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Is it just me or has dialing in to speak to a Real Human become an exercise in being on hold for literally hours.
Every company has a notice along the lines of "Due to the COVID pandemic we're experiencing higher volumes blah blah blah".
It's been 18 months. How this means that my insurance broker, or local bike store, or an airline is now overrun with calls because of COVID is beyond me. I get that many are working from home but is the lack of staff to take calls because everyone who should be manning the phones is taking their dog for a walk? Or have slept in, again? Or that beer o'clock has slipped from 5pm to 4 to 3 to 10AM?
I'm just wondering what your experiences are, and if anyone who deals with high-volume inbound call systems has any insight into what's going on. Bandwidth issues due to people working from home? Systems simply unable to cope with offsite call-handlers so they are on 25% staffing? Burn out? Home computers still trying to update to Windows 21H1?
cheers
Chris Maunder
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They outta make a sci fi move; "The day 18 months the earth stood still"
The less you need, the more you have.
Even a blind squirrel gets a nut...occasionally.
JaxCoder.com
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eBay and Amazon must be doing something right. Their human service reps seem to answer calls within the (accurately estimated) 1-5 minute period. With everyone else, it seems like a crap shoot. 
/ravi
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The Amazon email system on the other hand ... 24 hours for an email OTP? Which expires with the session after 20 minutes! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Wait, people are calling eBay and Amazon?
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Actually, they call you.
/ravi
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Friend tried to book his seat for a flight. The announced expected hold time was 250 min, multiple tries, multiple days, always the same. He went to the airport and booked his seat.
I think it is a crap shoot, some outfits have moved their phone centers to never-never land. Unless, of course, it is a sales signup/order line.
I am hearing impaired (PC for almost deef) and accents (like in Wales) are a challenge. 
>64
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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well here in the US, we're paying people to stay home and not work, so there is that.
I have a very smart daughter who is working up to be a paramedic. The fact that she does not want to make a career in "fill in the blank job for a student to make $$ while they study" seems to get her cancelled every time. Weird times.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Oh the irony. I went to a neurologist for a while whose practice's communications were expressly designed to prevent communication between patients and medical personnel unless it was in a billable context. If you called in to speak with the staff to say, refill a prescription or even schedule an early appointment, you were put on hold and then passed to voice mail. Voice mails took 2-3 business days before they were returned. My last appointment there took 5 phone calls, 2 hours total on hold, and 3 voice mails back and forth to be scheduled. Their "patient portal" was even worse. Beautifully designed, but refill requests typically took 5-8 business days.
Yes, I'm a grumpy old SOB. I'm sick and tired of elaborate technology being used in place of good service. My current doctor, in practice all his own, has a receptionist who answers the phone. I call and talk to a human. Unfortunately the doctor's older than I am, so I'm going to end up at MegaMedCorp™ before I shuffle off this mortal coil  .
Software Zen: delete this;
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I recently called a company, I think my electric company, and I got someone instantly!
It actually startled me and I couldn't bring out a word...
I was like "hi... uhhh... well... uhhh... I'm sorry, I didn't expect someone to pick up the phone this fast." and we both laughed 
But mostly, it's like you describe.
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Don't know how to use a command prompt.
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They clearly haven't been exposed to Ubuntu or similar.
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I'd make Raspberry Pi a required course. Not because a Pi is going to be practically useful; rather because of all the low level skills working with one teaches.
College students aren't taught command line and don't know enough to ask about it. The quality and experience of the instructors is the real problem.
My sons graduated from a state university in recent years. One is ChemE, and in his large dept about 5% of the instructors had any industry experience; all others had started "teaching" right after graduation. The quality of instruction and preparation for industry was abysmal.
The other son is PaperE, and in his small dept 100% of the instructors had industry experience, most more than 10 years. His preparation for the workforce was top notch and his instructors actually knew how to teach.
If colleges required even 2 years of industry experience before teaching, the landscape would change tremendously. But that won't happen, as those in power want to hire people just like themselves. Hiring people that actually know something practical is not an their agenda.
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BryanFazekas wrote: in his large dept about 5% of the instructors had any industry experience; all others had started "teaching" right after graduation
Of all software developers I have met in my career, something like 3% have any work experience in the application domain they are writing software for. With Linux developers: a small fraction of a per cent.
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Member 7989122 wrote: Of all software developers I have met in my career, something like 3% have any work experience in the application domain they are writing software for. With Linux developers: a small fraction of a per cent.
Interesting. 100% of the people I work with have at least 5 years experience in the technologies we work with, and this is current technology. Back in the 90's it was common to start a new job and learn new tech at the same time, but in the last 15 years my experience is ya gotta have experience to get in the door. Makes it tough for new grads to get started.
Back to my original point: a large chunk of college instructors have 0% professional experience and as a result, teach the material but have no real understanding of how it applies in the real world. I accessed the staff page of a large university and randomly selected 5 staff members and checked their bios. Not one listed any professional experience -- lots of academic awards and activities, but no practical experience.
This is a problem across all industries, not just comp sci.
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BryanFazekas wrote: 00% of the people I work with have at least 5 years experience in the technologies we work with, and this is current technology
You probably think of different aspects than I do. I wasn't thinking of technology but tasks, established methods, work patterns and terminology, ...
For how many years did you work as a librarian, in a real book library before you started working on that library software? For how long were you working in a sound studio with mixers and reverb boxes before digging into that digital sound studio? How may city planning projects did you see from intial conception to completion before you were employed to develop software for managing that kind of tasks?
I am not talking about sitting in on a project for a couple months to learn how "they" are doing things, "their" tasks, terminology and concepts, but experiencing it as how we are doing things, our tasks, terminology and concept. You are not there to learn. You are in that sw development group to teach the other software developers what your needs are, because you work in that problem domain.
I have worked with librarians having sufficient software training to understand what those sw developers are talking about. Same with sound studio people. And city planners. And professionals in a handful other domains. But they were not the software developers. They were fighting hard to get the developers to understand how librarians, sound studio people and city planners view the world, their tasks and problems. Not technologies but tasks and issues belonging to the profession, regardless of technology.
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Your point is well taken. One project I was on was for a very narrow public sector division, and there was no one who would have experience. The customer had to train everyone they hired.
We had a good analyst who faithfully documented what the customer needed, we implemented what was asked, and at final review, the project was canceled. The customer assigned a person who had been with the division less than 6 months to work with our analyst, and that person did not understand the business, so the requirements were wrong. The program did what it was designed to do, but it didn't do what was needed.
However, in general, teams I've worked with had a good balance of subject matter experts, business & technical analysts, and programmers, so programmers not having years of experience in that domain was sufficiently addressed. I've had a lot more successful projects that not, so it's working.
But this is not related to my point. If a college instructor has real world experience, in ANY domain, they understand many of the non-language facets of programming in a group. Things their fellows without real experience do not.
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BryanFazekas wrote: Not one listed any professional experience -- lots of academic awards and activities, but no practical experience.
"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach"
- Unknown
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And those who can't teach become department heads/deans/administrators...
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That's not the only thing they don't know, unfortunately.
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Command what? 
The less you need, the more you have.
Even a blind squirrel gets a nut...occasionally.
JaxCoder.com
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Make em use it for Tick Tock.
edit: oops, meant it for the OP. 
>64
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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Words [almost] said to our new entry-level hire a while back: "Don't give me that blank look, I'll hit you for your impertinence."
Software Zen: delete this;
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You might want to take a college education, and then there is a great danger that you will be forced to to Linux. Besides, when Linux takes over the desktop, you will have to learn to do spreadsheets and business graphics from the command line.
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