By James Cooley - November 08 2006 tags: business service

Call centers are a pretty poor way to communicate a problem with a company. People working in CC I talk to are generally not that in control of the problem you need their company to fix and so you join a virtual conference call jumping between operators. One of the problems is the waiting long periods before you actually get to talk to someone so I tend to only do this if I have time to dedicate to it. What would be nice is to outsource my waiting time on a call ring and put the tools used by corporations in the hands of the public so that a call center working on behalf of members the public talks to a call center acting on behalf of a corporation. Members of the public join the conference call only when the conversation has reached a point where something is being resolved. It could work something like this:

  1. Joe want to see what happened to his order from Dell.
  2. Joe emails the reverse call center saying to ring Dell and find out what happened with order and customer number.
  3. Twenty minutes later when the reverse call center navigated the call ring, talked to some people who cannot help and has now located someone who can help so they call Joe's mobile and patch him in.
Of course we know Dell would never do this but you know who you are.
This could make the world a better place if it only stops companies from hiding behind awful customer service. I don't imagine the call center arms race could get any worse if something like this was implemented but it would put the public on a level playing field.