Ten Reasons Why Customers Hate Calling You for Help 

This article answers the question: Why do customers hate calling customer support, and how can companies fix the experience?

I have good news. Calling customer support is getting better, even if you don’t notice it yet. Part of the reason you might think it’s not improving is that past bad experiences have left such a “metaphorical scar” that you avoid making the call for many reasons I’ll share in just a moment.    

Yes, we may still encounter friction when calling for help or support, but with the latest technology, which includes AI-infused chatbots that either talk or message with you, the experience of getting help is improving. And even without technology, it’s still possible to create an experience that makes customers love you. You just have to know what they hate about calling for support and eliminate those from the experience. So, with that in mind, here are the 10 reasons customers hate calling for help: 

1. Making It Hard to Find Contact Information: This is where customer support starts. Some companies seem to bury contact information, making it hard for customers to find, which creates or adds frustration. 

2. Long Hold Times: Nobody wants to wait. At best, keep hold times short. At worst, which isn’t so bad, let customers know how long the wait will be and give them the option of a call-back. 

3. Making Customers Repeat Themselves: The more times you make customers retell their story, the more frustrated they become. 

4. Being Transferred: The goal should be to not transfer a customer, but if you do, make sure it’s only once. And multiple transfers most likely mean customers are repeating themselves multiple times. 

5. Agents Who Aren’t Empowered: If you hire good people and train them well, they should be empowered to take care of customers, eliminating the need for customers to repeat themselves and be transferred multiple times. 

6. Inconvenient Hours of Operation: Some companies make support available only during normal working hours. This is fine if your customers are unemployed, but for everyone else, be accessible. And with AI being able to handle many issues, some questions and problems can be answered 24/7. 

7. Bad Phone Trees or IVRs (Interactive Voice Response): If you have called for support and none of the choices offered are what you need, or you find yourself trapped in a loop of options, you’ve experienced this. By the way, our annual customer support research found that 76% of customers have been caught in an automated menu system and screamed “Agent” or “Representative” into the phone, before eventually hanging up.  

8. Clunky and Ineffective Self-Service: Customer support of any type should be easy. Self-service systems should be intuitive and easy to navigate.  

9. Telling Customers, “You Have to  ____ ”: It’s okay to tell a customer what to do, just phrase it in a way that’s helpful, not forceful. And if you can do it for them, even better.   

10. Customer Anxiety: This may be the most important one! There’s a reason that 34% of customers we surveyed said they would rather go to the dentist than call customer support. It’s because they’ve experienced one or more of the above reasons that customers hate calling customer support. This anxiety causes customers to be frustrated even before they decide to reach out to you. 

Yes, there are other reasons that frustrate and anger customers when they have to call customer support. A short summary of the above is to be easy, eliminate friction, respect customers’ time, and give them the right answer the first time. This will make customers love you and say, “I’ll be back!”

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.