The Expert Podcast

…So the tight labor market is showing up in more ways than one It's not always just Lack of availability of merchandise or even higher prices. Where it also shows up is in customer service. Here's an article in the wall street journal about how a lot of companies are going to robots or voice bots or chat bots automation. To handle incoming inquiries. So what's your solution If you're a consumer how do you get around this How do you actually get…valid information ? And direct contact from a company. Well you're going to find that this type of…Maybe passing the buck. Is not just in the private sector. This article talks about restaurants, pizza places having. Voice bots take orders over the phone. You may find chatbots on websites that talk to you. using AI it's not an actual person typing the messages. It may also show up and just the lack of any direct contact at all Maybe you're contacting a. Government agency like the department of motor vehicles or some permitting office and you just can't get through on the phone. Sometimes you can get through, but the person you talk to is not really knowledgeable just. Low-level clerk or receptionist or administrator. Who. It's just there to basically field phone calls And if you're an existing customer maybe they can pass you along to your agent or your rep. But for new customers they're basically sending you to the website or maybe sending you an email. If you're a consumer. And have some inquiry about. It professional type service or product. You may find this difficult to get good answers Now of course you can access YouTube like this video and. Do your own research and do delay. you may be able to go to websites and find the information but sometimes people. In their mind think I just want to talk to somebody. I want to talk to somebody one-on-one the problem is. Companies now have to allocate the resources. Of their employees to something that has a rate of return. If you have all your employees just on the phone giving out information to customers. Nobody's going to be. Available to actually provide a product or service to paying customers. It's just the nature of the beast It's the nature of the marketplace. Now that's going to impact you as a prospective customer, or maybe even somebody that just wants information in the old days you could call up and companies had excess staff. That could talk to you and give you free advice and answer questions. And you could talk to a qualified person in that company. Right. And you might. that that should be the case If you have a question, company has customer service You want to be able to just talk to somebody one-on-one undivided attention, have them give you straight answers. Without having to jump through hoops nowadays you either get a chat bot a voice bot, you talk to a low level receptionist. Maybe you do talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about but they're a salesperson right They're just trying to sell you on something with a sales pitch and that's not unbiased information. So because of this there's a lot of. Business enterprises popping up. That offer consultation. For a fee. There's companies like just answer You see on the screen TelAdvice.com there's telemedicine, websites. There is better help which does, therapy online. A lot of companies now especially in the digital age where you can talk. One on. by video you don't have to go to a place are using that technology. To offer. Access to certified credentialed experienced legitimate experts. For a fee Now as a consumer you might say look I don't want to pay just to talk to somebody and that I would agree you shouldn't have to pay. But in this day and age with the limitations of staff…And not enough. Professional experts to go around. The people that are, are at a company that need to, that are there need to work on files for paying customers, somebody orders a product or service. You want to make sure that you have somebody that can work on that file. For your customer. So it puts the company in a bad spot. Either you take your qualified staff and have them. Answer all the incoming calls and give out information and have nobody leftover or not enough leftover to work on. Cases or files or orders for, you know your customers or you just shut down the phone shut down live contact, and have everybody work on paying customer only orders. Or maybe you hire salespeople. Who. They're only…really purpose on the phone calls to try to get you to buy something not give you information to try to get you to buy something. Puts you as a consumer in a bad spot. You now have some options. You have to pay for them, but you can decide is it better to pay a small amount or not ? Or do your own research. That's the good thing about the internet age and the YouTube age. Almost everything you'd ever want to find out is on YouTube. Right You can learn how to build a house on YouTube You can learn how to…program a computer on YouTube Anything you'll need to know. Is on YouTube. However you have to take the initiative to find it and search through and, and navigate. And almost do forensics on all the information It's a. Overwhelming. Amount of information It's like a needle in the haystack. So if you don't mind putting some time into it to extract the information that's a good option. If you do want a one-on-one undivided attention of an expert, you have these other options Like I said, Better help is one just answers Dot com is another website. Tell advice as a website. So you have these options for accessing experts, but again it's a trade off Do you want to pay the money or put in your time And there's no right or wrong answer You could do either one. It's just, this option is now available and I think consumers are now. A little bit more accepting of the fact that well it might be worth paying. To talk to somebody, you know for years. attorneys sometimes had a free initial consultation Well that's the thing of the past. You're lucky even to get an attorney that is willing to give you a consultation If you. them, most attorneys have too many cases. To spend an hour just talking to somebody about a potential case even if you pay them…Law firms right now are very. difficult to get through and get answers back from just like every other industry. General contractors builders. professionals, government agencies. It's tough to get people to call you back So…think about those options. And what other. Alternatives you might have put a message in the comments let us know what you think. Is this the wave of the future ? Is it insulting to have to pay to talk to somebody ? Or is it something that at least is the best of both worlds where you can talk to an expert That's not trying to slam dunk you into a product. With the sales pitch. Or all the alternative is talking to a low level administrative person that maybe doesn't have the direct knowledge of your question.