I *really* hate live chat
This is another one of those opinions that makes me feel old, but Good Lord do I miss the simple days of just calling a number and speaking to a person.
Our fixed price energy contract is up this month, and we're being pushed onto a variable rate direct debit until they offer fixed rates again1.
This is fairly new territory for me. I've only ever dealt with pre-payment and a fixed price contract, so I had questions. Is the quoted direct debit my actual payments, or just an estimate? What about the debt I built up over winter; how will that get factored in? What are my options to get off this as soon as possible when a fixed rate comes?2
My energy supplier places a heavy preference for live chat, advising customer to hang up unless they're vulnerable or similar, so I gave it a punt.
The whole thing took an hour. If I were able to speak to someone directly, I probably could have got it done in a quarter of that time.
First, there's a bulk of time that gets taken up both ends by typing, reading, and coming up with a reply to the other persons message. Plus, there's frantic editing to try and make your wording as unambiguous as possible. At least, that was the case on my end, because another chunk of time was spent clarifying their statements and repeating their own words back to them when they decided to change their line.
Then there's the delays their end, because my chat window will not be the only one they have open at a given time. At least from my experience in a call centre, their manager would be pushing the multi-tasking line hard, so they more than likely had another customer asking about their price cap and direct debits as well. Fine in principal, but now I'm competing for their attention to detail, which leads to vague statements, which leads to more clarifying questions.
Now, unambiguity isn't a sure thing on a phone call either, but it's a lot quicker to call someone out on their nonsense on a phone, rather than reading, digesting, and re-reading their words to make sure I'm not missing something.
Like so many things in the 21st Century, live chat in theory is a solid solution. Cut down on phone calls, no hold music, and accessible from pretty much any device with an internet connections. Companies can hide the fact that they're outsourcing to an offshore centre, and it's more immediately trackable by the end user; instead of relying on the fact that the call is recording, you can simply get a transcript of the chat log emailed or saved directly to your device.
The problem is if your customer service is crap to begin with, adding a new way to interact with it changes nothing. Upgrading your kitchen knives isn't going to make your food taste better if the problem is you're a terrible cook.
And I'm much happier to waste 15 minutes of my day on a bad phone call, than an hour on a bad live chat.
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