An idea: You set up a phone tree with about 7 different "offices", each handled by one of those natural-language computer phone-handler things. Each office can redirect you to two or three other "offices", depending on which "office" you came from. Something like the "Bureaucratic Nightmare" puzzles at the attached link. Anyway, if the customer makes it through the tree, he/she can talk to Tech Support.

Alternately, if you want to be REALLY evil, you can just set the tree up so that it's IMPOSSIBLE to get through, then fire all your tech support. Another savings, brought to you by... oh, wait, you'll have to call us to get the info.
-- HalfBaker, Oct 03 2007

(?) Bureaucratic Nightmare http://www.puzzlemo...m/visual/nightmare/
[HalfBaker, Oct 03 2007]

evil
-- evilpenguin, Oct 05 2007


Very. However, this is already baked in President's Choice tech support for phones. Yeah, they make phones. I own one. Their support was so bad, their phone tree actually directed me to Vonage tech support! They had no clue what the heck that was about, but they helped me a lot more than the PC guys. It wasn't even their phone, and I still got more help. Before this spins off into a rant, I'd like to give you this (+). If your idea gets baked, even if you implement the "impossible" idea, it probably will still be easier to use than my phone's web (they probably made it better since I last checked though).
-- Shadow Phoenix, Oct 06 2007


Quick tip for anyone frustrated by "customer service" lines - call the sales line instead. Funnily enough, they're often a lot quicker to pick up the phone if they think you want to buy something from them...
-- lostdog, Oct 06 2007


Variation: Premium rate phone line on which you run the evil phone tree. [+] for the ideal, [-] because I might want to phone your company one day = [0]
-- vincevincevince, Oct 07 2007



random, halfbakery