The Specific Problem

If you were a giant corporation with millions of customers, and wanted to have the worst customer support possible.. how would you go about that?

Evidence suggests that the following is a very effective strategy:

1. Make sure all your services are in different departments.
2. Make sure those departments have no way of contacting each other.
3. Make sure customers have no way of contacting any of those departments, but have to click through an elaborate phone tree in which there are many dead ends.
4. Make sure front-line phone support agents aren't trained in basic customer service skills, and don't really understand which department is which.
5. Make sure your staffing is minimal enough that every department has a significant hold time, even for direct transfers.
6. Allow disconnects and hang-ups when a customer doesn't say exactly what the agent wants.

The results? Customers that have long hold times before they can reach a human being, then more long hold times while they're transferred to the wrong department, then more long hold times before they're hung up on. From an evil-corporate-mindset, it's absolutely perfect.

I've had customers reach me, in error, while trying to cancel their account because of the poor customer service they'd previously received. I can't do anything about that. So I have to put them on hold again, so that they can get transferred to someone else... who will hang up on them.