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Call centers are designed to fail due to 1 simple improvement

Hear me out, Call centers would fail drastically if they provided the necessary information to the customer. If you've been in a call center you may have detected this. On those busy days where calls are pouring in, most likely it's because of a specific lack of communication between the company and the customer because this act generates calls. Here's a good example When I worked on the Service Desk for USAA (not a blue badge) we would experience what's known as Major Incidents or MIs. These would range from certain groups of employees experiencing the same issue to an issue impacting the entire company. Now, one would think if a team is experiencing a work stoppage, a manager or lead of the team would call with everyone's name and employee ID, create one ticket, and be done. This was not the case. When these issues would arise, everyone impacted…


Hear me out,

Call centers would fail drastically if they provided the necessary information to the customer. If you've been in a call center you may have detected this. On those busy days where calls are pouring in, most likely it's because of a specific lack of communication between the company and the customer because this act generates calls.

Here's a good example

When I worked on the Service Desk for USAA (not a blue badge) we would experience what's known as Major Incidents or MIs. These would range from certain groups of employees experiencing the same issue to an issue impacting the entire company. Now, one would think if a team is experiencing a work stoppage, a manager or lead of the team would call with everyone's name and employee ID, create one ticket, and be done. This was not the case. When these issues would arise, everyone impacted would call to let the Service Desk know. These same employees would also put in a ticket (assuming they knew how) which would bog down the system, the same system we have to operate in daily, our literal main system. And this would be an issue almost every time an MI happened.

Now, why did this happen so often? Because no one told those employees to cut that shit out. Yes, USAA and Service Desk could've easily sent out mass communications letting users know how to properly handle MIs in regards to getting a ticket in. “But why didn't they?” you may ask, that's because it generates calls and tickets regardless of how difficult it becomes for the SD agents.

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There are a few things that need a bit more detail:

  1. When creating a ticket for an MI there are about 15 steps to complete before attaching the ticket to the MI and there are certain things you specifically can and cannot do on an MI ticket
  2. ServiceNow (SNOW) developers on USAA's side decided to “fix” SNOW by not allowing certain boxes to be filled in unless another field was completed. If one doesn't know this (because why would you tell agents about developer doings), this will add more time to the call due to trying to figure out what box needs to be filled. Oh, it doesn't tell you btw.
  3. Even if one did know these changes in SNOW, there wasn't a road map to know which boxes would be impacted by what.
  4. If a user wasn't part of the fix for the MI but submitted a ticket and still has the issue, that's another call plus another ticket followed by another set of steps to close said ticket (if it doesn't need escalation)

TL:DR: Call centers are designed to be disorganized because it generates calls and thus generates money. While this is only 1 example, I've seen this type of structure in most call centers I've been in.

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