product, then leave them hanging whenever they need a hand.
It’s not just tech support; customer service is dying out in a post-truth, post-COVID world. While “the customer is always right” used to be the case, now it’s just a shrug and a meme. If a customer has a problem, they’re being a “Karen,” and whatever level of customer service they’re actually provided comes with exaggerated eye rolling.
It’s somewhat better in a small town like ours — mainly because when you’re a jerk to someone, you’ll undoubtedly have to face them again in the future. But there are still the sales counters where you’re met with blank stares and silence after approaching as a customer.
Some have called the modern customer service standards the “DMV Model,” which is an insult to DMV employees. Sure, the line might take a long time, but DMV workers have always been polite and professional with me. In essence, the term means that when you need a driver’s license, a customer will deal with all sorts of setbacks and incivility because the DMV is literally the “only game in town.” Customers have to put up with it because they have no other choice.
But we do have choices, people. Lots of them. The problem lies in the fact that we’ve allowed Them to get away with it — “Them” being the faceless corporate overlords who apparently now rule every aspect of our lives.
Remember when you bought a Netflix subscription to watch shows without commercials? Now, you buy the subscription to watch shows with ads and you buy the “premium” service to go ad-free. Or when you bought a piece of software and owned it forever? Now, we pay monthly subscriptions to keep using it.
Somewhere along the line, we all got used to being slapped in the face by Them and this is the result. We outsourced thinking for ourselves and are now living in the Age of Inconsequence.
I shudder to think that the future outlined in Idiocracy could be real, with dumbed-down people mashing their fat, sweaty fingers into picture buttons and arguing with monotonal chatbots for fun and education.
To quote from Office Space, another Mike Judge film: “We don’t really have a lot of time on this earth. We weren’t meant to spend it this way.”
Damn right.
As a final experiment after trying in vain to reach my internet provider’s support line, I hung up and dialed their sales number. To no one’s surprise, a sales person picked up almost immediately.
“What can I do for you today?” they asked.
“Please hold,” I said, and hung up.
