How I Love "Customer Service"

Here's what we need: A "technical support union." [UPDATE NOTE: This is not a union of people who answer the phone, but rather a union of consumer's using bulk power to get noticed by corporations.]

Is there any major company left in the world that is even remotely concerned with individual customer service? The answer is probably not. Why? Because as individual consumers, we're irrelevent to them. If companies screw me and I vow to never use their services again it makes absolutely no difference to them.

That's why companies can pay pennies to folks in India to read through talking points -- and call it "customer service": Because there's no profit in customer service. If an individual doesn't like it, what are they going to do? Go to another company? Individuals are irrelevant at that level.

That's also why when you call "customer service" the first thing the automated voice asks is whether you're calling from a business or as an individual -- they want to cut out the individuals who can be ignored from the mass-consumers who can't be. Piss off the wrong person at a business and you might lose a serious chunk of change.

Which is why we need a "technical support union." If you were calling technical support not as Joe Shmoe but as Joe Shmoe from TS Local 513, it might, ahem, encourage major companies to give competent support.