« Random rants on music and books | Main | Are new concert halls worth it? »
Markets in everything: customer service edition
Stephen Dubner reports:
Now there’s a new website, still in beta, called Bringo! (a.k.a. NoPhoneTrees.com), which takes a different approach. Here’s how one of its founders, Marcin Musiolik, describes the project: “Our mission is to help users skip phone trees and connect with a real human on the customer support phone lines at many companies throughout the U.S. Users simply choose the company they wish to call, and we’ll dial the company directly, navigate their phone tree, and call them back when they are in queue for an operator or customer service representative.”
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 4, 2006 at 07:53 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Novel idea, I think it will be a while before it catches on, especially phone trees that require personal information... I mean how does it work? Do you have to do a mini interview each time you call so they can forward your information? I think it would be faster to just look up (in the company's directory) an extension and dial directly.
Posted by: David Malmstrom at Sep 4, 2006 12:30:32 PM
The fundamental flaw in the plan is its assumption that speaking to a human will actually be useful. It often doesn't work out that way. Outsourcing of customer-service functions, whatever its advantages may be, not infrequently results in callers dealing with representatives whose commands of English can be poor.
Posted by: Peter at Sep 4, 2006 1:00:10 PM
David: I would guess that the auto-navigator just tries to get you to a live person, skipping through all the "enter your personal information" nonsense. I've entered that stuff hundreds of times, and almost invariably, when I get to a real person, they ask me to repeat it.
Peter: You're pointing out a possible flaw in the plan of anyone who wants to call customer service, but it's not a flaw in Bringo's idea. If we start from the assumption that people call these phone trees in the first place, it's reasonable to think someone might pay to have this done for them.
Posted by: Jeff Brown at Sep 4, 2006 2:58:49 PM
I work on the end of a phone tree.
Trust me, Tyler, that duck is dead in the reeds.
Posted by: Martin at Sep 4, 2006 4:01:48 PM
According to liberterian economic theory this problem should not exist. Competiton should have eliminated any private firm that was this inefficent. Only government can be this wasteful.
Posted by: anon at Sep 5, 2006 5:56:07 PM
I can see how this would be benificial to the caller, but I agree that there would be a problem when it comes to verification. Many phone lines these days ask for the last four digits of your s.s.n. and the like. Also, the wait would still be the same - only now we would be waiting for some person to call us back - and even then how do THEY manage to get the company to stay on hold? I think this idea is good - but it has way to many holes to actually work. Also, I think companies should do away with voice recognition lines, I mean yeah it's a good idea but how many times do I have to call them back becuase the machine thought I said "Next" when I really said "No"? Or even better - when you are saying "Yes" over and over again and it decides it can't understand you and hangs up!
Posted by: Deiah Haddock at Sep 6, 2006 12:03:57 AM
guild wars gold
guild wars gold
guild wars gold
guild wars gold
cheap guild wars gold
cheap guild wars gold
cheap guild wars gold
cheap guild wars gold
guild wars
guild wars
guild wars
guild wars
guild wars powleveling
guild wars money
guild wars money
guild wars money
guild wars money
cheap guild wars money
cheap guild wars money
cheap guild wars money
cheap guild wars money
guildwars gold
guildwars gold
guildwars gold
guildwars gold
guildwars money
guildwars money
guildwars money
guildwars money
Posted by: guild wars gold at Aug 28, 2007 2:00:16 AM
Mabinogi Gold
Mabinogi online gold
Mabinogi money
cheap Mabinogi gold
buy Mabinogi gold
Posted by: aion kina at Mar 20, 2009 4:09:42 AM
