Why does not any company in USA have a 'single window' solution systyem?

Question

If you try to call any company or service provider in USA they keep you on hold for a minumum of 20 minutes. Still, you might not get the solution to your queiry. They pass on the call to minimum 3 other people before giving you an answer. Why??

Answer 1

This is a generalization, but not a bad one.

The larger the company is, the more time/money/effort they have gone to to reduce their labor costs. They do this by creating phone trees to make sure that when one of their employees picks up the phone, they are equipped to deal with the call (so the call will last the least amount of time).

Of course, it reduces THEIR labor costs but increases the time the consumer spends ditzing around with the phone menu.

There are companies that advertise amonst their various virtues that when you call them you get a person. That's great, but that person may not be the right person, so they'll put you on hold and ...

Labor is expensive, particularly in the US. Anything they can automate to eliminate it is considered a cost savings.

Answer 2

Not sure I understand your point, but here are my thoughts.

You wouldn't want to pay a certified accountant's wages to a person who's job is to read billing information to customers who are too dense to understand their own bills.

You wouldn't want to pay engineers' salaries to people who will most often advise customers to "power cycle the device" to solve small technical issues.

You'd want to pay young, literate, but inexpensive employees to handle the most basic inquiries, and free up the engineers and CPAs to handle higher-level problems and projects.

I have little sympathy for customers who clog customer care lines with moronic questions and then complain that their moronic questions aren't answered promptly enough.

They simply make it impossible for people with real problems to get timely advice or help.