Push-button Problems

WSJ book promo, March 24, 2009, pA15
Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us
By Emily Yellin (Free Press, 291 pages, $26)

This book is a collection of telephone-related customer service stories. The review summarizes it as "a series of free-standing magazine features than an unbroken narrative arc, and it sometimes bogs down in the detail."

Details can be interesting if we work in this area: "The approximate cost of offering a live, American-based, customer service agent averages somewhere around $7.50 per phone call," Ms. Yellin says. "Outsourcing calls to live agents in another country brings the average cost down to about $2.35 per call. Having customers take care of the problems themselves, through an automated response phone system, averages around 32 cents per call, or contact."

The first 6 pages are fascinating, including the story of what Comcast did to LaChania Govan, a customer service representative for a major credit card company, and then the story of the hammer woman!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123785194159219179.html

UPDATE: The author on WNYC, 20 minutes about customer service:

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2009/03/27/segments/127236#