The most obvious example of this in daily life is through airlines, where the difference is pretty transparent and you get night-and-day better service by being a loyal customer.<p>With top status with AA and UA (EXP and 1K), you connected to U.S.-based very senior phone agents right away, who always make sure to take care of any issue that arises. 50min delay on your AA flight? No problem, sir, we are rebooking you on Alaska so you don't miss your dinner meeting. (Real example from last weekend)<p>Customers are put in different levels in the loyalty program, with the top level getting to pre-board the flight, getting free upgrades to any empty seat in business, getting many other extra perks that make flying a joy. You get a smile, a thank you, and a free drink when flying in the back. Within a status level, customers are oftentimes ranked by how much revenue they bring to the airline. (On AA, upgrades are ordered by Elite Qualifying Dollars the flyer has spent in the prior year)<p>Contrast that with the experience the vast majority of people have flying the very same airlines: say the words United Airlines to your average flyer and it brings back memories of Dr. Dao, of cramped seats in the back middle row, of not being able to bring a carry-on because they're in basic economy, of having to gate-check your bags, etc.<p>At the end of the day, frequent flyers bring the vast majority of profits to airlines, so it makes sense to focus all efforts on catering to them vs. the average person. The cheap seats have very low margins, oftentimes negative… so it just infeasible economically to give everyone good service.
> Zeta Global, whose clients include wireless carriers, generates scores using data points such as the number of times a customer has dialed a call center and whether that person has browsed a competitor’s website or searched certain keywords in the past few days.<p>Wait, so this means I dial a number and they link my identity to my browser to tell whether I've browsed a competitor's website in the past few days? Is this really how far tracking has come?
“Not all customers deserve a company’s best efforts,” says Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School who helped popularize lifetime value scores.<p>I feel like this is a succinct argument against the idea to privitize everything — there’s no accountability nor notion of “fairness” baked in whatsoever.
How's this a secret?<p>I used to work in retail/service. Not something with data and metrics, just a mom'n'pop. But we knew our customers. We especially knew our regulars. And you did try not to piss off a regular.<p>But from this I learnt that people will try to play their 'value' as a trump card when they want to complain. Do you know who I am, do you know how much I spend here, I come here every day, blah blah blah. They are very quick to make sure you know this isn't about a $4 coffee, this is about keeping them & their business.<p>This isn't a secret, It's just an answer. Yes, they do know who you are. Surprise!
Honestly, this sounds like a pretty practical feature. Just do some basic arithmetic on key variables to let customer service know how much of that all too prescious resource (effort) they have to spend on that call.<p>I think the real problem is a lot more nuanced, though. For one, even tiny unsophisticated call centers implement painfully slow numeric menu navigation that always gives you that extra little kick in the nuts, "please listen carefully as our menu options have changed". Even if they haven't changed in a hundred, or even a thousand, years. They're an industry ripe for change because they haven't kept up with technology. To the contrary, customer support interactions have clearly become heavily scripted and dehumanizing. I can't imagine that industry having taken an uglier turn.
I worked in different call center environments, things may have changed but hold time really was more a matter of dumb luck and incompetent call routing systems more than anything else.<p>I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I wouldn't necessarily read a difference in response as some sort of panned customer score or system necessarily. Incompetence reigns supreme when it comes to call centers, even when someone tries to institute a system.<p>I can't tell you how many times they tried to prioritize some things or people and the result was those things or customers actually waited longer...
One might argue that having such a list constitutes bad faith. 1) It's dishonest to not inform your customers that they are to be systematically treated differently based on a secretly kept score.
2) Such a score kept changes the relationship between parties after a contract has been established, thereby negating value of the contract.<p>Given that good faith requires honesty, such a thing should be regarded as unethical. It would be like if Disneyland sold you a season pass for the same price as everyone else, but then made you wait in a longer line because someone during that process didn't like the tone of your voice.
The methods might be a bit more sophisticated now, but this has been going on for many years now.<p>A single call center may take calls for hundreds of consumer retail products, but if you call the 800 number for your high annual fee, high-balance card, you will absolutely be higher in priority than people who called about their pre-paid starter credit card. Asking for an operator won't change that.<p>More recently, the last 15-20 years or so, it became much more common for a "data dip" to happen when you call, or when data is provided, so the system can look you up and make intelligent routing decisions. If you've called before with a particular phone number, there's a decent chance the system already knows who you are and will prioritize you accordingly unless you provide account numbers suggesting otherwise.<p>Call centers (whether in-house or farmed out) are high-volume, low-margin enterprises. Everyone is frustrated dealing with them, and they prioritize reducing that frustration for high-value customers. It's definitely unfair at times (an errant $500 charge that would be trivial for someone rich could be devastating for someone poor, but the rich person's call will be taken first) but that's just how the business is.
I think I'd be more comfortable with customer scores if there's more "Access/Participation"[1]. Being able to see my scores, see how they're calculated, and dispute them would at least help with trust and preventing mistakes.<p>[1]: "Access as defined in the Fair Information Practice Principles includes not only a consumer's ability to view the data collected, but also to verify and contest its accuracy. This access must be inexpensive and timely in order to be useful to the consumer" <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_fair_information_practice#Principles" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_fair_information_practice#...</a>
I work in customer service. We don't have scores but we have detailed notes on every past interaction.<p>I don't keep anyone on hold long because I don't like dealing with people who get angry about that stuff,<p>But, lots of my colleagues put people on hold out of spite.
><i>Your call will be handled in the order it was received</i><p>Seems you can now use this as a canary for companies using CLV.<p>If you don't hear it you better be rich.
Last month I canceled my account application when I realized my new bank would not provide support to unathenticated users.<p>By this I mean you really couldn't get hold of anyone without providing a credit card number. Which is not only invading privacy and creating customers castes, but it's also stupid since I didn't have a credit/debit card yet.<p>After loudly swearing at the machine, either a quality control person or an emotion identification algorithm forwarded my call to a support worker. I simply hanged up and called the local branch, asking them to cancel my application.<p>I'm not going to support this kind of businesses. However in the case of monopolies and oligopolies legislation is needed to assure retail customers are treated the same regardless of the race, age, postal code and spending figures unless there are clear terms dictating that higher spenders get better support (ie, providing better support as a paid service and/or having clear rules about prioritization).
I've actually had success with simply emailing a company stating the issue and politely stating my frustrations with their phone menu. Always be polite with CSRs obviously as a decent human being.<p>On a side note I wish the phrase "our menu options have recently changed" would go away. no they haven't, and no there is not a higher than normal call volume.<p>Just firing off an email is worth attempting, one time I actually used the phrase "give me a holler" and got a call back the next morning. The problem was immediately taken care of.<p>Button mashing used to work but now the systems aggressively hang up on you. And I have no idea why I am prompted to enter account details just to be asked for the same info, apparently the systems are capable of playing ads every 15 seconds, but can't transfer info.
I’m taking a probability models class at Wharton from Prof Fader (quoted in the article).. just have to say, it’s been an epic class, and it’s nice to see something like probability (and not the overhyped AI/ML) actually used for something so applicable in industry.
Huh. WSJ site put me 'on hold' becuz I'm not a subscriber.<p>This tactic seems a bit self-defeating in the end. Keep me on hold for over 15 minutes (never mind the music and mechanical apologies ... what a farce) and I <i>guarantee</i> you have <i>lost</i> a customer. (If I have <i>any</i> recourse, and I <i>will</i> assiduously seek one).<p>Modern business attitudes that don't strive to welcome <i>all</i> customers are, IMO, on death row. Perhaps they're too big to succeed. (Hello? Sears?) OTOH, businesses that welcomed my trade (or that great rarity, welcomed me by name!) have enjoyed steady business for decades. No doubt the revolution will fix that.
It will be difficult for engineers to wash their hands off this level of surveillance, as they are building it.<p>All the dissent is coming from other places, we have not had any protests, resignations or even leaks to warn the public about the level of surveillance underway.<p>This betrays an indifference even support among engineers of invasive surveillance that others find abhorrent.<p>There is a sharp contrast between the unequivocal indignation and outrage similar stories generate on other countries as a reflection of something greater while here they seem to dissipate into a factoid with no larger implications.
"Marital status is often factored in, with some companies assuming that singles are better customers, and others, the opposite. Age also is a common input, potentially penalizing older people because of their shorter projected lifespans."<p>Odd paragraph... It seems like those things could go either way depending on the company. I'm sure we could all list companies that would bend over for old married people as much as young single people.
Serious question: google has no helpdesk at the consumer level and a very fractured one in corporate space. (I have GPC. AdWords and some other relationships for work aside from my personal google id so I do believe I know something of what I write, because I've seen at least two or three of the many sides of their product space beyond consumer ones)<p>Does anyone believe they could run some kind of helpdesk at consumer scale FOR PROFIT?
I find it hard to believe most call centres have sophisticated tracking systems when they can't even manage a basic "You are number X in the queue. The estimated wait time is X minutes." Or how about "If you would like us to call you back, press 1". I've had that from about 2 call centres in my life total (one was Google, can't remember the other).<p>Fancy tracking linked to wait times? Please.
We've implemented this for companies in the past - bumping callers to the front of the line based on the caller ID (or input of some other data by customer) and matching customer profile or CRM record tracking customer spend, MRC, etc. It's pretty standard practice.
This doesn't surprise me much. I probably lose a lot of points for only buying deeply discounted items. (I'm often happy to wait for a $36.99 Blu-ray set to hit $12.99 to buy it.)
I don't see what the big deal is? Unless your contract with a another group of individuals says that group will serve you within X amount of time when calling with a problem, you're SOL.<p>Lots of talk on here about government and rights and other stuff when it's just that you're paying for a service, and you're either served or you're not. Take your money elsewhere. Oh, they're a monopoly? Think of how to improve and disrupt. I'm sure there used to be horsedrawn carriage monopolies also.