Easy vs difficult

I just had to call Comcast.

Yep, I groaned too. Why do we dislike communicating with these types of service providers? It’s because they make things so difficult. I called in and surprisingly had my call answered by a human. He asked the nature of my call and it was to disconnect phone service. He responded, “Oh, you want to downgrade service. Hold please.” I then waited on hold for twelve minutes. Thank the Lord for speakerphones.

After the twelve minute wait, another man came on the line and I went through the same dialogue. There was the usual discouragement to disconnect. The other packages offered. The attempt to upgrade the services I was keeping. Finally, the long periods of silence interrupted only by the clattering of a keyboard. All in all, twenty-four minutes was spent to do something I could have done myself online in two minutes.

Why do they make it so difficult? They do so in an attempt to keep our business. If they make us jump through a million hoops, we may not even make the call to start with. Maybe they will entice us with a different package. Maybe they can sell the upgrade. In the end, if they do accomplish any or all of those things, they still lose because they made the customer frustrated with the difficulty of the process.

Make it easy and I want to do business with you. Make it difficult and I resent having no other choice but you.