Tired of customer service putting you on hold all the time? The summary really explains the idea -- instead of the bank putting you on hold, send a meeting invite to 'customer_service@mybank.com' for time '2:45 PM' and location '813-1234567' (your phone number). Optionally, slap a note in the subject or description about the issue for discussion.
On the other side, mybank.com's systems figure out if current call volumes allow for the call. They either confirm and call back at 2:45, or they propose a new time for the call.-- sonam, Sep 26 2013 Weird, but I call some bogus call last night and it was an answering machine saying "We can't come to the phone right now." Kind of like a reverse of this...-- xandram, Sep 26 2013 Not the scheduling thing, but I have run into some cases where customer service calls you back when they have an operator free.-- MechE, Sep 26 2013 That's actually not a bad idea [+] The downside of course is how are they supposed to let you know if they can't call you back at that time ? That and (I imagine that) most CS callers want to talk to somebody *now*/-- FlyingToaster, Sep 26 2013 There is a critical balance between preventing customer dissatisfaction, and providing them with service that they pay nothing for. How much it sucks to call customer service is this balance, make it suck less and more customers get a service for free, make it suck more and customers get dissatisfied. Hit it just right and most customers don't try, many who do give up, and a few who are near getting dissatisfied stick with it and get a little bit of free service.-- WcW, Sep 26 2013 [WcW] I was going to argue that some companies actually promote themselves as having very good customer service and make up for it by charging a little more. Then agian, those companies ususally have enough operators that implementing this system probably isn't worth the bother.
What this system would do however is make it easier and cheaper for typical companies to hit that critical balance between avoiding providing service and preventing dissatisfaction. For example, say I start transitioning from irritated to dissatisfied after about 10 - 15 minutes on hold. So that is the "ideal" wait time in order for a company to discourage me from calling customer support without loosing my business. With this idea, that range might change from 10-15 minutes to 1-2 hours, giving them a much wider window of time to hit and also allowing more efficient use of call center resources as they balance loads between peak times and less busy times.
The system should be set up to use caller ID, so if the custoemr re-dials the customer service line while they are waiting for a call-back, it immediately reports the estimated wait time and gives options like leaving the queue and returning to the main memu, accessing self help options while waiting without affecting the queue position, or hanging up again and waiting for the call-back.-- scad mientist, Sep 26 2013 random, halfbakery