Within the customer service industry, they'd claim a great "deflection rate". That's a metric that all of these large companies hold around any kind of help/support channel that may involve humans because people are a cost. It's often covered by some kind of satisfaction metric based off post-issue surveys, but fundamentally, if you just go away that's success.
There are often complaints here about what amounts to bean counting affecting other aspects of business. Customer service at larger scale is costly so attracts a section of very analytical leaders. They don't get, or ever prioritize, the human elements. It's only when satisfaction numbers are bad, or another exec outside of customer service takes action, that things improve.
The scale part kills the customer. You can have great support at one size. Once you grow then leadership, structure, and the culture change. These analytical leaders don't want to carry over the culture and structure because it comes at a cost. It really needs force and support from outside of customer support leadership to maintain it.
Had this issue with Ubisoft recently. Installed Trackmania through Steam for free, then had to create a Ubisoft account, then had to buy the Trackmania annual pass for $20. I guess I followed the wrong flow or something, but I ended up with the purchase on my Ubisoft account, but I guess their system also auto-creates a Ubisoft account for Steam accounts? So the purchase on the Ubisoft account ended up on the account not tied to Steam.
Emailed support about it on 13/07/2024.
Got back a reply on 23/07/2024:
> Our Support Team is currently experiencing high case volumes, so we are reaching out with a message to check-in and make sure you still need help!
> If you've found a solution to your problem already, there's nothing you need to do. Just ignore this message and your case will automatically close in 2 days.
Didn't see the reply until the 3rd day.
> As we have not heard from you in the last 2 days your case has been closed automatically.
I think people, even on HN, grossly underestimate how much customer service costs at any major company that works with the public.
Most calls to customer service are easily self-serviceable. My brother used to work for X-Box Live support, and he said over half his calls were for password resets, something people could easily do on their X-Box.
But then there's bad actors. Another significant chunk of his calls were from people complaining about being banned, and he'd see the reports of their spamming racial slurs.
Not to mention how many people try to abuse customer support in attempts to take over someone else's account.
Yeah...customer service is expensive. Even if you automate as much as you can, but offer an appeal process, that appeal process with be absolutely abused by bad actors, so that will end up automated as well.
There are often complaints here about what amounts to bean counting affecting other aspects of business. Customer service at larger scale is costly so attracts a section of very analytical leaders. They don't get, or ever prioritize, the human elements. It's only when satisfaction numbers are bad, or another exec outside of customer service takes action, that things improve.
The scale part kills the customer. You can have great support at one size. Once you grow then leadership, structure, and the culture change. These analytical leaders don't want to carry over the culture and structure because it comes at a cost. It really needs force and support from outside of customer support leadership to maintain it.